MikieDecember 31, 2019 at 19:3916900 views831 comments
I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes.
Reply to Xtrix It's an inevitability of human existence. Newborn infants have no such conception and it is one of the broad parameters that is developed in the first several years of existence. Thereafter it forms a kind of implicit understanding of the nature of the world.
Historically, this becomes especially significant since Descartes, as you note. In fact a philosopher named a condition which he says characterises a lot of human thought since Descartes, which he described as 'Cartesian anxiety':
Cartesian anxiety 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 well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".
Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.
In my analysis this marks the advent of the distinctively modern outlook, formed by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which sought to sweep away all of the ambiguities and obscurities associated with metaphysics and view the world and its problems solely through the perspective of scientific rationalism. However as various critics of the Enlightenment have long since noted, this too embodies a kind of metaphysics, or rather, attempts to address many of the questions associated with metaphysics through the perspective of naturalism.
Deleted UserDecember 31, 2019 at 21:05#3674290 likes
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bongo furyDecember 31, 2019 at 21:17#3674330 likes
It's worth noting the grammatical origin of those two terms which have often acquired different meanings in the history of philosophy (including with Descartes' subject-object dualism).
The subject is, according to a tradition that can be traced back to Aristotle (and that is associated with phrase structure grammars), one of the two main constituents of a clause, the other constituent being the predicate, whereby the predicate says something about the subject.
For example, consider the sentence, "Alice sees Bob". Alice is the subject, sees Bob is the predicate and Bob is the object.
In the early 20th Century, self-awareness about the use of language in philosophy was marked by the linguistic turn and, specifically, ordinary language philosophy.
Ordinary language philosophy is a philosophical methodology that sees traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting what words actually mean in everyday use.
Nahhhhh.....nothing as exotic like that. The notion of subject/object is me thinking as subject in relation to the world as object, not the world as subject/object in itself, which is how I understood the question, re: “see the world that way”.
I like sushiJanuary 01, 2020 at 02:10#3674810 likes
Reply to Xtrix Can you expand the question more please? Don’t know what you’re asking.
In my analysis this marks the advent of the distinctively modern outlook, formed by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which sought to sweep away all of the ambiguities and obscurities associated with metaphysics and view the world and its problems solely through the perspective of scientific rationalism. However as various critics of the Enlightenment have long since noted, this too embodies a kind of metaphysics, or rather, attempts to address many of the questions associated with metaphysics through the perspective of naturalism.
The notion of subject/object is me thinking as subject in relation to the world as object, not the world as subject/object in itself, which is how I understood the question, re: “see the world that way”.
The idea as human beings being subjects and the world being the object is what I'm referencing here. That we're thinking things in the sense Descartes meant -- consciously aware beings, and since Kant subjects with object as "phenomenon" and representation. Schopenhauer discusses this at length as well, as one of the most basic principles of all knowledge.
It's hard to see things any other way, I realize...hence why I'm wondering about others' opinions.
StreetlightJanuary 01, 2020 at 04:03#3675010 likes
A distinction of provisional use, tends to be more obfuscating than clarifying, has led hundreds and thousands of people astray for the most part. Liked it better when the terms used to mean the opposite of what they do now. A decade or so moratorium on it's use - to usher in the new year, say - would probably leave everyone better off.
The idea as human beings being subjects and the world being the object is what I'm referencing here. That we're thinking things in the sense Descartes meant -- consciously aware beings, and since Kant subjects with object as "phenomenon" and representation. Schopenhauer discusses this at length as well, as one of the most basic principles of all knowledge.
It's hard to see things any other way, I realize...hence why I'm wondering about others' opinions.
I normally think of them as:
Subject: A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.
Object: A person or thing to which a specified action or feeling is directed.
In a scenario where Alice sees Bob, Alice is the seeing subject and Bob is the seen object.
I like sushiJanuary 01, 2020 at 07:38#3675200 likes
Reply to Andrew M I see the as relational antonyms because they’re relational antonyms. Many mistaken them for complimentary antonyms.
In phenomenological terms all ‘objects’, are objects, in the sense that they’re ‘intersubjective’.
I still don’t really understand what is being asked for. I get that there is some kind of stretching for some equivocation between ‘physicalism’ and ‘objectivism’ yet the terms ‘object’ and ‘subject’ are not necessarily just about that - nor primarily about that given that they have linguistic weight to them in terms of grammar and also in terms of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ (regarding reality and evidence). I mention this because scientifically speaking when we talk about being ‘objective’ we mean this in a ‘gradable’ way (gradable antonym) which does help to pull back the veil of of this false, yet convenient and useful, misappropriate antonym.
Have I slayed the dragon my quest? What page number do I turn to next?
"To see things" can imply that one has a distant vantage point on the world, as if one is separated from it, perhaps in some eternal realm. Maybe it's an intellectual space that we inhabit when we take the world apart. It's an inner sanctum where imagination is God.
SophistiCatJanuary 01, 2020 at 10:47#3675430 likes
I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way ["The Notion of Subject/Object"] or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes.
This seems to be too thin for a philosophical basis. Can you elaborate? Not the specific meaning of "subject/object" (I think we have clarified that part), but how you think that forms the philosophical basis. A philosophical basis would have to be something substantive, non-trivial, something that is both consequential, and that could plausibly be constituted differently and have different consequences.
I like sushiJanuary 01, 2020 at 12:50#3675630 likes
Reply to SophistiCat I’ve been told it’s a guessing game - seems to be a recent trend on this site
Cool. I’d add that the subject/object notion isn’t even used in the internal, everyday occupation of the brain. The image of tying a shoe is much more the case than the thought, “I am tying my shoe”. Reason creates the dualism as the means to explain itself internally in thought, or express itself externally in language, the intrinsic circularity of which tends to make reason its own worst enemy, a condition the pure physicalist/naturalist/empiricist exploits, and the speculative philosopher ameliorates.
Reason creates the dualism as the means to explain itself internally in thought, or express itself externally in language, the intrinsic circularity of which tends to make reason its own worst enemy, a
But don't we arrive at this insight by way of reason?
The eye can't see itself.
I like sushiJanuary 01, 2020 at 16:33#3676000 likes
Reply to frank The eye cannot ‘see’, legs cannot ‘walk’ and mouths cannot ‘talk’. I think this may be the point if the OP?
This seems to be too thin for a philosophical basis. Can you elaborate? Not the specific meaning of "subject/object" (I think we have clarified that part), but how you think that forms the philosophical basis.
Again, it seems to me that since Descartes epistemology has become predominant, the "problem of knowledge" -- how we know anything at all, what knowledge is, etc. This view of a conscious being (a subject) which takes in the "objective" world through means of sensibility (the "representations" of Kant) is an underlying assumption in modern science to this day. It barely gets questioned anymore, thus serving as a philosophical basis and a framework for understanding human knowledge, perception, and thus the universe.
"Descartes was probably the first to attain the degree of reflection demanded by that fundamental truth [that the world is representation of a subject]; consequently, he made that truth the starting-point of his philosophy, although provisionally only in the form of skeptical doubt. By his taking cogito ergo sum as the only thing certain, and provisionally regarding the existence of the world as problematical, the essential and only correct starting-point, and at the same time the true point of support, of all philosophy was really found. This point, indeed, is essentially and of necessity the subjective, our own consciousness." World as Will and Representation Vol. II, p 4.
I think he's correct, and I think this idea -- as I said originally -- still dominates much of philosophy and science today, especially in epistemology.
A philosophical basis would have to be something substantive, non-trivial, something that is both consequential, and that could plausibly be constituted differently and have different consequences.
Says who? That's a nice list, but you'll rarely find that to be the case in the sciences. The philosophical justifications that many modern scientists make (if pushed, at least in my experience) is from the philosophy of science of maybe 100 years ago or so.
Reply to Andrew M Even in your apparently simple construction, there's something unstated, which is that 'Bob' is an object for Alice, whereas Alice is an object for Bob. Whether there are objects without subjects, or subjects without objects, is left open.
As I see it, the process of 'objectifying' is specific to the modern outlook. I am of the view that pre-moderns did not instinctively think of the world in the objective terms we now take for granted, because the world was seen in terms of an 'I - you' relationship rather than in terms of things or objects; the Universe was animated by spirit. I think that shift to the objective is a matter of historical conditioning or development of consciousness (a theme which I believe is explored in depth by Owen Barfield.)
This is why the use of the term 'objectivity' as the criterion for what is considered truly existent, is a characteristic of modern thought, generally (i.e. to determine whether something is real, we ask if it is 'objectively real'). To the extent that this sense of the 'I-you' relationship was eliminated, then what remains are individual subjects and individual objects of perception; a stance which would have appeared incoherent from the pre-modern p.o.v. (because, lacking in reason or cause.)
I understand also that this was a theme in Heidegger's philosophy:
Heidegger believes that early Greek thinking is not yet metaphysics. Presocratic thinkers ask the question concerning the being of beings, but in such a way that being itself is laid open. They experience the being of beings as the presencing (Anwesen) of what is present (Anwesende). Being as presencing means enduring in unconcealment, disclosing. Throughout his later works Heidegger uses several words in order rightly to convey this Greek experience. What-is, what is present, the unconcealed, is “what appears from out of itself, in appearing shows itself , and in this self-showing manifests.” It is the “emerging arising, the unfolding that lingers.” He describes this experience with the Greek words phusis (emerging dominance) and alêtheia (unconcealment). He attempts to show that the early Greeks did not “objectify” beings (they did not try to reduce them to an object for the thinking subject), but they let them be as they were, as self-showing rising into unconcealment. 1
Bolds added. I think this 'unconcealment' that he was seeking to illuminate is similar in essence to the Buddhist intuition of 'Tath?t?', thusness or suchness (see this note.)
Subjects are called 'beings' for a reason; whereas objects lack being. I think this is a valid ontological distinction but one that is obfuscated in much modern thought. So it is wrong to treat beings as objects, except for technical purposes, such as demographics or epidemiology. (Interesting to note that the airline industry uses the expression 'sob' for those lost in airline crashes, where the term stands for 'souls on board'. )
Subjects are called 'beings' for a reason; whereas objects lack being. I think this is a valid ontological distinction but one that is obfuscated in much modern thought.
A perfect example of the problem: reason thinks it can see itself, knows it makes mistakes, so informs as to how to prevent them. It’s all a mere chimera: we in our very nature are required to use something to express what we do when we think. But when we think qua thought alone, we require nothing of the sort.
So, no, the eye cannot see itself, but the eye still needs to construct an explanation for what it does see.
Subjects are called 'beings' for a reason; whereas objects lack being.
You lost me here. Objects aren't beings?
The reference to Heidegger (who's fascinating to me) was very relevant indeed. I suggest "Being and Time" but more importantly, and too often ignored, his "Introduction to Metaphysics."
I understand the expression 'sentient beings' to mean creatures endowed with sense. So I would take the expression 'beings' to include all sentient creatures. I don't think it includes trees and other vegetative life-forms. But it is not as if animals 'have' being, but that they are beings, not simply objects. The behaviour of objects can be described solely in terms of physical laws, whereas animals engage in intentional actions. They are, if you like, the manifestation of subject-hood. That's why:
[quote=Thomas Nagel] The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. 1 [/quote]
It's true I can see other people as 'objects' in a sense. But think about the implications of that. When you refer to other persons, you use personal pronouns. You don't treat them as objects, as 'it' - at least, I hope not! - because you implicitly recognise that they are subjects themselves, and not just objects to be picked up and put down.
Of course, the whole point of materialist theories of mind is that subjects are simply the output of large numbers of objective processes which give rise to the illusion of subjective experience. In other words, denying that there is an essential distinction between objects and subjects, through reducing the latter to the former. But that is the sense in which materialism is de-humanising.
Re Heidegger - I've only picked up bits and pieces. I am loath to study him in depth and detail. But at least he wrote about 'the meaning of Being' and considered the nature of human existence, rather than regarding philosophy as elaborations on evolutionary biology or footnotes to Scientific Method.
That's a very interesting point and, incredibly, often overlooked when discussing human action.
No doubt, and is the ground for refutation of Hume’s human action by mere habit, or, which is the same thing, convention. I can tie my shoe via mere image without conscious thought because I already know all there is to know about tying shoes, that is, by habit. But that tells me nothing whatsoever about how I learned to tie my shoe in the first place.
It's true I can see other people as 'objects' in a sense. But think about the implications of that. When you refer to other persons, you use personal pronouns. You don't treat them as objects, as 'it' - at least, I hope not! - because you implicitly recognise that they are subjects themselves, and not just objects to be picked up and put down.
By "being" I'm not talking about "sentient beings." By "beings" I mean to include literally any entity or "thing" whatsoever. This is where the miscommunication is coming from.
I can tie my shoe via mere image without conscious thought because I already know all there is to know about tying shoes, that is, by habit.
These seem to contradict each other. What I thought you were talking about was habit, something in which the subject/object distinction (and even consciousness) often plays no role. That's not to reduce all of human behavior to habit, of course. Not sure how it's therefore the grounds for refuting Hume's thesis of human action by habit.
Subjects are called 'beings' for a reason; whereas objects lack being. I think this is a valid ontological distinction but one that is obfuscated in much modern thought. So it is wrong to treat beings as objects, except for technical purposes, such as demographics or epidemiology. (Interesting to note that the airline industry uses the expression 'sob' for those lost in airline crashes, where the term stands for 'souls on board'. )
I never knew that about the souls on board. Neat.
Living creatures are objects insofar as they are finite, have a surface, move as one, and so on. I think we should treat humans as objects, not because it objectifies the human, but because it humanizes the object. We’ve already tried applying spirits, minds, souls, and other words; and these figments end up gaining prominence over the object itself, so much so that the objects—human beings—were sometimes destroyed in order to redeem them. So I think we need to learn to value the objectivity of a human being, or else we’re left to apply value through a sort of linguistic trickery.
I still don’t really understand what is being asked for.
So the ordinary language distinctions seem to have been rejected. The thesis seems to involve an amalgamation of Cartesian substance dualism (and perhaps Cartesian certainty) and transcendental idealism. And an as yet unexplained connection with modern science.
Yes, that's a linguistic distinction. That's not what I was getting at, as I feel I've made clear already.
It seems you're asking whether others see things differently from Cartesian dualism and/or Kant's transcendental idealism. And, further, that they seem to provide the philosophical basis for modern science.
I do see things differently from that. Per your second claim, I think Descartes, Hume and Kant all left a mark on how science was subsequently practiced. But in modern times, Popper and Kuhn are probably the main influences (and Positivism before that).
But perhaps you have a specific thesis with respect to subject/object that you think is basic to (or assumed by) modern science? Perhaps you could give some examples of how it applies.
I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes.
Although it may not be a conscious decision, all thought and action implicity assumes the subject-object distinction. I, the subject, think of and do toobjects. I think the subject-object paradigm has proven its worth in the vast amount of accumulated knowledge we have in our libraries.
If at all there is something off about it then it must mean that the subject isn't sufficiently detachable from the object in terms which we can roughly speak of as causality. I maybe wrong about this but I believe quantum physics has phenomena that blurs the line between subject and object e.g. the double slit experiment with electrons where the act of observing by a subject changes the outcome of the experiment, the object. However, the question remains whether findings at a quantum level can be extrapolated to the world of humans - mind and body.
Also I recall that some very clever person, whose good name I forgot, once suggested that the universe is trying to understand itself which I assume is via evolving conscious thinking lifeforms like humans and, hopefully, other intelligent life elsewhere; lifeforms capable of actively investigating and discovering the inner workings of the universe. In such terms the universe is both subject and object.
Thematically, self-reflection, when the subject makes an object of itself, has its origins in philosophy. Socrates, the father of western philosophy, famously claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. I'm sure eastern philosophy too has a similar tradition.
Presumably, philosophy, understanding the self, not only just an individual but humanity as a whole, was the first step in the journey of the universe in understanding itself.
Harry HinduJanuary 02, 2020 at 04:11#3677700 likes
As I see it, the process of 'objectifying' is specific to the modern outlook. I am of the view that pre-moderns did not instinctively think of the world in the objective terms we now take for granted, because the world was seen in terms of an 'I - you' relationship rather than in terms of things or objects; the Universe was animated by spirit. I think that shift to the objective is a matter of historical conditioning or development of consciousness (a theme which I believe is explored in depth by Owen Barfield.)
This is why the use of the term 'objectivity' as the criterion for what is considered truly existent, is a characteristic of modern thought, generally (i.e. to determine whether something is real, we ask if it is 'objectively real'). To the extent that this sense of the 'I-you' relationship was eliminated, then what remains are individual subjects and individual objects of perception; a stance which would have appeared incoherent from the pre-modern p.o.v. (because, lacking in reason or cause.)
Seems like you and everyone here in this thread is trying to argue for their own objective truth - informing readers how things truly are, and even how things were in your explanation of pre-moderns, for everyone. You're explaining how the world is independent of anyone's beliefs and perceptions.
If everything is subjective then why tell others how things are for you as if it would somehow apply to others?
When talking about pre-moderns are you talking about your history or the history of the world?
Of course, the whole point of materialist theories of mind is that subjects are simply the output of large numbers of objective processes which give rise to the illusion of subjective experience. In other words, denying that there is an essential distinction between objects and subjects, through reducing the latter to the former. But that is the sense in which materialism is de-humanising.
The only options are de-humanization or anthropomorphism? Maybe it's something in between.
It would only be de-humanizing if you think humans are the only potential subjects. What about other apes, elephants, dolphins or pigs?
Its associated with sight. If thought reduces to linguistic use, then why do we say "I see" when we understand something? Why not "I hear."? Maybe language was originally mostly visual like sign language.
What I thought you were talking about was habit, something in which the subject/object distinction (and even consciousness) often plays no role.
I was. Except consciousness, which inescapable under any conditions of human action whatsoever, depending on what one thinks consciousness to be, of course.
Tying shoes is somewhat simplistic, granted, but if it is the case that instances of imaging is the modus operandi of the mind when there is no need of a subject/object dualism, the question then arises, what is the origin of those images. Psychologically speaking, it is memory; origin, philosophically speaking, it is a priori pure reason, the very thing Hume denies as having any such power.
The reason this matters, is that habit cannot explain the first learning of what may eventually become habitual. Pure reason, on the other hand, has no problem with it. Again, depending on whether one accepts that there even is such a thing, as opposed to pure naturalistic determinism, or the myriad of relative absurdities in between.
Maybe language was originally mostly visual like sign language.
A reasonable assumption, yes. Then came drawings, geographical markers, all sorts of visual aids. Generally though, I think conversants engaged in some dialogue has the listener recalling from his own congruent experiences, images relevant to the speaker’s words.
Not too much controversy there, right? Other than giving the rabid solipsist a gigantic soapbox.
Harry HinduJanuary 02, 2020 at 21:59#3679200 likes
Its associated with sight. If thought reduces to linguistic use, then why do we say "I see" when we understand something? Why not "I hear."? Maybe language was originally mostly visual like sign language.
It's is because we are visual creatures. Most of our information about the world is provided visually. Our visual field has more distinctions within it than our auditory, gustatory, olfactory and tactile fields do. We tend to think the world is at it looks, not as it sounds or smells. Dogs and dolphins will probably disagree.
As I see it, the process of 'objectifying' is specific to the modern outlook.
I don't think so. I think the issue arises due to a philosophical conflict between dualism and naturalism, an issue that exercised pre-moderns as much as moderns. Descartes' mind/body dualism is one manifestation of that. Plato's ideal Forms (as distinct from the shadowy physical world) is an earlier manifestation of dualism.
Even in your apparently simple construction, there's something unstated, which is that 'Bob' is an object for Alice, whereas Alice is an object for Bob. Whether there are objects without subjects, or subjects without objects, is left open.
On a natural view, there is a relational symmetry between subject and object. We can notice that Bob is hit by a falling branch. Or we can notice that a falling branch hit Bob. The subject and object are interchangeable and the details of the kind of referent that Bob and the branch each are is abstracted away. That is useful for scientific modeling where one might want to consider Bob and the branch as abstract natural systems that can be represented (in language) in a myriad of different ways and for different purposes.
Whereas on a dualist view, subject and object are ontologically distinct and relationally asymmetrical. Science can properly describe objects but not subjects, which are beyond it's purview. On that framing, naturalism overreaches, objectifying subjects and purporting to provide "a view from nowhere". But that is to misunderstand naturalism, which does neither of those things.
I was. Except consciousness, which inescapable under any conditions of human action whatsoever, depending on what one thinks consciousness to be, of course.
The reason this matters, is that habit cannot explain the first learning of what may eventually become habitual. Pure reason, on the other hand, has no problem with it.
I'm not sure "pure reason" really explains all habits either.
"Subject" and "object" are an indispensable part of our conceptual framework, but it's entirely possible (and I'd argue necessarily true) that all subjects are objects and all objects are subjects. "Subject" and "object" are roles, not classes of entities.
Substance dualism? On your view, how do Popper and Kuhn presuppose it?
Because while they may not themselves explicitly refer to the res cogitans or the res extensa, they both discuss knowledge and theory from the subject/object formulation.
Although it may not be a conscious decision, all thought and action implicity assumes the subject-object distinction
I doubt that very much. This conception is so prevalent in the west we take it as part of human nature, but there's no reason to assume it's universal.
But perhaps you have a specific thesis with respect to subject/object that you think is basic to (or assumed by) modern science? Perhaps you could give some examples of how it applies.
In psychology, particularly in studies of perception. It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. This way of talking about the "outside world" of objects and the "inner world" of thoughts, perceptions and emotions is literally everywhere. It'd be hard not to find examples.
So for you it is not Berkeley's "To be is to be perceived", but rather 'To be is to perceive'? That would be a very eccentric use of the term; do you have some philosophical justification for using the term in such a strange way; a usage that no other philosopher in the tradition has ( to my knowledge) employed?
Reply to Janus I have been asking about this for a while too. This also seems to underlie Wayfarer's theism somehow, where he holds that "God does not exist" but that in some sense still "there is a God", because God has being or is a being rather than existing or being an existent or something like that.
Reply to Pfhorrest Yes, it is puzzling! For me God (or any other purported being) either exists or does not exist (regardless of our beliefs). And the term "to exist" is synonymous with the term "to be". I think this, or something very like it, just is in accordance with the logic of common usage.
Hmm, really? That's interesting. Never read Ockham. Where does he touch on this?
... and Aristotle, apparently.
http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Ockham/Summa_Logicae/Book_I/Chapter_1: Now I say that utterances are 'signs subordinated' to concepts or intentions of the soul, not because, by a proper acceptance of the word 'signs', the utterances always signify the concepts of the soul primarily and properly, but rather because utterances are imposed to signify those same things that are signified by the concepts of the mind. In this way the concept primarily signifies something naturally, and secondarily the utterance signifies that same thing...
[...] And the Philosopher says as much, [saying] that utterances are 'marks of affections that are in the soul'[4];So also Boethius[5], when he says that utterances signify concepts. And generally all writers, in saying that all utterances signify affections or are the marks of those [affections], do not mean anything other than that the utterances are signs secondarily signifying those things that are primarily conveyed by affections of the soul...
[...] the concept or affection of the soul signifies naturally whatever it signifies, but a spoken or written term signifies nothing except according to voluntary imposition.
Hence the etymology of "idea" involving "image", as in a photographic trace. (Natural as opposed to conventional.)
And the undeniably fruitful connection of (the notion of empiricism in) philosophy of science to (the notion of empiricism in) developmental psychology. How we learn to read messages from nature.
Still, I see Goodman and Quine as reasserting convention, and rather kicking against...
This way of talking about the "outside world" of objects and the "inner world" of thoughts, perceptions and emotions is literally everywhere. It'd be hard not to find examples.
Or we can notice that a falling branch hit Bob. The subject and object are interchangeable and the details of the kind of referent that Bob and the branch each are is abstracted away.
However, there's something that this glosses over: that if Bob is hit by the branch and injured, he's rushed to hospital and cared for, whereas the branch is put out with vegetable waste. Sure, the impact on Bob can in one sense be explained in physical terms - the branch weighed such and such, and fell such a distance - but the impact in terms of 'consequences for Bob's life' cannot.
Whereas on a dualist view, subject and object are ontologically distinct and relationally asymmetrical. Science can properly describe objects but not subjects, which are beyond it's purview.
On that framing, naturalism overreaches, objectifying subjects and purporting to provide "a view from nowhere". But that is to misunderstand naturalism, which does neither of those things.
I think it does exactly that. This reaches its highest (or lowest) point in materialist philosophies of mind, which seek to deny the reality of mind altogether, as we've discussed many times (and which is plainly absurd, as far as I'm concerned).
And the point of Nagel's book of that title, is precisely that science attempts to arrive at a perfectly objective point of view through quantification and scientific method, however, that in the actual world, points of view are always those of subjects, so not a 'view from nowhere' at all. I think the view of scientific realism that it arrives at a view of the cosmos as if from no perspective is a falsehood, and is the point of the 'blind spot of science' critique. Science is still a human enterprise, and looks at the cosmos through the human perspective, even if it is highly abstracted and methodologically rigourous.
I do advocate a form of dualism, with the crucial caveat that mind is not something amenable to objective analysis, meaning that it's impossible to characterise objectively. So whereas Cartesian dualism posits two distinct 'substances' (in the 17th c philosophical sense), I think this is an abstraction and simplification, even if one that nevertheless portends something fundamentally true. But the Cartesian attitude then gives rise to the insoluble problem, how can res cogitans affect res extensa if the two are wholly distinct and separate? Which in turn gives rise to the whole 'ghost-in-the-machine' argument. But both 'ghost' and 'machine' are abstractions or intellectual models; organisms are not machines, and the mind is not a ghost. But having developed that model, or is it metaphor, then scientifically-inclined philosophers sought to eliminate the ghost, leaving only the machine, which is just the kind of thing that lends itself to study and improvement.
The way I approach a definition of 'mind' is 'that which grasps meaning'. But mind itself always eludes objective analysis, as it not objectively existent. Indeed it's precisely the mysterious nature of the mind that makes materialists want to deny that it's real! They rail against 'woo woo' but deep down they realise that their own nature is fundamentally mysterious, and this infuriates them.
By "being" I'm not talking about "sentient beings." By "beings" I mean to include literally any entity or "thing" whatsoever. This is where the miscommunication is coming from.
But I think that the fact that we can't differentiate "beings" from "things" actually conceals a very profound philosophical truth. A chair is not a being, but a cow is a being. When Heidegger talked of 'forgetfulness of being', was he talking about forgetting his car keys?
This also seems to underlie Wayfarer's theism somehow, where he holds that "God does not exist" but that in some sense still "there is a God", because God has being or is a being rather than existing or being an existent or something like that
Reply to Wayfarer That's needlessly pedantic. There is... whatever God is. That's not to say that God is an individual in some set that contains more than himself. I just don't know what phrase you would use to disagree with the thesis of atheism, while avoiding using the word "exists".
Reply to Janus 'Common way of putting it 'where? Living creatures are defined as ‘beings’. It would incorrect to describe minerals or manufactured artefacts as 'beings' and if you described them as such, you'd be mistaken. They are ‘inanimate’ by definition. And I say the difference is more than semantic, that it's ontological, that it denotes a real difference.
Reply to Pfhorrest
There's a book called The Case for God, Karen Armstrong, 2009. It's not a book of religious apologetics, but an essay in the history of ideas. She traces how from the early modern period, Christianity incorporated God into science, through the ideas of Newton, and others, for whom the 'regularity of the heavens bespoke God's handiwork'. But this had the unexpected consequence of more or less reducing what had been previously understood as the 'divine mystery' into simply another hypothesis; one which Simon LaPlace, and many others since, declared they 'have no need of'. But, she argues (at book length, and I can't possibly summarise it), that this omits the crucial element of religious consciousness, which is practical knowledge.
...myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.
Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd.
As it is, 'God' has now been reduced, mainly, to an intellectual abstraction, almost a term of ridicule in secular culture ('incoherent, incredible, even absurd'). It's a consequence of many centuries of history. When much younger, I had the idea that much of this was due to the formation of Christianity itself, which overly emphasized orthodoxy at the expense of attaining insight. This I attributed to the conflict between orthodoxy and gnosticism in the early Church; the upshot was strong emphasis on correct belief - something which wars were fought over for centuries in Europe. And the reaction against this became formative for the Enlightenment - the founding documents of the Royal Society specifically eschewed consideration of any of the metaphysical disputes that were prosecuted by the Churches. But amongst all this sturm und drang, something really fundamental became lost.
Reply to Wayfarer So you're saying that, to you at least, the difference between a theist and an atheist isn't what they believe, but that the theist does something that the atheist does? More like a swimmer vs a non-swimmer (who may believe all the same things, but do things differently), than say a flat-Earther vs a round-Earther (who may do all of the same things, but believe things differently)?
(FWIW, I did learn to swim in the abstract. I distinctly remember being in the back seat of the car on the way to the pool, lamenting on how I could never figure out how to do the normal overhand crawl method of proper swimming and could only doggie paddle, thinking about it, picturing myself doing it and trying to understand how the overhand crawl thing was supposed to work, and then having a "Eureka!" moment when it all made sense in my head. We got to the pool, and I dove right in and immediately tried applying that, successfully. A decade or more later, I also figured out the three-beat weave pattern of poi spinning, which had thus far eluded me, in the same way, just thinking through the motions in slow motion in my mind, and then applying them.)
Harry HinduJanuary 03, 2020 at 13:36#3680910 likes
It would incorrect to describe minerals or manufactured artefacts as 'beings' and if you described them as such, you'd be mistaken. They are ‘inanimate’ by definition.
Why? Beings are made of inanimate matter. The only difference is the complexity with which some thing is affected by the environment and then reacts to the environment.
Harry HinduJanuary 03, 2020 at 14:08#3681000 likes
I can see why. But once you give him enough effort, it's very interesting.
I dont understand why people still resort to pointing to long-dead philosophers claims as if they'd say the same thing knowing what we know today. That's not interesting. What is interesting is that neuroscientists and biologists are beginning to make claims about consciousness where this used to be off limits.
Harry HinduJanuary 03, 2020 at 14:23#3681010 likes
I doubt that very much. This conception is so prevalent in the west we take it as part of human nature, but there's no reason to assume it's universal.
In psychology, particularly in studies of perception. It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. This way of talking about the "outside world" of objects and the "inner world" of thoughts, perceptions and emotions is literally everywhere. It'd be hard not to find examples.
If its everywhere, it universal. Objects appear in my visual field as an instinctive act - without any intent of objectifying anything. It isnt cultural. It is biological.
I'm not aware of any other culture that doesn't objectify something.
If there is at least one long-dead philosopher who would hold with his claims given what is known today, then if he was interesting then, he would seem to be just as interesting now. Why would such long-dead philosopher give a crap about the claims neuroscientists and biologist are beginning to make, when his philosophy is not affected by them?
Works just as well the other way around. If some guy doesn’t give a crap about what neuroscientists and biologists are beginning to claim, he Is perfectly justified in holding with the same claims long-dead philosophers put forth in their day.
Makes no difference to me personally, as a regular ol’ human being, that one part of my brain communicates with another such that I feel good or bad about something, or whatever else happens behind the curtain between my ears. Actually, I couldn’t possible care any less about it. That a certain neural pathway is triggered by a certain activation potential invokes not the slightest interest in me at all, when it occurs to me it’s time to go check the mailbox.
Just sayin’........
Harry HinduJanuary 03, 2020 at 16:56#3681380 likes
If there is at least one long-dead philosopher who would hold with his claims given what is known today, then if he was interesting then, he would seem to be just as interesting now. Why would such long-dead philosopher give a crap about the claims neuroscientists and biologist are beginning to make, when his philosophy is not affected by them?
But we can't know if they would say something differently. It would be more interesting to know what current philosophers think.
The fundamentally religious don't give a crap what scientists say either, but they are both talking about the same thing - how the universe and humans came to be. Philosophers of mind and knowledge are talking about the same thing neurologists are talking about so that is the reason they should both concern themselves of what each other are talking about. There must be a reason why you wouldn't because you should probably be knowledgable of what people who study the brain are saying when they can make predictions about what you experience when parts of the brain are abnormal.
Makes no difference to me personally, as a regular ol’ human being, that one part of my brain communicates with another such that I feel good or bad about something, or whatever else happens behind the curtain between my ears. Actually, I couldn’t possible care any less about it. That a certain neural pathway is triggered by a certain activation potential invokes not the slightest interest in me at all, when it occurs to me it’s time to go check the mailbox.
Of course you shouldn't be concerned about it normally. Only when discussing the mind-body relationship on a philosophy forum, or when you receive brain damage.
whollyrollingJanuary 03, 2020 at 17:05#3681450 likes
Science is not a study of the world as “separate from ourselves”. Science is as objective a method as we have ever had available to us. Anyone who attempts to conduct it subjectively is incorrect. Anyone who attempts to separate humans from nature is incorrect.
But we can't know if they would say something differently.
True enough, but irrelevant. Interest is judged by what is, not by what might not have been. It would be irrational to hold an interest in falsified theoretics of long-dead natural philosophers, but it isn’t irrational to hold an interest in theories metaphysicians create that empirical science cannot conclusively address. Don’t have to live and die by it to be interested in it.
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you should probably be knowledgable of what people who study the brain are saying when they can make predictions about what you experience when parts of the brain are abnormal.
There’s really no good reason to worry about what may never be the case, so it follows that there is no good reason I should be knowledgeable on predictions. Truthfully though, I hope they find a cure for Alzheimer’s before I catch it. Otherwise, I shall deteriorate predicated on the standard process of all biological creatures.
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discussing the mind-body relationship on a philosophy forum
Can that really correlate to the predictions of cognitive neuroscience, if that paradigm has to with physical mechanics, but philosophy has to do only with simple human rational capabilities?
Don’t get me wrong. Science in general is both fascinating and quite useful. But I, a stand-alone thinking subject, am more concerned with what my mind does for me directly, however abstract that may be, than I am with what my brain does for my indirectly.
Harry HinduJanuary 03, 2020 at 20:27#3681930 likes
Interest is judged by what is, not by what might not have been. It would be irrational to hold an interest in falsified theoretics of long-dead natural philosophers, but it isn’t irrational to hold an interest in theories metaphysicians create that empirical science cannot conclusively address. Don’t have to live and die by it to be interested in it.
Interest is determined by your goals. What is interesting depends on the present goal in the mind. The only interest in knowing about the claims of long-dead philosophers is to know how far we've come since.
Can that really correlate to the predictions of cognitive neuroscience, if that paradigm has to with physical mechanics, but philosophy has to do only with simple human rational capabilities?
Don’t get me wrong. Science in general is both fascinating and quite useful. But I, a stand-alone thinking subject, am more concerned with what my mind does for my directly, however abstract that may be, than I am with what my brain does for my indirectly.
Is it really indirect? How would you know? This seems to assume dualism.
Interest is determined by your goals. What is interesting depends on the present goal in the mind. The only interest in knowing about the claims of long-dead philosophers is to know how far we've come since.
The first may be true, but the second does not necessarily follow from it. If I don’t know the current state of philosophy, the reading of long-dead philosophers in order to be informed of it, isn’t going to work. Parsimony suggests I might just read long-dead philosophers merely to know what they thought, regardless of their relative antiquity.
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But I think that the fact that we can't differentiate "beings" from "things" actually conceals a very profound philosophical truth. A chair is not a being, but a cow is a being. When Heidegger talked of 'forgetfulness of being', was he talking about forgetting his car keys?
Of course a chair is a being. Heidegger's talk about forgetfulness of being is not about beings, but that on the basis of which beings "show up" for us at all -- namely, "being" (some like to capitalize this, but I don't).
Beings are capable of perceiving, whereas inanimate objects (minerals, for instance) are not. Is it 'strange and eccentric' to say that?
To say any being is not a being is meaningless. An object is a being. A chair is a being. That building is a being. That piece of sand, Bach's fugues, mineral baths, and a trombone. All beings. Literally everything in the world has being. As I said above, to reserve the term "being" for "sentient being" is an extremely narrow and specialized usage.
I dont understand why people still resort to pointing to long-dead philosophers claims as if they'd say the same thing knowing what we know today. That's not interesting. What is interesting is that neuroscientists and biologists are beginning to make claims about consciousness where this used to be off limits.
Neuroscientists and biologists all have philosophical beliefs guiding their research, and often follow dead-end paths because of holding bogus ones.
To wonder why we study thinkers of the past is kind of ridiculous.
If its everywhere, it universal. Objects appear in my visual field as an instinctive act - without any intent of objectifying anything. It isnt cultural. It is biological.
No, it isn't. To say every human being has perceptions is more accurate, but to say what they perceive are "objects" -- a concept with a long history -- is to mistake the current (Western) worldview with a universal. The Greeks didn't view the world this way, nor did the Christians. That's not to say they didn't perceive things -- of course they did. But they did not refer to things as "objects" in the sense we mean. So to argue the subject/object distinction is universal is a mistake.
What is interesting is that neuroscientists and biologists are beginning to make claims about consciousness where this used to be off limits.
BTW -- no one is making claims about consciousness, because no one has told us what consciousness is. It would be like saying "neuroscientists are making claims about ectoplasm."
Oddly enough, when they even try to make a definition, they fall back on those long-dead philosophers you find so boring.
In English, the word ‘being’ applies to living creatures. Chairs and other object are artifacts, objects, tools, etc, but they’re not designated as ‘beings’. As I say, this is simple English albeit with philosophical implications.
'Common way of putting it 'where? Living creatures are defined as ‘beings’. It would incorrect to describe minerals or manufactured artefacts as 'beings' and if you described them as such, you'd be mistaken. They are ‘inanimate’ by definition. And I say the difference is more than semantic, that it's ontological, that it denotes a real difference.
Living creatures are defined as living beings. Minerals or artifacts are inanimate non-living beings and plants are usually taken to be living, but non-sentient, beings. So, you have it all wrong when it comes to common usage. When it comes to terminology it is always a semantic matter, but of course semantic distinctions do reflect ontological differences as they are conceived; between living and non-living, sentient and non-sentient, sapient and non-sapient, and so on.
StreetlightJanuary 04, 2020 at 00:51#3682390 likes
In English, the word ‘being’ applies to living creatures. Chairs and other object are artifacts, objects, tools, etc, but they’re not designated as ‘beings’. As I say, this is simple English albeit with philosophical implications.
Can you please stop this. No one in philosophy limits the use of 'beings' to humans. This is just your idiosyncratic rubbish that no one but you spouts. It is misleading, off-topic, and you have been told this multiple times before. You are knowingly spreading misinformation. Stop.
In English, the word ‘being’ applies to living creatures. Chairs and other object are artifacts, objects, tools, etc, but they’re not designated as ‘beings’. As I say, this is simple English albeit with philosophical implications.
No, it doesn't. The word "being" in English references "existence" as well, and not simply human or living existence. It's the present participle of "be." But this completely misses the point anyway. What I was talking about was in the context of ontology, not common usage.
It's heartening that I'm not the only one here scratching my head about this supposed difference between "being" and "existing".
Wayf, we all get that there's a difference between subjective and objective, first person and third person, and so on, but "being" and "existing" just aren't the words for that difference.
StreetlightJanuary 04, 2020 at 06:12#3683060 likes
Reply to Pfhorrest To be fair, the distinction between 'being' and 'existence' is a well founded one that has its roots in Aquinas and alot of medieval Christian philosophy, and still can be found in alot of contemporary philosophy. You can find a rough explanation of the distinction here: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Being_and_Existence
Wayfarer's equation of being with the living however, is a different matter and largely unique to his own homebrewed idealism.
Reply to StreetlightX Thank you, that article is very helpful in translating this language. I hadn't connected Wayf's sense of "being" with "essence", and though I was aware of the distinction between "essence" and "existence" I hadn't connected those to the distinction between "possibility" and "actuality" (thinking of them more as "form" and "substance", and not understanding why existentialism made such a big deal out of what seemed such an obvious point about them, being unaware of Thomism making a big deal of the opposite thesis, since medieval philosophy is my greatest weakness). As I read further and further on in the history section of that I found ideas sounding less and less like incoherent nonsense, finally coinciding with my own views when we reach modal realism.
(I also disagree with the prevailing Analytic claim that "existence is just what the existential quantifier asserts", though that is only because I think there is sense to be made of non-descriptive sentences. For descriptive sentences, it does work out that way. I prefer to read the so-called "existential" quantifier as "for some" -- for some value of x, [some proposition regarding x] is true -- and if the proposition is describing the world, then that amounts to an existential claim, but it might be performing a different speech-act than description, in which case it might not be saying anything at all about what does or doesn't exist.)
(In my logic, the assertion of existence is instead performed by the operator that denotes a descriptive assertion, so instead of "a wise man exists" or "some man is wise", you would say something more like "there is some man being wise", where "being wise" is the idea predicated of some "man", and "there is" indicates that that idea is a description of reality, in contrast to something like "be there some man being wise", where "be there" instead is an imperative or exhortation calling for there to be a wise man, i.e. "there ought to be some wise man". And we might simply want to talk about the logical implications of the state of affairs of "some man being wise", and the relationship of that idea to others, without either describing or prescribing anything; e.g. we can talk about how "some man being wise" and "Socrates being a man" don't entail "Socrates being wise", without saying anything at all about the existence of Socrates, men, or wisdom).
The word "being" in English references "existence" as well,
The noun form - as in ‘a being’ - is not used in relation to insentient objects, artefacts, tools, minerals, and so on; such things are never referred to as 'beings'. If you look up the definition of the noun form of 'a being' in any dictionary, you will find it applies to living creatures (and also to immaterial beings such as angels and spirits which you will presumably not believe in).
To be fair, the distinction between 'being' and 'existence' is a well founded one that has its roots in Aquinas and alot of medieval Christian philosophy, and still can be found in alot of contemporary philosophy.
Thank you. The leading paragraph of that article is close to what I'm getting at:
Being and existence in philosophy are related and somewhat overlapping with respect to their meanings. Classical Greek had no independent word of "existence." The word "existence," as distinguished from the word "being," arose in the Middle Ages. Influenced by Islamic philosophy that recognized the contingency of the created world as compared with God the Creator, Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas used the Latin word "existere" ("to exist" or "to appear") as distinct from "esse" ("to be") or "essentia" ("essence").
But this is also related to the question of why 'God' (or the absolute however conceived) does not exist. He is customarily beyond existence, not non-existent, but super-existent, or absolutely real, in a way that individual particulars/phenomena are not.
But with the 'flattening' of ontology that has developed as a consequence of modernity, that distinction is no longer intelligible - as we can see by the responses here to the idea.
No one in philosophy limits the use of 'beings' to humans. This is just your idiosyncratic rubbish that no one but you spouts. It is misleading, off-topic, and you have been told this multiple times before. You are knowingly spreading misinformation. Stop.
This goes back to a point I have raised in the past about the etymological derivation of the term 'ontology'. I pointed out that, according to an online etymological dictionary, the word 'ontology' (which first appears in the early modern/late medieval period) was derived from the first-person participle of the Greek 'ouisia', 'to be'. And the first-person participle is 'I am'. So in some ways, the term 'ontology' applies to the 'discipline of the study of Being' in a manner that includes, or at least implies, the first person perspective. And I think that is crucial to understanding what 'ontology' really is about.
The 'hard problem of consciousness', on the one hand, or the phenomenological tradition, on the other, are areas of philosophy that are explicitly concerned with understanding the nature of lived experience from a first-person perspective. They both say that the attempt to account for the nature of experience in third-person terms is radically flawed. And why that is significant, is because of its difference to the attitude of naturalism or 'the objective sciences', which 'bracket out' any notion of the first-person perspective but claims to be able to fully account for it in the third-person terms of the objective sciences - which is the nub of the dispute between Chalmers and Dennett.
So I don't see how this amounts to 'disinformation', and I could also do with a little less vitriol from yourself, if you can manage.
...areas of philosophy that are explicitly concerned with understanding the nature of lived experience from a first-person perspective...say that the attempt to account for the nature of experience in third-person terms is radically flawed.
If "the attempt to account for the nature of experience in third-person terms is radically flawed", empathy (understanding the thoughts and/or emotions of another person and/or social group) does not exist (which is obviously false).
the term 'ontology' applies to the 'discipline of the study of Being' in a manner that includes, or at least implies, the first person perspective. And I think that is crucial to understanding what 'ontology' really is about.
This isn't up for debate. Amateur etymology is no substitute for 2000 years of philosophical tradition because you want to push a moonshine philosophy that no one, no where holds. Stop lying to people.
"The question which was raised long ago, is still and always will be, and which always baffles us—"What is Being?"—is in other words "What is substance?"... Substance is thought to be present most obviously in bodies. Hence we call animals and plants and their parts substances, and also natural bodies, such as fire, water, earth, etc., and all things which are parts of these or composed of these, either of parts or them or of their totality; e.g. the visible universe and its parts, the stars and moon and sun" (Aristotle, Metaphysics VII).
"A few examples should help. Over there, on the other side of the street, stands a highschool building. A being. We can scour every side of the building from yhe outside, roam through the inside from basement to attic, and not everything that can be found there: hallways, stairs, classrooms and their furnishings. Everywhere we find beings... Moreover Being does not consist of our observing beings. The high school stands there even if we do not observe it". (Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics).
Kindly take your made-up, non-philosophical pseudo history and put it in the bin where it belongs. I will continue to call you out on this rubbish everytime you post it.
I doubt that very much. This conception is so prevalent in the west we take it as part of human nature, but there's no reason to assume it's universal.
I'm no Wittgenstein but check out language as Andrew M suggested. All languages I know of have a subject-verb-object structure and maybe, just maybe, if there are languages that lack it we may gain some insight into the issue herein discussed.
What would it mean to say that there's no subject-object distinction? Surely we're sufficiently removed in time and space from the moon landing in 1969 to validate it as an object and us as subjects. To say otherwise is, in my opinion, to claim that there's a causal connection between any and all would be subjects and would be objects rendering the subject-object distinction moot.
Have you never experienced empathy, or observed it in the behaviour of others?
Any argument which denies empathy as fact is unsound.
You must have misunderstood what I was writing about. In no way was I 'denying empathy'. Maybe read through the previous comments in this thread to see what I was getting at.
You must have misunderstood what I was writing about. In no way was I 'denying empathy'. Maybe read through the previous comments in this thread to see what I was getting at.
Same old pattern of avoidance: non-engagement with ideas that contradict your programme through obfuscation.
But not all objects are subjects it would seem, unless you attribute to rocks conscious awareness, which I doubt anyone would.
What about AGI in computers. Hypothetically. We can either presuppose that despite any behavioral characteristics machines are to rocks and planets different from what human beings are to them. Or otherwise, we can compare ourselves to rocks in our role of subjects by comparing them to machines first. Do we consider rocks as self-aware as ourselves? By many degrees of magnitude they lack the expressive, cognitive and reasoning parameters for that. But is the quality binary or is their sentience so insubstantial that it borders inconsequential by our usual standards. If the quality is binary, which side of the filter would AGI computers fall? And how different are computers from rocks then, fundamentally? A binary distinction I think already assumes an exosystemic component - i.e. a mind-body distinction.
P.S.: Maybe only thoughts have subject and object proper. And the human being is a vessel that serves as a locus for a collection of coherent thought processes that give rise to a sense of identity. These "thoughts" interact coherently to form the role of a "subject".
non-engagement with ideas that contradict your programme through obfuscation.
You plainly misunderstood the passage you quoted from me. Would you like me to explain it further, or will you engage in the same old pattern of avoidance of ideas you find difficult?
P.S.: Maybe only thoughts have subject and object proper. And the human being is a vessel that serves as a locus for a collection of coherent thought processes that give rise to a sense of identity. These "thoughts" interact coherently to form the role of a "subject".
:up:
StreetlightJanuary 04, 2020 at 11:30#3683880 likes
Readily accessible from the realization “existence” is a category, yet “being” is not. The first is irreducible, the second reducible to the first.
Sorta like.....”Heraclitus and Parmenides walk into a bar......”.
If those two had just sorted this nonsense out, back in The Day, we might not now have been “....strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism...”
(WWR-2, Preface, 1818)
Maybe only thoughts have subject and object proper.
Thoughts, strictly speaking, are the one thing that does NOT have subject/object dualism proper. In pure subjective privacy, the sole constituency of which is our thoughts, there is no need to communicate, therefore there is no need to qualify a relation between the thinker and the thought; they are the same thing. Internally, the thinker is the thought.
I think we need to learn to value the objectivity of a human being, or else we’re left to apply value through a sort of linguistic trickery.
I agree.
Social awareness (perception and cognisance) has objective (fact-based) and subjective (value-based) properties. It:
1) Requires observation.
2) Is caused by the mirror mechanism (experience of others' acts, including simultaneous exteroception and interoception, and the activation of common and/or associated mental representations).
3) Causes intersubjectivity, sociality, imitation, and empathy.
If you look up the definition of the noun form of 'a being' in any dictionary,
It amazes me you continue to argue about this. I’ll grant your point about the noun form in common usage —because it doesn’t make the slightest difference to what I’m talking about.
I'm no Wittgenstein but check out language as Andrew M suggested. All languages I know of have a subject-verb-object structure and m
I’m not talking about grammar or world languages. I’m talking ontology. It’s discouraging that this has to be explained, repeatedly, in a philosophy forum.
What would it mean to say that there's no subject-object distinction?
In my view it would mean that we’re not engaged with the world in a particular way (in this case, as “abstract thinking”). Heidegger would say something similar, only as a “present-at-hand” mode of being.
Once you’re in this mode, then a subject contemplating objects as a fundamental distinction can commence. But this is a “privative” mode- what human beings do for the most part does not involve subjects and objects at all.
So in some ways, the term 'ontology' applies to the 'discipline of the study of Being' in a manner that includes, or at least implies, the first person perspective. And I think that is crucial to understanding what 'ontology' really is about
And what would that be exactly?
The Greek sense of being was phusis and, later, ousia. Neither privileges the first person perspective. A casual glance at an online etymology site just doesn’t tell you much.
It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes.
The subject object distinction is a metaphysical distinction; it makes sense when you have an account of souls separated from objects, or minds separated from worlds, mental separated from physical, primary separated from secondary quality and so on. To my mind, to say that the subject object distinction is part of the philosophical basis of modern science is very greedy, as scientific theories and styles of inquiry which produce them only interface with the subject object distinction as part of their intellectual heritage; and as we know, being in the intellectual heritage of a topic does not say anything about being conceptually foundational for or logically consistent with the topic.
I think it's more accurate to say that scientists will articulate justifications for scientific inquiry in the abstract in terms of something resembling the subject object distinction based on how common and pervasively applied a metaphysical intuition it is, rather than saying anything about whether the subject object distinction is really relevant to their work.
You probably mean objects incapable of being subjects. They will be machines by definition, no matter what. Or do you mean, that we are not machines, or fundamentally distinct from machines? If so, how?
Maybe in the future they’ll acquire “consciousness” of some kind
It is not obvious to me what does it mean for something to "acquire" consciousness. Is this a behavior modification or substance change or some other metaphysical phenomenon? Because stated in this way, how does one challenge any claim that something has or hasn't acquired consciousness. Also, it isn't clear to me what consciousness denotes - a behavioral pattern, a type of experience, etc. If it is a type of experience, how can a person know that it exists outside of their own being - i.e. the solipsism style argument.
I think it's more accurate to say that scientists will articulate justifications for scientific inquiry in the abstract in terms of something resembling the subject object distinction based on how common and pervasively applied a metaphysical intuition it is, rather than saying anything about whether the subject object distinction is really relevant to their work.
Yes and no. I agree most scientists would repeat something like this as a philosophical grounding of their work, especially in the cognitive sciences, and that it does't really matter to the particulars of their research. But on the other hand, the particulars are seen in the light of fundamental notions, even if taken for granted and completely unexamined as they usually are. Every science has an ontological basis.
I think the subject/object distinction is one such fundamental notion for science, a variation of Kant, who took up Descartes' ontology, who in turn took up the Scholastic tradition, which of course was influenced by the Greeks.
It may not seem to matter, and it's often hard to care when modern science is so successful -- especially in terms of technology -- but the philosophical underpinnings are still worth questioning. I started this thread to see how many still question this particular notion, and as you can see, not many really do -- yourself included. That's interesting.
Thoughts, strictly speaking, are the one thing that does NOT have subject/object dualism proper.
I did not mean to say that all thoughts refer to the subject. In fact, I did not address (or honestly even think of) the distinctions between awareness, knowledge, self-awareness, etc. Indeed, only self-aware thinking incorporates the subject explicitly. Still, self-interest is present in most thought processes - even animal ones. So, although it is not formally present, the subject still emerges "organically", so to speak, from the coherent pursuit of personal advantage. Even if it is not directly expressed by the said thoughts.
Actually, this is exactly what I meant. That the subject arises in consequence from the coherent pursuit of self-centered objectives by the individual. This does not even imply self-awareness, unless the subject becomes the object of discussion itself.
You probably mean objects incapable of being subjects. They will be machines by definition, no matter what. Or do you mean, that we are not machines, or fundamentally distinct from machines? If so, how?
Depends on what you mean by "machine," but yes I think that we're not only machines in the traditional sense. How so would require a separate thread regarding human nature, of which there's much to say. But quickly: I like Heidegger's conception of the being for which being itself is an issue.
It is not obvious to me what does it mean for something to "acquire" consciousnesses. Is this a behavior modification or substance change or some other metaphysical phenomenon? Because stated in this way, how does one challenge any claim that something has or hasn't acquired consciousness. Also, it isn't clear to me what consciousness denotes - a behavioral pattern, a type of experience, etc. If it is a type of experience, how can a person know that it exists outside of their own being - i.e. the solipsism style argument.
True, no one has pinned down what consciousness means yet as a technical notion. Hence the use of quotation marks.
Is time relevant? Or do you mean that the emergence of such advanced AGI is suspect to you for some fundamental reason?
What's relevant is that we don't know what consciousness is, and computers are non-human objects. So to answer your question more clearly: no, there's no problem here.
It may not seem to matter, and it's often hard to care when modern science is so successful -- especially in terms of technology -- but the philosophical underpinnings are still worth questioning. I started this thread to see how many still question this particular notion, and as you can see, not many really do -- yourself included. That's interesting.
I don't give much weight to the distinction, at least whenever I think it's relevant. I think that it generates intractable access problems (how does a mind move a body?); and the conceptual distinction between a subject and an object is still something which has to come from somewhere - why do these entities operate as if there's a subject object distinction and not others? I think it makes more sense to start from a metaphysics of events and interactions (like a process metaphysics) and build up minds and bodies (or subjects and objects and their transcendental structure) out of those than read things in terms of the subject object distinction.
Though I do think it makes sense in terms of a folk psychology construct; something like that it can be a valuable part of our manifest image but when it's treated as foundational or a given it occludes more than it helps.
I don't give much weight to the distinction, at least whenever I think it's relevant. I think that it generates intractable access problems (how does a mind move a body?);
Well that's slightly different. Notice I didn't put "mind/body" in the title. To equate the subject with a "mind" is a different topic. But your point is taken nonetheless. I don't give it particular weight either.
To equate the subject with a "mind" is a different topic.
The kind of discussion that distinguishes a mind from a subject is already a more interesting idea than the usual elision of reason which joins them.
Edit: eg, subject as a universal constitution with its own phenomenological structure, a system in which conditions of possibility of experience make sense as an idea (ontological account), mind as particular concretion of that phenomenological structure which learns and experiences within the constraints of its constitution (ontic account) and thereby can discover the universal constitution through logical introspection.
Not that I buy that idea in the edit either, but at least it's got more meat to it than things like "you can't base metaethics on emotion, it's subjective!" or "physical theories are objective, anthropological theories are subjective" or "the warmth of a flame is subjective, whereas its temperature is objective". Or "materialism doesn't make sense because theories are subjective - the object is just a subject's apprehension of the object!"
"In philosophy, being means the material or immaterial existence of a thing. Anything that exists is being. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies being. Being is a concept encompassing objective and subjective features of reality and existence."
self-interest is present in most thought processes - even animal ones. So, although it is not formally present, the subject still emerges "organically", so to speak, from the coherent pursuit of personal advantage.
Reply to Baden Note this qualification in that Wikipedia article:
Anything that partakes in being is also called a "being", though often this usage is limited to entities that have subjectivity (as in the expression "human being").
Which is the point I'm making. We do not, in common usage, refer to inanimate things as 'beings' - buildings, tools, artefacts, minerals and so on. There is no issue that they exist, but they're not referred to as 'beings', and this is philosophically significant.
Furthermore, the fact that the Wikipedia article equates 'being' and 'existing' does not obviate the philosophical distinction between these two terms. My argument is that the loss this distinction is a characteristic of modernity, generally, and the significance of the elision is more than semantic.
My argument is that the loss this distinction is a characteristic of modernity, generally, and the significance of the elision is more than semantic, but is a symptom of what has been described as the 'forgetting of Being'.
So because most of the time, in everyday usage, we use the word "things" instead of "beings" for inanimate objects (as a matter of fact, for any object whatsoever), this is an example of the "forgetfulness of being" of modernity? Is that really what you're arguing?
"Forgetfulness of being" is indeed an interesting subject -- in Heidegger. But he's not meaning it in the way you are.
Reply to Mww
Let's say, I need to drink water from the waterhole, I like eating grass, and I am afraid of meeting lions. Who cares if I have established my identity of an antelope? I may not acknowledge that I am me (which obviously strips me of some advanced reflective mental faculties), but my agency still creates a subject's point of reference. My thought process needs to be coherent in order to induce a subject, because we mean something sustained by this concept. If I liked eating grass, but spontaneously decided to mate with a tiger I saw at the waterhole (I hate myself for this example), then my identity would be too distorted to induce a meaningful subject's point of reference. There would be no subject per se, just a collection of random ideas occurring without any rhyme and reason.
In a sense, I see the subject as the property of a collection of thoughts, of being organized to manifest some consistent agency.
So because most of the time, in everyday usage, we use the word "things" instead of "beings" for inanimate objects (as a matter of fact, for any object whatsoever), this is an example of the "forgetfulness of being" of modernity? Is that really what you're arguing?
What I’m arguing is that to place 'beings' on the same plane as 'objects', is to overlook their fundamental nature as beings. But if you ask what it is that is being overlooked, it’s impossible to answer, because ‘being’ is not something about which we can make objective statements. Being is always implicit, it’s not an objective reality.
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974, 'What is it like to be a Bat?') has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.
From Thomas Nagel's NY Times summary of his 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos:
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe [i.e. the universe described by the natural sciences], composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained.
So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'. In the broadest sense, 'being' is the capacity for experience, which is found in the simplest of organisms, but which reaches the plateau of self-aware, rational being in human beings.
Nagel and Chalmer's natural antagonist is Daniel Dennett. And what is Dennett's attitude to 'the hard problem of consciousness'? His attitude is that it doesn't exist. His presupposition is that the only things that exist are the elements of matter, and that through the process of evolution, which he describes in terms of an algorithm, these generate the illusions of mind and being through what he calls 'unconscious competence', the activities of billions of cells executing their genetic routines in service of the selfish gene. So in his schema, there is no subject or really any beings as such:
[quote=Daniel Dennett, Evolution and the Meanings of Life, p202-203]An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.[/quote]
True, no one has pinned down what consciousness means yet as a technical notion. Hence the use of quotation marks.
Consciousness or mind or rationality is that which discloses meaning, which makes it possible to define, consider, or analyse anything in the first place. Yet we don't actually know what it is, just as Nagel remarks in his OP.
So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'.
What you are arguing is irrelevant because no one but you uses the term in this way. Stop pretending that anyone does. This is terrible, bad philosophy. Stop being a bad philosopher and stop lying about things.
So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'. In the broadest sense, 'being' is the capacity for experience, which is found in the simplest of organisms, but which reaches the plateau of self-aware, rational being in human beings.
So consciousness (of any kind) is "being," which is why (as you claim) we only refer to sentient beings as "beings." But this (1) completely ignores the field of ontology and the Greek sense of being and (2) is simply subjectivizing the word.
"Beings" are everywhere, conscious or not. Even in English. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it's true. If you want to reserve the word "being" for conscious beings, fine -- then everything else let's call "things" or "entities." Makes no difference.
You're well within the ontological distinction of "being and thinking," which has a long tradition.
Your argument, once the smoke is cleared, is not very interesting. Citing an English dictionary does not an argument make.
So consciousness (of any kind) is "being," which is why (as you claim) we only refer to sentient beings as "beings." But this (1) completely ignores the field of ontology and the Greek sense of being and (2) is simply subjectivizing the word.
Don't you think that the issue of the 'hard problem of consciousness' and Chalmer's and Nagel's arguments as to why the natural sciences can't sufficiently describe the nature of experience in principle is basically an argument about ontology? (i.e. 'the nature of being').
Consciousness or mind or rationality is that which discloses meaning, which makes it possible to define, consider, or analyse anything in the first place. Yet we don't actually know what it is, just as Nagel remarks in his OP.
If we don't know what it is, then it isn't simply "that which discloses meaning." No one is interested in defining something out in space. It's armchair philosophy. I can choose to define consciousness as the light of Zorthar. Who cares?
Don't you think that the issue of the 'hard problem of consciousness' and Chalmer's argument as to why the natural sciences can't sufficiently describe the nature of experience is basically an argument about ontology?
Since you ask me what I think, I think it's a complete waste of time, and one would do well to skip Nagel and Dennett (who I like personally) and Chalmers altogether. And no, it's not ontology. They're discussing consciousness, not being.
one would do well to skip Nagel and Dennett (who I like personally) and Chalmers altogether.
Oh, I'm sorry, then. I thought this was a philosophical discussion. I will, however, be edified in my newfound knowledge that buildings are beings. So long.
Oh, I'm sorry, then. I thought this was a philosophical discussion. I will, however, be edified in my newfound knowledge that buildings are beings. So long.
The fact that you find so strange the idea of a building as a being, or a chair, or a rock, or literally anything at all, is puzzling. Unless you've managed to ignore ontology (and metaphysics) altogether.
And yes, it is a philosophical discussion - not a venue to talk nonsense, which is what you're doing.
See Heidegger, "Introduction to Metaphysics," p. 88 (in German) or p.122 (English). It's available online for free.
The very idea of a conscious entity (a conscious, "rational" being) as sui generis and the "problem of consciousness" itself are, at bottom, taking up the tradition of substance ontology and, I would argue, presuppose the subject/object distinction.
The noun form - as in ‘a being’ - is not used in relation to insentient objects, artefacts, tools, minerals, and so on; such things are never referred to as 'beings'.
It's true that people most often use the term " a being" as an abbreviated form of "a living being" or "a human being", but this is just an idiomatic (and perhaps in respect of its cognates in other languages, a predominately English usage) which does not rule out using the term to refer to any thing whatsoever in accordance with the primary common definition of 'being', as referring to anything that is.
The very idea of a conscious entity (a conscious, "rational" being) as sui generis and the "problem of consciousness" itself are, at bottom, taking up the tradition of substance ontology and, I would argue, presuppose the subject/object distinction.
Wouldn't disagree. But I am hoping nevertheless to probe that construction, rather than simply assume it. I am interested in the role of the observing intelligence in the constitution of being. I maintain that it is natural for us to believe that objects have intrinsic or substantial existence.
The fact that you find so strange the idea of a building as a being, or a chair, or a rock, or literally anything at all, is puzzling. Unless you've managed to ignore ontology (and metaphysics) altogether.
Buildings and office furniture are not 'beings'. If a building burns down - unfortunately this has happened more than a thousand times in my part of the world in the last few weeks - we don't say that the building and its contents 'died. But if it contains living beings - animals or people - then we say 'they died'. Is it strange to say that? Does saying that amount to 'ignoring ontology'? How is this 'ignoring metaphysics'?
What do you make of this gloss of Heidegger's work:
Heidegger's talk of Being may sound obscure, but at least in his most famous work, Being and Time (1927), what he means by it is fairly straightforward. The Being of entities is “that on the basis of which they are already understood” by us, however implicitly and inchoately. In other words, the Being of an entity is the condition under which we can recognize it as an entity of a certain kind. For example, as we’ll soon see, it is only on the basis of forms of human practice that entities like hammers can be recognized and understood. To “forget” Being is, therefore, to ignore the conditions – forms of practice, for instance – that make it possible for us to experience things, for anything to “show up” for us. This failure of attention, Heidegger argues, is endemic in Western philosophical tradition, most strikingly in the Cartesian picture that, he maintains, nearly all philosophers since Descartes have broadly endorsed.
With its strict division between selves and the world, subjects and objects, or mind and nature, this picture sets us against the world, in effect treating it as alien to us. And it is a bad picture, since in reality, Heidegger argues, we and the world cannot, even notionally, exist without one another: “self and world” are not “two beings”, but mutually dependent. The Cartesian picture results from viewing us in an over-intellectual way – as, essentially, “thinking things” who observe objects and mentally represent them. Phenomenological attention, undistorted by theory, to “things themselves” yields a very different picture of how we relate to the world, however. We do so, not as “spectators” or “thinkers”, but “primordially” as agents, for whom things are revealed as “equipment”, as things – like hammers – that we use and which owe their identity to their place in purposive human activities, such as carpentry. The world is intelligible to us, in the first instance, as a “relational totality” of “ready-to-hand equipment”, in which each thing has significance for us through its location in this “sign-like” whole. The hammer is implicated in a whole form of life – of working, building, bringing up a family and so on. ...
This account of our being-in-the-world, Heidegger recognizes, does not do justice to the unique character of human existence: after all, animals also cope with, and to a degree understand, their environments. What is missing is the appreciation that creatures with our kind of Being (Dasein) are not only “absorbed” in everyday practices, but are able to regard their lives as an “issue” for them – to take stock of these lives and make them “their own”, by giving them sense and direction. Only when we choose to do this are our lives “authentic”, and no longer the “inauthentic” ones we lead when we allow, as we do for the most part, our practices, tastes and interests to be dictated by “Them” (Das Man), the faceless “public” that dominates in the “average everydayness” of human life. The capacity for authentically seizing hold of one’s life is intimated by Angst – an “uncanny” mood in which “everyday familiarity collapses”, so that previously entrenched convictions lose their hold. Precisely because Angst is a disturbing mood, however, people are more than ready to suppress or “flee from” it, back into the reassuring arms of “Them”.
Note, 'our kind of Being', capitalised. What do you make of that?
I think the paragraph on the 'division of selves and world' is suggested by the quote I gave in my earlier post about 'the Cartesian anxiety'.
Reply to Janus If you look at the encyclopedia reference which StreetlightX posted in about the distinction of 'being and existence' there is a centuries-old discussion of the distinction. It says that most modern analytical philosophy now doesn't recognize the distinction - which is the point I'm making! I'm saying, there's a real distinction which is now not recognized, and as it's not recognized, it's extraordinarily difficult to say what it is. So most people will simply shrug and say they can't understand the difference - like you are doing. Fair enough, but I'm trying to explain what I see as the issue.
Anway, I've been told I'm 'peddling nonsense' a number of times in this thread already, which I think is completely untrue, but I will go and do some more reading and contemplation and will take a time out for a while. Bye.
But not all objects are subjects it would seem, unless you attribute to rocks conscious awareness, which I doubt anyone would.
That’s just panpsychism, and contemporary versions of it are a lot more innocuous than it might seem, being basically what is left over after you have ruled out all the even more absurd options (like we are all p-zombies, or there’s some metaphysical magic that goes on in humans but not rocks).
It says that most modern analytical philosophy now doesn't recognize the distinction - which is the point I'm making!
It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy.
Buildings and office furniture are not 'beings'. If a building burns down - unfortunately this has happened more than a thousand times in my part of the world in the last few weeks - we don't say that the building and its contents 'died. But if it contains living beings - animals or people - then we say 'they died'. Is it strange to say that? Does saying that amount to 'ignoring ontology'? How is this 'ignoring metaphysics'?
Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings. No one is saying they're sentient beings. How is this hard for you to understand? Possibly because you not only ignore ontology, but you ignore me and everyone else on this thread who continually try to tell you that "being" as "conscious being" is your peculiar terminology.
You don't have to go far back in the history of ontology -- just look at Heidegger, who you quote.
Maybe someone should have been around to tell him that in English, "being" is usually used, in commoninteraction, to refer to "sentient things," hmm? What a profound realization he would have had.
Note, 'our kind of Being', capitalised. What do you make of that?
What do I make of what? The capitalization? In Being and Time, and in other translations, "being" is usually capitalized -- and it's unfortunate, in my view. It implies some kind of "God"-like "special" entity or something. In German, all nouns are capitalized, so it's misleading to reserve "being" for special importance.
Anway, I've been told I'm 'peddling nonsense' a number of times in this thread already, which I think is completely untrue, but I will go and do some more reading and contemplation and will take a time out for a while. Bye.
You're peddling nonsense in the case of reserving the word "being" for "conscious being," citing the English dictionary as support, and then basically saying this in turn lends proof to your belief that consciousness and being are the same thing. You've got to do better sir. This would fail as a dissertation, a master's thesis, an honors thesis, and probably as a Presidential tweet (alright, maybe not THAT bad).
Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings.
Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? Buildings and furniture are structures and artefacts. The point is that beings are not things or objects, but are subjects of experience, which is demonstrably not the case for inanimate objects (although apparently panpsychists don’t agree.)
I didn’t say ‘consciousness’ and ‘being’ are the same - what I said was that the capacity for experience is the fundamental attribute of being, which I illustrated with reference to the ‘hard problem’. (Perhaps you’re not familiar with ‘the hard problem of consciousness’?)
I never claim any expertise of Heidegger, although I did do a Master’s thesis (on the Buddhist doctrine of Anatta.) However to be told that I have no understanding of ontology and metaphysics, because I argue for the ontological distinction of beings and objects is, at least, ironic.
It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy.
The relevant passage is this:
Eventually, however, the concept of "existentia" ("existence") was established amongst Medieval Christian philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas as a technical term contrasted with "essentia" ("essence"), an abstract form of the presumed present participle of "esse" ("to be"). While essence apparently meant "what a thing is," existence meant "that a thing exists." According to Charles H. Khan, this development of the modern sense of existence occurred under the influence of Islamic philosophy, which distinguished existence (wujud) from essence (mahiat) in its radical revision of Greek ontology in light of a biblical metaphysics of creation within Islam which distinguished the created world (contingency) from God (necessity).
There seems to be an understanding in Greek philosophy, that particulars or individuals are not (here is where words are difficult) ‘fully real’. They are a composite of real and unreal elements. In fact this is the case for all of the objects of the phenomenal domain; they, and the sensory domain, is real in some respects, and unreal in other respects (which is subject of traditional metaphysics) which became adapted (some would say appropriated) by the monotheistic faiths as indicated in that passage, so as to distinguish the ‘essential’ from the ‘contingent’. And I think this still contains an essential truth (whilst fully acknowledging that hardly anyone will agree with that.)
This is why I point to intelligible objects such as logical laws and natural numbers as examples of ‘objects’ which only exist in and for a rational mind. So, they don’t exist in the sense that stones and flowers do, but they’re nevertheless real, in that they’re the same for all who think; 7 is 7 for you, me, Aquinas, and Dr. Spock. The point is that they belong to a different domain to the phenomenal realm - perhaps ‘the noumenal realm’, where ‘noumenal’ means ‘objects of mind’. Not that such a domain actually exists - but it’s real, in the same sense that the ‘domain of natural numbers’ is real. Which is the point!
It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy.
Islamic philosophy, which distinguished existence (wujud) from essence (mahiat) in its radical revision of Greek ontology in light of a biblical metaphysics of creation
I'm wondering how many people in this forum still see the world in this way or something similar to it. It seems to be the philosophical basis for modern science, at least since Descartes.
We have our own experience of the world as individuals and human beings, and then we have scientific explanations of the world which are divorced from that, because how the world appears to us is not always how the world is.
This has been known since our ancestors starting making note of the difference between appearance and reality. We can use whatever terms make the most sense in modern language to describe that distinction, but yes, it's a reality of our human existence, and probably the impetus that got philosophy started.
StreetlightJanuary 05, 2020 at 09:45#3686600 likes
Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker?
Maybe you're utterly ignorant about anything to do with philosophy because no one but you equates being with the living, and is nothing but the idiosyncratic fabrication of a hack and a fraud?
Starting at about 3:38 in the video above, Phillip Ball, an editor at the Journal of Nature, is discussing popular notions of quantum mechanics. Here he talks about how people think that because measurement impacts the result:
[quote=Phillip Ball]So the human observer can't be extracted from the theory. It becomes unavoidably subjective.[/quote]
He's just laying out a popular conception, not arguing for it. The point about the quote is the idea that science tries to extract the human from the observation. Right here we have a subjective/objective distinction, where it seems to be a problem that one result of QM might not allow that, at least on a popular understanding, or according to one interpretation.
But the key idea is that science tries to extract our human experience from what's being studied.
Mapping the MediumJanuary 05, 2020 at 10:04#3686680 likes
We recognize subject only in relation to object. A world of verbs and adjectives, so to speak. This is why we have no memories of early development. Our sense of self 'became' due to the action of verbs and the recognition via adjectives. Nominalism reduced our adult approach to the world down to dismissing the importance of the verb and adjective. Even your question has a 'slash' (slice) between subject and object.
But the key idea is that science tries to extract our human experience from what's being studied.
:up:
PossibilityJanuary 05, 2020 at 10:24#3686740 likes
I have to say that I would have initially agreed with @Wayfarer in this discussion - I always thought when talking about a ‘being’ that we’re commonly assuming some level of consciousness or at least life, but I also understand that, ontologically speaking, a ‘being’ refers specifically to temporal existence.
I think we reserve the term ‘being’ for the living in order to distinguish it from ‘object’, which we understand to be lifeless, and therefore static. I’ll admit that referring to a building, for instance, as a ‘being’ seems strange to me, even as I recognise it as an instance of being. But I no longer think it’s useful to make this distinction, especially if, with Rovelli, we recognise that the universe more accurately consists of interrelated ‘events’ rather than ‘objects’.
So I acknowledge that buildings and office furniture ARE beings after all - and that to distinguish them, ontologically speaking, as ‘objects’ instead fails to recognise their relative temporal existence in the universe.
Plus, I think if we’re aiming to plausibly explain the origin of life at some point in our philosophy, then it’s important to dispense with this being-object distinction that implies ‘life’ as something added to matter.
Mapping the MediumJanuary 05, 2020 at 10:34#3686760 likes
This is a favorite video on my educational playlist ('My Freedom from Nominalism Worldview'). ... Rocco Gangle does an EXCELLENT job of explaining Spinoza, language, and relational identity. ... https://youtu.be/osySxRALhSo
StreetlightJanuary 05, 2020 at 10:38#3686770 likes
So I acknowledge that buildings and office furniture ARE beings after all - and that to distinguish them, ontologically speaking, as ‘objects’ instead fails to recognise their relative temporal existence in the universe.
One of the reasons that thinking in terms of 'subjects' and 'objects' is so warped is that it is an utterly anachronistic way of speaking: almost no one before Kant spoke of being in terms of either objects or subjects; this was a later distinction that came nearly 1700 years after philosophers had spoke of 'being' for multiple centuries in entirely other terms, only after which it was grafted on, like a badly transplanted organ, onto talk about being by those who knew no better and had no understanding of history. You won't find it in Parmenides, you won't find it in Aristotle, you won't find it in Aquinas, you won't find it in Spinoza. At all. The essential distinctions at work in talk of being were far more likely to be between the One and the Multiple, the Accidental and the Essential, or Form and Matter, than there would be anything to do with 'subject and object'. No one pre-Kant speaks of being in terms of a subject/object distinction. Not a single soul.
(So to those who say that it's hard or impossible to think in terms other than subject and object, well, we did it for millennia, and we can not do it quite easily once again).
The debate isn't whether or not being is really 'objective' or 'subjective'. That's not even the right question; it's like asking if colourless green sheep snore or not. But because Wayfarer, who is a hack, knows nothing other, he can only try to secure the rights of the 'subjective' over the 'objective' by falsifying history and making basic, intentional mistakes that any undergraduate would be embarrassed to submit to scrutiny. Anyone who thinks that questions of being turn upon subjects or objects ought to go back to philosophy 101 or simply give up on pretending to know anything whatsoever on the subject.
Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? Buildings and furniture are structures and artefacts. The point is that beings are not things or objects, but are subjects of experience, which is demonstrably not the case for inanimate objects
Yes, it is so I'm afraid. Except in your world, where you reserve "being" for sentience, and cite the English dictionary.
Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings. No one is saying they're sentient beings. How is this hard for you to understand? Possibly because you not only ignore ontology,but you ignore me and everyone else on this thread who continually try to tell you that "being" as "conscious being" is your peculiar terminology.
(Bold mine)
The fact that you only quoted the first sentence already proves my point. You're a joke.
Next up: let's go to a physics forum and explain that the way we use the term "energy" in English just doesn't line up with how physicists use it. Then cite the dictionary. Bam!
I’m not talking about grammar or world languages. I’m talking ontology. It’s discouraging that this has to be explained, repeatedly, in a philosophy forum.
In my view it would mean that we’re not engaged with the world in a particular way (in this case, as “abstract thinking”). Heidegger would say something similar, only as a “present-at-hand” mode of being.
Once you’re in this mode, then a subject contemplating objects as a fundamental distinction can commence. But this is a “privative” mode- what human beings do for the most part does not involve subjects and objects at all.
Well reminds me of driving. When traffic is flowing smoothly we're completely unconscious of the act - the car and the driver are one. The instant something unexpected happens the driver becomes aware of driving the car. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, taking into account your other thread on the problems the world is facing, it seems that the scientific bent of the human mind, albeit only expressed in a minority but widely claimed by all, which is the quintessence of the subject-object distinction, is actually an indication that the world has broken and is now present-at-hand. It makes sense since morality, something that has been on our minds for over 2000 years, is about oughts, as if to say the world is busted and needs repair.
Well reminds me of driving. When traffic is flowing smoothly we're completely unconscious of the act - the car and the driver are one. The instant something unexpected happens the driver becomes aware of driving the car. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, taking into account your other thread on the problems the world is facing, it seems that the scientific bent of the human mind, albeit only expressed in a minority but widely claimed by all, which is the quintessence of the subject-object distinction, is actually an indication that the world has broken and is now present-at-hand. It makes sense since morality, something that has been on our minds for over 2000 years, is about oughts, as if to say the world is busted and needs repair.
Fair enough. I don't feel the use of "present-at-hand" makes much sense in this context, but I get your meaning.
I also thought being referred to living things, hence the great chain of being of theology from God on down to microbes, but not chairs or rocks. Unless we're talking pantheism.
The ancients may have used being to refer all things, but that's not how I understood the modern use of the word. A being was always something alive.
But as for the OP, the subject/object divide to is the difference between how we as animals experience the world versus how the world is.
No one cares how the word is (mostly) used in English. Least of all me. I'm talking ontology. Do we walk into a physics lecture and gripe about their "counterintuitive" use of the word "energy" or "work"?
I'm continually discouraged by the lack of any familiarity with ontology in this thread. I was hopeful in the philosophy forum, members would be somewhat educated in philosophy.
Reply to Xtrix The thing is quite a few members on here are ordinary language philosophy fans, and not great fans of metaphysics, so discussing the usage of words is important to them, since they're convinced philosophy goes wrong with a misuse of language, particularly when it comes to ontology.
I think we experience the world as if there is a subjective/objective divide, but the ontological situation is unclear, because we don't know the nature of consciousness. However, we're made of the same stuff as everything else, so I tend to think it's an epistemological divide.
Carrying this to its logical conclusion, taking into account your other thread on the problems the world is facing, it seems that the scientific bent of the human mind, albeit only expressed in a minority but widely claimed by all, which is the quintessence of the subject-object distinction, is actually an indication that the world has broken and is now present-at-hand.
Well to say the world is "present-at-hand" simply means the theoretical, "rational" mode of being (which underlies science) where things show up as "before us"in the present moment -- as objects with properties, usually. Hubert Dreyfus often says the hammer becomes a "wooden stick with a metal blob at the end" -- a piece of equipment that has a certain weight, color, etc.
None of this is relevant when the activity of hammering is going transparently well -- or take your driving example, which is a good one. That would be ready-to-hand activity.
Given this, I think you mean to say that the current reliance on science shows how this present-at-hand mode of being is taking over the world?
The thing is quite a few members on here are ordinary language philosophy fans, and not great fans of metaphysics, so discussing the usage of words is important to them, since they're convinced philosophy goes wrong with a misuse of language, particularly when it comes to ontology.
Discussing words, their origins and the history of their meaning, is indeed important. That's not being done here. To resort to the dictionary is as useless here as it is in physics, as I mentioned before. No one cares about how "energy" is used in everyday discourse if you're discussing physics. Likewise, no one cares here either -- unless it somehow plays into a deeper analysis of the etymology of the word (in this case "being") in the context of the history of ontology (which is what we're concerned with). But that hasn't been done.
I think we experience the world as if there is a subjective/objective divide, but the ontological situation is unclear, because we don't know the nature of consciousness. However, we're made of the same stuff as everything else, so I tend to think it's an epistemological divide.
It's impossible to say whether things like 'atoms' really exist, nor does it actually matter. An 'atom' is a very simple concept, even meaningless for many elements in natural conditions, such as metals for example, because of 'electron sharing in substance 'pools' larger than 'molecules.'
But it doesn't matter, because such words refer to a scientific model to explain the observed material world, and not the material world itself.
In the model, events change an object's state (subject) to something else (object) by an action (verb). Whether the object exists or not is irrelevant to the language used to describe it, because it is only describing an abstracted model of observed phenomena.
Reply to Xtrix Within a LARGER scope, it could be meaningless or not, depending on your metaphysical position, which ultimately can be no more than belief. Within the scope of science, the concept of an atom does have meaning, or we wouldnt be able to make sense of scientific theories.
Within a LARGER scope, it could be meaningless or not, depending on your metaphysical position, which ultimately can be no more than belief. Within the scope of science, the concept of an atom does have meaning, or we wouldnt be able to make sense of scientific theories.
It's quite true that an atom makes sense in chemistry and physics. That has nothing to do with "material," which is meaningless. It used to have a meaning in science, in Newton's day, in terms of the mechanical philosophy, as "body," -- but that was abandoned long ago.
"Physical," "material," "body," etc., are honorific terms. They used to have a technical notion within mechanical philosophy of the 16th and 17th centuries. They no longer do. Thus, "material world," "material reality," "physical world," etc., is completely meaningless. As is the mind/body "problem."
The thing is quite a few members on here are ordinary language philosophy fans, and not great fans of metaphysics, so discussing the usage of words is important to them, since they're convinced philosophy goes wrong with a misuse of language, particularly when it comes to ontology.
I think we experience the world as if there is a subjective/objective divide, but the ontological situation is unclear, because we don't know the nature of consciousness. However, we're made of the same stuff as everything else, so I tend to think it's an epistemological divide.
I agree with you that the subject-object divide is not ontological, but epistemological. I think this is the confusion that Wayfarer describes in the ‘common language’ use of these terms - especially in relation to what is not an ‘object’. And I also agree with you that arguments about the ‘correct’ use of language are frequent here, both in ontological and epistemological discussions - particularly in discussions that bring these two together. I think when we attempt to define the ‘real world’ as it is and as we understand it - especially when we seek to deconstruct this subject-object divide - we venture onto ontological/epistemological ‘common’ ground, and are tempted to find ‘common language’ or dictionary definitions for support, despite the errors in understanding.
FWIW, I see ‘subject’ and ‘object’ as relative epistemological concepts that allow for a form of panpsychism. I certainly don’t see it ONLY in terms of human beings as subject and the world as object - that’s just where we start to understand the world. For me, there is something it is like to be a carbon atom (but not a rock), quantum information theory makes intuitive sense to me, and Ball’s variation on the twenty questions game (late in the video you posted) most beautifully describes for me the nature of our unfolding universe.
I would say we’re beings among other beings. “Stuff” is misleading.
It's not misleading since science is very successful in telling us what that stuff is. Granted, it's a bit murky once you get to fundamental physics, but we know the bigger stuff is made up out of that smaller stuff physicists call particles and fields.
Reply to Xtrix Science is successful in telling us all that stuff. But there's still plenty left unexplained like consciousness, causality, the right interpretation of quantum mechanics, and whether we should think of the world as being divided up into subjects and objects.
What is that you want from an ontological discussion? I think science helps informs us on what exists and what that stuff is made up of, at least down to a certain point. But it leaves unanswered other questions, like whether objects can have parts or whether math or information are at the bottom of it all.
I would say we’re beings among other beings. “Stuff” is misleading.
Okay, then what problem do you have with my modern update of the great chain of being, from the very small to the universe? Is there a problem with how science categorizes the different "beings", since you prefer that over "objects" or "stuff"?
I don't really see what the issue is with any of those terms, other than they're sufficiently vague enough to encompass everything, if one wishes to do so.
Substance dualism? On your view, how do Popper and Kuhn presuppose it?
— Andrew M
Because while they may not themselves explicitly refer to the res cogitans or the res extensa, they both discuss knowledge and theory from the subject/object formulation.
Can you be more specific? How does falsifiability and paradigm shift, for example, imply a subject/object dualism?
But perhaps you have a specific thesis with respect to subject/object that you think is basic to (or assumed by) modern science? Perhaps you could give some examples of how it applies.
— Andrew M
In psychology, particularly in studies of perception. It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. This way of talking about the "outside world" of objects and the "inner world" of thoughts, perceptions and emotions is literally everywhere. It'd be hard not to find examples.
Fair enough - I agree that dualism has had a significant influence in those areas. But my impression was that it is also commonly thought to be a mistaken view. See, for example, Dennett's Cartesian Theater criticism.
I would note that Quine opposed mind/body dualism. As did the ordinary language philosophers, particularly Gilbert Ryle (in his book The Concept of Mind).
My main area of scientific interest is physics and I'm not aware of any examples there, with the possible exception of the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics. However that interpretation is more of historical interest these days, popular misconceptions notwithstanding.
ir enough - I agree that dualism has had a significant influence in those areas. But my impression was that it is also commonly thought to be a mistaken view. See, for example, Dennett's Cartesian Theater criticism.
I’m not sure about mistaken, but simply one formulation which happens to be the most dominant in the west.
Can you be more specific? How does falsifiability and paradigm shift, for example, imply a subject/object dualism?
Both deal with scientific theories, and a knowing subject is thus assumed.
And again, I’m not necessarily talking about mind/body dualism. I’m talking more about Kant’s variation- that we as subjects have representations of the outside world (the phenomenon, the object).
Reply to Xtrix I think the duality is mostly the result of confusion. Try to define "object". Now try to define "subject". I find that I can't actually find a difference between them. They both seem to be words that we invoke to point to a certain actor. Subject has the connotation that said actor is conscious/ has a mental life, while object doesn't have that connotation. That's really the only difference I can think of.
Science is still a human enterprise, and looks at the cosmos through the human perspective, even if it is highly abstracted and methodologically rigourous.
That science is a human enterprise conducted from a human perspective is entirely consistent with naturalism. The "view from nowhere" is just how a dualist sees naturalism. The dualist thinks that if the ghost is dispensed with, then so is the human viewpoint. (I would add that one can be a materialist yet still presuppose dualism, which is the machine option you note below.)
But both 'ghost' and 'machine' are abstractions or intellectual models; organisms are not machines, and the mind is not a ghost. But having developed that model, or is it metaphor, then scientifically-inclined philosophers sought to eliminate the ghost, leaving only the machine, which is just the kind of thing that lends itself to study and improvement.
Which still presupposes the dualist framing (with one half eliminated). Naturalism, properly understood, rejects both the ghost and the machine. As an example, think of Aristotle's naturalism which included purpose, ethics, mathematics, and so on.
The way I approach a definition of 'mind' is 'that which grasps meaning'. But mind itself always eludes objective analysis, as it not objectively existent.
The trick is to avoid reifying abstractions. We can wonder whether Donald Trump has lost his mind. We shouldn't also wonder whether he left it on the kitchen bench next to his car keys.
As Gilbert Ryle put it, "Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth which continues to distort the continental geography of the subject. A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them."
I’m talking more about Kant’s variation- that we as subjects have representations of the outside world (the phenomenon, the object).
That’s mistaken I believe. The ‘phenomenon’ is all there is for us - as opposed to the negative sense of noumenon. He is explicit enough about that I felt? It is a little confusing as we’re stuck with imprecise wording and ‘represent’ strongly suggesting ‘representing something’ where Kant meant more or less that ‘representing IS thing, not of some unreachable something’.
How about turning to neuroscience for how the weltenschauung is formed? We have a basic neurological make-up involving Afferent and Efferent pathways (sensory and motor/input and output), and embedded within this basic structure we have interneurons communicating. In this sense if we’re to try and place the ‘quality’ of the terms ‘subject’ or ‘object’ into play then how do we do so here?
In the simplest sense we likely parcel up afferent and efferent as ‘subject’ directed and the interneurons as ‘object’ directed.
If we’re going to completely remove physicalism from play then we’re kind of adrift. In terms of ‘being’ what is thought of ‘has being’, meaning a unicorn ‘is’. Often people get confused about ‘nothing’ too, yet ‘nothing’ is more or less what Kant was pointing toward in terms of ‘positive noumenon’ - which, ironically, is immediately only ever ‘negative noumenon’ (known as a limiting factor rather than as a ‘beyond’ factor: somewhat equivalent to ‘horizons’ in the phenomenological sense).
If you’re only interested in some illusionary ‘pure’ ontological perspective, then I am at a loss as to how you expect to approach such an issue as wholly separate from the epistemic condition we’re ‘surrounded’ by. The divisions of interest regarding ‘epistemology’ and ‘ontology’ are convenient delineations (just as ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are), but if we’re to untangle the use of making an object or subject distinction then we cannot, in any reasonable sense that I can see, hold strictly to the ‘ontic’ by framing it as redundant of any sense of an epistemic question.
Personally it’s obvious enough to me that the ‘objective’ is due to ‘intersubjectivity’ - if there was a permanent universal distinction between these ‘views’ that was perceivable then I don’t see how we’d perceive them at all - simply because two universal terms that meet wholly vanish into insignificance (what matters is what changes ‘in relation to’ so if there is no change in relation there is no ‘being’)*
*As an example of this if we all viewed the world as being of various tones of ‘yellow’ then we wouldn’t have any equivalent means of referring to ‘yellow’ other than to call it ‘light’ - it wouldn’t be a ‘tone’ as its absence would equate to no visual observation whatsoever. The only possible backdoor would be by way of some analogy of the limits of the human visual spectrum by referring to something like UV or IR in this hypothetical world fo ‘yellowness’.
That science is a human enterprise conducted from a human perspective is entirely consistent with naturalism. The "view from nowhere" is just how a dualist sees naturalism.
The view from nowhere exists because science has to abstract from human perceptual relativity to get at the way things are, and not just as they appear to us. Otherwise, we're left with ancient skepticism or some form of idealism.
I would note that Quine opposed mind/body dualism. As did the ordinary language philosophers, particularly Gilbert Ryle (in his book The Concept of Mind).
That's nice and all, but one still has to deal with intentionality, consciousness and epistemology.
Try to define "object". Now try to define "subject". I find that I can't actually find a difference between them.
Subject is the referent of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious.
Object is what is outside the subject.
Some (few) philosophers identify it, but the distinction is clear at the analytical level.
Try to define "object". Now try to define "subject".
A useful first step,
1) Avoiding linguistic meanings, as instructed by the OP.
2) Dispensing with "objectivity" and "subjectivity" as "objective" and "subjective" condition, respectively.
So, subject/object: a convenient epistemological distinction and ontological unity (comprising awareness).
I like sushiJanuary 06, 2020 at 10:27#3690250 likes
Reply to David Mo The issue is the terms have various applications in different fields of interest. We don’t perceive something ‘outside’ of us - the perceiving takes place internally.
As for ‘conscious’ it would be useful to distinguish between ‘conscious awareness’ and mere ‘consciousness’ (which ate technically different). There are many issues between/within fields of investigation that cause incredible confusion - often between/within cognitive neurosciences and psychology.
Philosophers have a terrible habit of conflating this confusion for the laymen.
That’s mistaken I believe. The ‘phenomenon’ is all there is for us - as opposed to the negative sense of noumenon. He is explicit enough about that I felt?
Yes. So what’s “mistaken” exactly? That Kant believed in an outside world? I’m not seeing your point.
I’m talking more about Kant’s variation- that we as subjects have representations of the outside world (the phenomenon, the object).
— Xtrix
That’s mistaken I believe. The ‘phenomenon’ is all there is for us
From the Kantian epistemological thesis, yes, it is a mistake: we as subjects have representations of the outside world, but they are not phenomena. The representations of objects as such are, first, appearances from sensation, and intuitions, from extant experience. Phenomena are “...undetermined objects of empirical intuition...”, thus not technically representations.
(There is a neo-Kantian, analytic argument** that phenomena indeed represent the synthesis of appearance with intuition, a systemic method Kant does use. But it is worthwhile to consider that Kant doesn’t so argue, because the phenomena to him is “undetermined”, and as such, would represent nothing. Also, Kant does not say objects represent something, but are themselves represented, so it is consistent for phenomena, as “undetermined objects”, not to represent anything.)
It is also mistaken to say “the phenomenon is all there is for us”, for such claim disallows the possibility for any and all pure a priori rational activity, or, that which occurs in us without any empirical intuition connected to it. This won’t matter to those who reject a priori knowledge, or synthetic a priori logical propositions in general***, Nevertheless, the domain here is “talking more about the Kantian variation”, so it would be better suited to follow Kant when looking at a Kantian variation.
And forget noumena; the notion of them is utterly irrelevant in discussions by humans about humans.
**Strawson, 1966
***Hume, 1748; Quine, 1951
I like sushiJanuary 06, 2020 at 14:23#3690530 likes
Reply to Mww “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”
There is only phenomenal experience as that is all the experience there can be. Everything else is ‘empty’ or ‘blind’. The concept of ‘noumenon’ is deadly important so as not to fall down and never ending reiteration of rabbit holes.
A priori there is no experience (hence ‘a priori’). The ‘phenomenon’ is all we have.
It is also mistaken to say “the phenomenon is all there is for us”, for such claim disallows the possibility for any and all pure a priori rational activity, or, that which occurs in us without any empirical intuition connected to it.
You cannot have ‘rational activity’ without experience - if you think that then I’m intrigued what you mean by ‘rational activity’ because clearly you mean something different to what I have in mind.
It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them which give us the key to the understanding of the phenomena of Nature. Experience can of course guide us in our choice of serviceable mathematical concepts; it cannot possibly be the source from which they are derived; experience of course remains the sole criterion of the serviceability of a mathematical construction for physics, but the truly creative principle resides in mathematics.
The issue is the terms have various applications in different fields of interest.
This is a philosophy forum. Therefore, it is advisable to use words in the common philosophical sense. I have mentioned above the usual philosophical meanings. They are common in the history of philosophy, epistemology, anthropology, ontology, etc. I agree that in some cases further clarification may be necessary. Although this is not the same as arbitrarily creating personal meanings that only add confusion to confusion.
I would like you to clarify the distinction between "conscious awareness" and mere "consciousness" and why it is necessary. It sounds, but I do not see its direct relationship to the subject-object distinction.
There is only phenomenal experience as that is all the experience there can be
This is correct, another way to say all experience is of phenomena. Good thing I didn’t say pure rational activity is an experience, and went so far as to say it cannot be.
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Also correct, which is the explanation for why phenomena are not representations. In context, intuitions will always be blind (undetermined objects) until a concept Is synthesized with them by understanding. Both together are the form of all cognitions a posteriori. It is of note that Kant doesn’t give a similar conjunction for conceptions alone, as in conceptions without something are.....something. This is because there are conceptions that have no intuition associated with them, re: space, time, the categories, which are relevant to the very possibility of human empirical cognition, or, experience.
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You cannot have ‘rational activity’ without experience
Again, from the Kantian epistemological system, with which we....you and I....are currently involved, that is categorically false because I must have something clearly different in mind. A good example is right here on this thread, where the dissension between being and existence has run amok. A human cannot even begin to cognize the being of anything whatsoever, the objective reality of a particular, which translates into an experience, without first granting the existence of it a priori. And because there is no experience of “existence” in itself, but rather the existence of something, nor is there experience of any of the other pure categories, it is quite clear it is not only possible, but absolutely necessary, to indulge in rational activity without involving experience for it.
One would do well not to confuse rational activity with conscious thought. Mental machinations antecedent to judgement are rational activities, judgement and the consequences of it are conscious thought. And THAT is the primary ground for the notion of the subject/object dualism of the Kantian variety.
In terms of "the philosophical basis for modern science" (which was also being discussed) what has Kant contributed?
Now you're diverting. There's plenty that can be said about Kant's influence on modern science. But first one needs to understand Kant. Saying it's mere "physicalist pap" shows you're not worth having that discussion with, however.
The phenomenal world is the world of representations.
True, but that doesn’t say phenomena are representations. If it did, it would be tautological, re: the phenomenal world is the world of phenomena. Thus, to have meaning, either it is not the world of representations, or phenomena are not representations. Take your pick.
————————
True, but that doesn’t say phenomena are representations. If it did, it would be tautological, re: the phenomenal world is the world of phenomena. Thus, to have meaning, either it is not the world of representations, or phenomena are not representations. Take your pick.
In Kant, phenomena are only experienced through our representations. What is the object "beyond" our representations? The ding an sich, the noumenon. So yes, the world and the phenomena of the world are representations. Saying phenomena is something other than or different from our representations, which is what you're arguing, is to speak about the noumenon, which is unknowable in Kant. Phenomena that isn't representation and isn't noumenal is meaningless.
I like sushiJanuary 06, 2020 at 17:17#3691040 likes
Subject is the referent of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious.
Object is what is outside the subject.
Some (few) philosophers identify it, but the distinction is clear at the analytical level.
It would be more useful if you cleared this up. If you really wish to know the difference between what I said you can google it easily enough.
You seem to have said something that can be interpreted in different ways. Is “consciousness and/or subconscious” a subject or object? What is “outside” of what?
To translate what you wrote ... Subject is the term referred to that is of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious (which makes said consciousness and/or subconscious the ‘object’ or another ‘subject’ - let us assume the former given what follows)
Object is what is outside the subject (meaning the ... this doesn’t work unless you meant subject means object and object means subject - thus backing up the point made in the first place, which I assume yiu didn’t intend?)
“...If we find those who are engaged in metaphysical pursuits, unable to come to an understanding as to the method which they ought to follow; if we find them, after the most elaborate preparations, invariably brought to a stand before the goal is reached, and compelled to retrace their steps and strike into fresh paths, we may then feel quite sure that they are far from having attained to the certainty of scientific progress and may rather be said to be merely groping about in the dark....”
It is quite clear Kant thought science to be the direction metaphysics should follow, which is pure reason applied to something, not that pure reason should be the direction science should follow.
Not to say you can’t forget Kant if you wish. Nobody cares one way or the other. Just don’t go along with ol’ Uncle Albert, without knowing the rest of the story.
In Kant, phenomena are only experienced through our representations.
“....We cannot think any object except by means of the categories; we cannot cognize any thought except by means of intuitions corresponding to these conceptions. Now all our intuitions are sensuous, and our cognition, in so far as the object of it is given, is empirical. But empirical cognition is experience...”
A speculative system has an sequential order for its logical constituents. If the order is wrong or misappropriated, the system is falsified. If your system says phenomena are experienced through representations, so be it. Just don’t call it the Kantian system.
Real physical objects external to us, are experienced through our representations.
Real physical objects external to us, are experienced through our representations.
This is not Kant at all. Nor would he ever make any such claims. In that case the "real physical objects" would be the noumenon. If they're physical objects, or anything else whatsoever, then they're representations.
Again, this is introductory stuff. Not difficult. See the Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic.
Or, if you like, Schopenhauer puts it clearly:
"What is extended in space, and hence the objective, material world in general, exists as such simply and solely in our representation, and that it is false and indeed absurd to attribute to it, as such, an existence outside all representation and independent of the knowing subject, and so to assume a matter positively and absolutely existing in itself."
"What is extended in space, and hence the objective, material world in general, exists as such simply and solely in our representation, and that it is false and indeed absurd to attribute to it, as such, an existence outside all representation and independent of the knowing subject, and so to assume a matter positively and absolutely existing in itself."
But that assumes our representations are not based on something related existing outside and independent of the knowing subject. After-all, why do we have the representations we do have? It would be weird if time and space have no correlate outside of experience. How would the mind create them with no basis for a temporal and spatial existence?
If they're physical objects, or anything else whatsoever, then they're representations.
Correct. Representations for us, re: the human cognitive system. That does not say anything whatsoever about the object itself. But they are real physical objects nonetheless.
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Real physical objects external to us, are experienced through our representations.
— Mww
This is not Kant at all. Nor would he ever make any such claims.
Apparently, it is, and, apparently, he did. Ironically enough, from the very Aesthetic you so kindly suggested.
“...For, otherwise, we should require to affirm an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd...”
“...The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation (...) That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation.... (...) It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us a posteriori.... (...) By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space.
I would say obvious to even the most casual observer, but apparently, it isn’t.
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Your Schopenhauer is pre-dated by:
“....Now, if it appears that when, on the one hand, we assume that our cognition conforms to its objects as things in themselves, the unconditioned cannot be thought without contradiction, and that when, on the other hand, we assume that our representation of things as they are given to us, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects, as phenomena, conform to our mode of representation, the contradiction disappears: we shall then be convinced of the truth of that which we began by assuming for the sake of experiment; we may look upon it as established that the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition....”
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But that assumes our representations are not based on something related existing outside and independent of the knowing subject.
No. That would be the thing-in-itself which we cannot know, since everything we can know are representations (from "sensibility" in space and time). Any story you make up about what the thing-in-itself itself comes from your experience of the world. Schopenhauer claims it's the "will," for example. To say it's "physical objects" or anything like that is already missing the point -- they too are representations.
What does the "they" refer to? The representations or the "object itself"?
The quotes you provide say exactly what I've said all along: phenomena and representation are the same thing, otherwise there would be no need for the idea of the thing in itself. Are you failing to grasp this or what? At this point I'm not sure what you're arguing, because you're making the case for me.
we as subjects have representations of the outside world, but they are not phenomena.
How this got started.
If not phenomena, then what is phenomena? Something "undetermined." But not an unknown thing in itself. Something between that is undifferentiated but with which we have representations of (which is the thing in itself in Kant). Then I hear something about physical objects.
Your whole thesis is confused. The onus is on you to demonstrate where Kant says there's some other realm between the known and unknown where this phenomena supposedly lies (since it's not "representation" according to you, yet we can still talk about it). Maybe the Twilight Zone?
phenomena and representation are the same thing, otherwise there would be no need for the idea of the thing in itself.
No. Phenomena and representation are different qualifications of the same thing, that being the external object. Representations are general things known to reason a priori, phenomena are unknown particulars. Appearances and intuitions are representations of the faculty of sensibility; conceptions are the representations of the faculty of understanding. Phenomena are undetermined empirical objects of the faculty of imagination, internal to us, thus cannot be the same as the thing-in-itself, which is external to us.
And there is a need for the idea of the thing-in-itself, because our knowledge of things is predicated on their representation, or, how they appear to us, which is NOT the thing. Our method may not give a correct representation of the thing as it really is. We just don’t have any choice in the matter, so the critique is a method created to regulate reason within a certain set of criteria.
Phenomena and representation are different qualifications of the same thing, that being the external object.
Different qualifications of the "external object"? What does "different qualifications" mean? So phenomena and representation are different or not? If not, which is what you seemed to be saying, then how do they differ? If they're the same, then that's exactly what I said above.
Representations are general things known a priori, phenomena are unknown particulars.
This is completely wrong. Find me one supporting sentence from Kant that states this. The phenomena being "unknown particulars" is meaningless. If it's phenomena, it's representation.
The forms of sensibility are time and space. These are a priori. We can't experience anything at all except through these forms. Matter, causality, phenomena or objects of any kind are experienced through these forms -- as representations. Beyond these representations is the unknown and unknowable -- the noumenon, the thing in itself.
This is Kant. To say phenomena is in some Twilight realm and "really exist" outside our representations is a complete misunderstanding. To say phenomena is just a "qualification" of an "external object" is likewise a misunderstanding -- any object whatsoever is an entity, a being, a phenomenon -- we only experience this as representation. What is the object, the phenomenon, the "external world" in itself? The noumenon.
I sometimes can't believe this is a philosophy forum.
"Accordingly, it is only the form of sensuous intuition by which we can intuit things a priori, but by which we can know objects only as they appear to us (to our senses), not at the are in themselves[...]" Prolegomena, p. 17
The "thing-in-itself" is a crucial part of Kant's philosophy.
The "thing-in-itself" is a crucial part of Kant's philosophy.
Thus,
And forget noumena; the notion of them is utterly irrelevant in discussions by humans about humans.
— Mww
Is a bit ridiculous. And probably the source of his confusion.
Hmmmm......here’s ridiculous: the claim, or even the intimation, that because noumena and the thing in itself are both unknowable to or by means of the human system, they are therefore the same thing. And the thing-in-itself is not crucial, per se, to the Kantian epistemology; it is merely given ontologically as extant, therefore inescapable and irrelevant. If it was crucial, why didn’t he talk about it, other than to say there’s nothing there to talk about? Reason has to do with what goes on in our heads, with respect to what’s outside it but not because of it.
Hell.....I can do this chit all day.
————————
Let the readers judge who’s confused. No one may comment, but if they judge by the content of the dialogue, they will certainly have the means to think it.
Hmmmm......here’s ridiculous: the claim, or even the intimation, that because noumena and the thing in itself are both unknowable to or by means of the human system, they are therefore the same thing.
I guess Kant is ridiculous then.
The "thing in itself" and "noumenon" is essentially the same thing, yes. If you have evidence otherwise, I'd be glad to hear it. Even a simple Wikipedia search admits it's pretty open-ended:
"In Kantian philosophy, the unknowable noumenon is often linked to the unknowable "thing-in-itself" (in Kant's German, Ding an sich), although how to characterize the nature of the relationship is a question still open to some controversy."
I could be completely wrong, but to say it's ridiculous is just nonsense. I see no evidence so far that I am wrong, of course -- except for your armchair philosophy.
I notice also you're trying to avoid defending your ridiculous claims about phenomena. Which is a smart move on your part, to avoid further embarrassment.
No, you haven't. If you'd like to, feel free. I won't hold my breath.
And actually I've used both Kant and Schopenhauer. You've made a claim about phenomena and representations being different, refused to provide any relevant evidence to support the claim, told me to find it myself, then changed the subject. Now you want to behave as an adolescent. That's fine. Doesn't change the facts.
I refer again to https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/369165. (For anyone serious who's interested in Kant's transcendental idealism.)
Representations and phenomena are the same thing, and beyond this the thing in itself. There is no phenomena as "unknown external object" -- that's the noumenon.
Phenomena and representation are different qualifications of the same thing, that being the external object. Representations are general things known to reason a priori, phenomena are unknown particulars.
Again: what "qualifications"?
Representations are not what's a priori -- the forms of intuition are.
Phenomena are not unknown particulars -- this is simply meaningless.
. Matter, causality, phenomena or objects of any kind are experienced through these forms -- as representations.
What I mean is, that to say that there's a representation of, or a representation and, is suggestive of representative realism, which is more like Locke's philosophy. I think the correct description of Kant's view is that they're not representations, they're phenomena, appearance. But, Kant himself muddies the waters by using the term 'representation', which naturally leads to the question 'representation of what'? This is discussed here
I think one clue is that Kant will often say mere representations, implying that the representation is not a reference to something else, but simply part of the machinery of thought which only deals in representations. (There's a parallel in Buddhist philosophy which speaks of the play of mind being 'mere appearance' i.e. not 'appearance' as distinct from something putatively real.)
I’m talking more about Kant’s variation- that we as subjects have representations of the outside world (the phenomenon, the object).
(Which is where this diversion started.)
If there's any "difference" at all, it's simply that phenomena usually refer to something "outside" the subject -- i.e., the object. But this, in turn, is only known as representation -- or appearance, if you prefer. Makes no difference. Now, what the phenomenon or object is in itself we can't know and can say nothing about, because our world is the world of representation (meaning nothing other than sensations in time and space, activity of the brain). If representations "of" something - apart from what they are -makes any sense, it's of something we can't fully know since our understanding and knowledge is bounded by time and space.
This is why Schopenhauer titles his book "World as Will and Representation." He identifies the thing in itself with the will, whereas Kant said there's nothing to be said about it. Was Schopenhauer way off base as well?
What I mean is, that to say that there's a representation of, or a representation and, is suggestive of representative realism, which is more like Locke's philosophy.
When do I say "representation of" or "representation and"? I'd like to see the context that was "suggestive" of this.
No, you haven't. If you'd like to, feel free. I won't hold my breath.
All my quotes are right out of CPR 1787. I use...if you MUST know....Miekeljohn online for C&P, backup by both Guyer, Cambridge 1998, and Kemp Smith, London, 1929, in print. Sometimes I will interchange the translations for clarity. And Palmquist,1993 for technical glossary with interpretive guidance.
All the evidence needed has been posted, except the distinction on noumena and phenomena. I don’t bother because the theory with which the critiques are concerned have to do with phenomena alone.
Yes, and say nothing about the phenomenon being different from representation. But in any case, that's not what I was referring to. I asked for citations regarding:
OK. I already referenced that sentence myself in the former post. That doesn't make it Lockean. But regardless, I'll rephrase: subjects have representations, some of which we call the outside world.
The "thing in itself" and "noumenon" is essentially the same thing, yes. If you have evidence otherwise, I'd be glad to hear it.
— Xtrix
Which you then claim you gave, while I merely cite Wikipedia.
So the point stands: you haven't.
The point doesn’t stand; I specifically said I gave no quotes on the distinction. The claim I referenced has to do with the phenomena/representation distinction.
(Sigh) If I must.....this sure as hell won’t be in wiki:
“.....The conception of a noumenon, that is, of a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a thing in itself (solely through the pure understanding), is not self-contradictory, for we are not entitled to maintain that sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition. Nay, further, this conception is necessary to restrain sensuous intuition within the bounds of phenomena, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensuous cognition; for things in themselves, which lie beyond its province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that this cognition does not extend its application to all that the understanding thinks. But, after all, the possibility of such noumena is quite incomprehensible, and beyond the sphere of phenomena, all is for us a mere void; that is to say, we possess an understanding whose province does problematically extend beyond this sphere, but we do not possess an intuition, indeed, not even the conception of a possible intuition, by means of which objects beyond the region of sensibility could be given us, and in reference to which the understanding might be employed assertorically. The conception of a noumenon is therefore merely a limitative conception and therefore only of negative use. But it is not an arbitrary or fictitious notion, but is connected with the limitation of sensibility, without, however, being capable of presenting us with any positive datum beyond this sphere....”
Cogitated as a thing-in-itself, meaning cogitate noumena the same way the thing in itself is cogitated, both solely through pure understanding, which gives us no cognitions at all.
Thing-in-itself called noumena to indicate a limit, the limit being the same for both, the limit being sensible intuitions.
Noumena is not thing-in-itself. It is merely treated like one by the understanding. Thing-in-itself is external to us, noumena are intellectual intuitions given from pure understanding, thus necessarily within us. They cannot possibly be the same thing.
The only justification for conceiving noumena is because we are not entitled to claim our form of cognition is the only kind there is.
Happy now? You told me this was all basic stuff, but you didn’t seem to understand any of it. You admit to not being a Kantian and not holding with his philosophy, which doesn’t necessarily presupposes you know it, so I guess it’s ok.
The point doesn’t stand; I specifically said I gave no quotes on the distinction. The claim I referenced has to do with the phenomena/representation distinction.
Yes, you said you gave no quotes AFTER saying you cite Kant while I cite wikipedia regarding noumenon and the thing in itself, which you initially claimed was "ridiculous." How about going back and reading.
The conception of a noumenon, that is, of a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a thing in itself (solely through the pure understanding), is not self-contradictory, for we are not entitled to maintain that sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition.
First, Kant doesn't say noumena, he says noumenon and thing-in-itself, in the passage cited. Let's at least be clear. Pluralizing one and not the other is unclear. Notice when he does mention noumena (plural), he also pluralizes "phenomenon."
Second, look at the quote. Breaking it down further: the conception of a noumenon - a thing which must be cogitated NOT as an object of sense [representation] but as a thing in itself. I don't know how much more clear that can be. And this is your citation, remember.
Thing-in-itself is external to us, noumena are intellectual intuitions given from pure understanding, thus necessarily within us.
This is NOT what Kant says, as demonstrated by your own citation. Noumenon is no more "within us" than the thing-in-itself. There's no indication that there's a difference -- in fact Kant is literally saying they're the same thing in this passage.
What Kant is getting at in this passage is whether the thing-in-itself (the noumenon) is contradictory. Nowhere does he say the thing in itself is "external" and the noumenon "within us." Nowhere. You added that in yourself. Nor should you expect this, since the point he's making isn't even to differentiate the two -- it's justifying the use of the conception of "noumenon."
You told me this was all basic stuff, but you didn’t seem to understand any of it.
I would be embarrassed if I were in your positron. I hope others are reading this -- I'd like others' opinions of this passage. At the very least, it certainly doesn't support any notion that noumenon and thing in itself are different things - which is your claim. Quite the opposite, actually. Despite this embarrassment -- since you obviously don't see it -- you feel entitled about how little I understand? As my nephew would say: "that's cringe."
for things in themselves, which lie beyond its province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that this cognition does not extend its application to all that the understanding thinks
(My italics)
He's literally saying what I've been asserting twice in a passage you have chosen. And yet you still maintain that somehow he's saying the thing in itself is "external" and the noumenon "necessarily within us." That's telling.
The only justification for conceiving noumena is because we are not entitled to claim our form of cognition is the only kind there is.
I congratulate you on one true statement. This is indeed what Kant is driving at in the passage. It's also simply repeating, almost verbatim, what he stated.
you still maintain that somehow he's saying the thing in itself is "external" and the noumenon "necessarily within us." That's telling.
Yes, it’s telling. That you don’t know he talks about the thing-in-itself in another section, describing it as the real, albeit known object of sensibility, and here, on noumena, he talks of the pure understanding cogitating noumena in the same way it cogitates the thing-in-itself. That you can’t deduce from that that one is internal (from pure understanding), the other external (from sensibility), is not my problem, is telling indeed. And that you fail to grasp they cannot be the same thing because of that alone, is just as telling.
I would argue that the notion of both object and subject, within the most general of cases, remain correlative with one another, and necessarily so. Such that whether either term is regarded as applicable to a certain instance, is determined solely by the relations of each, between themselves and the theoretic-structure within which either's application is found; this, implies that they represent indistinct entities, yet are differentiated only insofar as their forms of expression require it, and are therefore separate only on the basis of an isolated modality through which they may appear, and be spoken of, whilst remaining as a whole, identical in constitution. In the sense that the propriety in usage of each, is bound by the relational alone, as pertaining to which element within any manner of phrase, has agency, and is permitted to act thereby, contrasting thusly with what is acted upon.
To establish this dichotomy, beyond that which is expressive, and of no greater function, lies in gross error, and reflects little else in its occurrence.
That you don’t know he talks about the thing-in-itself in another section, describing it as the real, albeit known object of sensibility,
No, he doesn't talk about that -- because what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. Which isn't a surprise. And if what he talks about "later" is so very important to your point, then why leave it out? Especially when the point was to demonstrate how the "thing in itself" and the "noumenon" are supposedly different? Kind of a crucial missing piece there. And no, I don't have the Critique of Pure Reason memorized. If you have a point to make, the make it. So far you haven't. And you certainly haven't earned being taken on faith. Cite the passage or shut up. You're boring me.
and here, on noumena, he talks of the pure understanding cogitating noumena in the same way it cogitates the thing-in-itself.
You really have no clue.
Here's what Kant is saying, for anyone else listening: The noumenon (the thing in itself) is simply that beyond our sensations and perceptions in time and space and hence unknowable -- yet not self-contradictory. That's it. If the "thing in itself" and the "noumenon" are different in any way, it's not indicated here, never mind one being "external" and the other "internal."
Reading comprehension wasn't your strong suit I see. Pity.
The noumenon (the unknown) is "internal" because it's "cognitated" by the pure understanding. The thing in itself (the unknown) is "external" because it's an object of sensibility.
Does anyone on here take this seriously?
Maybe no one's even listening. I don't blame them, given how ridiculous the above forumlation is -- without one citation of support.
Can you be more specific? How does falsifiability and paradigm shift, for example, imply a subject/object dualism?
— Andrew M
Both deal with scientific theories, and a knowing subject is thus assumed.
And again, I’m not necessarily talking about mind/body dualism. I’m talking more about Kant’s variation- that we as subjects have representations of the outside world (the phenomenon, the object).
There is the obvious sense in which a human being is needed to propose a scientific theory. Also any theory will be in human language, both ordinary and technical.
So I think naturalists and dualists can agree on that.
But what a scientific theory is about doesn't require a "knowing subject". For example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before life emerged to construct a theory of heliocentrism.
The view from nowhere exists because science has to abstract from human perceptual relativity to get at the way things are, and not just as they appear to us. Otherwise, we're left with ancient skepticism or some form of idealism.
I think Special Relativity provides a useful model here. Things can have different properties in different reference frames (and one can translate between reference frames). But there is no absolute reference frame for how things "really" are.
Similarly, things can have properties that depend on one's perceptual machinery (which again we can discover). But there is no perception-free perspective.
That's nice and all, but one still has to deal with intentionality, consciousness and epistemology.
Yes, but it's sensible to stop using demonstrably broken frameworks. Imagine trying to model the Big Bang using the Ptolemaic model. Perhaps it can be done, but why unnecessarily handicap oneself?
“...Suppose now, on the other hand, that we have undertaken this criticism, and have learnt that an object may be taken in two senses, first, as a phenomenon, secondly, as a thing in itself...”
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these representations...”
“...Now although phenomena are not things in themselves, and are nevertheless the only thing given to us to be cognized...”
How much more of your homework am I supposed to do? Even you should be able to deduce the thing-in-itself is eternal to us, whether or not Kant said so much in so many words.
Reply to Mww Imagine that you and I are assessing a table. Would Kant say there are two tables (one for each of us)?
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 03:47#3692730 likes
Mww is right to distinguish between the thing in itself and noumena. The thing-in-itself are things apart from the conditions under which we can know anything about them. Noumena, by contrast, mark the limit of the sensibility. In other words, things-in-themselves are defined by having no relation to our capacity for knowledge, whereas noumena are defined only in relation to our capacity for knowledge ("The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment." (A255/B311)). Noumena are "for-us", while things-in-themselves are indifferent to sensibility. The distinction is slight and subtle, but it exists and is important to insist upon.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 04:48#3692900 likes
Reply to StreetlightX Wrong ... keep reading (A256/B311,B312) and (A289/B345) The point of using ‘thing in itself’ alongside ‘noumenon’ is to show they are one and the same.
Simply put, phenomenon is sensible experience and noumenon is not, and cannot, be experienced sensibly. The experience is given to us but the thing in itself isn’t and never can be - it is, as a phenomenal conception, useful as a realisation of limit (without which limit sensibility would be nought as if everything is sensible to us in full extension there is no ‘difference’ perceivable where there is no limit of experience).
Here are direct quotes respectively:
... Our understanding thus acquires a kind of negative extension, that is, it is not limited by sensibility, but on the contrary, it limits sensibility, by calling thing in themselves (not considered as appearances) noumena. In doing so, ti immediately proceeds to prescribe limits to itself; it admits that it cannot know these noumena by means of the categories, but can only think of them under the name of an unknown something.
And then ...
The understanding, accordingly, limits sensibility, but without expanding thereby its own sphere. By warning sensibility that it must never claim to apply to things in themselves, but only to appearances, it forms the thought of an object in itself, but only as a transcendental object. This object is the cause of appearance (therefore not itself appearance) and cannot be thought as magnitude, or as reality, or as substance, etc. (because these concepts require sensible forms in which to determine an object). Of this object, therefore, it must always remain unknown whether it is to be found only within us, or also without us; and whether, if sensibility were removed, it would vanish or remain. If we wish to call this object noumenon, because the representation of it is not sensible, then we are at liberty to do so. But as we cannot apply to it any of the concepts of our understanding, such a representation remains empty for us, serving no purpose other than of indicating the limits of our sensible knowledge and of leaving at the same time an open space which we can fill neither through possible experience nor through the pure understanding.
... Thus there remains to us a mode of determining the object merely through thought; and although this mode of determining is a mere logical form without content, yet it seems to us to be a mode in which the object exists in itself (noumenon), without regard to the intuition which is restricted to our senses.
The cantankerous one is very much correct. That doesn’t stop them being a needless impolite and obnoxious person.
Note: It is worth stating that people still disagree in many areas regarding Kant’s work. I haven’t come across many that have bothered to read Kant cover to cover and fewer that care to agree about his points. I can certainly see how one could interpret what he says as stating a ‘subtle difference,’ but I’d feel overly generous doing so.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 05:25#3692950 likes
The point of using ‘thing in itself’ alongside ‘noumenon’ is to show they are one and the same.
Not at all. the point of using them alongside each other is to show how they stand with respect to each other. Your quote is exemplary:
Our understanding thus acquires a kind of negative extension, that is, it is not limited by sensibility, but on the contrary, it limits sensibility, by calling thing in themselves (not considered as appearances) noumena.
Things in themselves are 'called' noumena by the understanding. But a nomination is not an equivalence. And insofar as noumena mark the limit of the sensible, it is as I said: that which is defined in relation to our capacity for knowledge. The thing in itself, however, is not defined by its relation to sensibility. It's rather defined by it's total non-relation to it: it is indifferent to sensibility. Is it not the obverse of the sensible, the recto to its verso, as it were, as the noumenon is. It simply has nothing to do with it.
As for the second quote, the transcendental object is not the thing in itself, so the paragraph lends nothing to your interpretation. As Kant says, "This transcendental object cannot be separated from the sense data, for nothing is then left through which it might be thought. Consequently it is not in itself an object of knowledge, but only the representation of appearances under the concept of an object in general ... The sensibility (and its field, that of the appearances) is itself limited by the understanding in such fashion that it does not have to do with things in themselves but only with the mode in which, owing to our subjective constitution, they appear." (A251-252).
Recall that the 'object in general' is itself a conceptual form supplied by the understanding: "I conceive of the understanding as a special faculty and ascribe to it the concept of an object in general (a concept that even the clearest consciousness of our intutition would not at all disclose)." So it's no good confusing the thing-in-itself with the transcendental object.
--
It's worth connecting this to the overall theme of the thread: for Kant, subject and object are indeed correlates of each other, and one cannot think the one without the other. However, the very object-form or the form that is 'the object' is itself supplied by the subject, so 'objects' cannot be understood to mean 'things out there'. It is true that if there were no subjects, there would be no objects. But attests less to any kind of idealism ("it's all in my head") than to the fact the the world does not come pre-packed as objects to begin with. Hence the incredibly limited role that should be afforded to both by anyone who is not a Kantian.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 05:51#3692960 likes
He must, necessarily, use sensibility to talk of any proposition.
Again, this is not true. Kant famously says that we can "think" the in itself, even as we cannot experience it - that is, even it if has no relation to the sensible: "Thus it does indeed follow that all possible speculative knowledge of reason is limited to mere objects of experience. But our further contention must also be duly borne in mind, namely, that though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in position at least to think them as things in themselves".
In a footnote to this he further notes that sensibility does not act as a constraint on thought - only conceptual consistency does: "I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought. This suffices for the possibility of the concept, even though I may not be able to answer for there being, in the sum of all possibilities, an object corresponding to it."(B xvii).
This all follows from that fact that the thing in itself is not an object of knowledge; hence, not defined in relation to sensibility; hence distinct from noumena. Not all thought is speculative - that is, knowledge oriented - in nature. Hence the critique of 'pure' reason.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 06:15#3693030 likes
Reply to StreetlightX like I said, we’re not going to agree - which is usually something that makes for a good discussion, but I’ve been down this road too many times already. I get far more from reading Kant directly than I do from wading through rigid misconceptions that general stop the flow of any given discussion not specifically about Kant.
It’s naive of the OP to assume everyone is going to come to agreement about Kant’s work. The reason it is still regarded today as one of the best philosophical works ever written is that it does throw up so much discussion a debate. I imagine we agree there at least :)
I can see why you think what you think. I just believe you’re wrong and I’m right. If he literally refers to a thing in itself being noumenon (on more than one occasion) I’m happy to assume he meant it. Personally I find the issue of framing the meaning of Transcendental as more problematic.
A thread on COPR would be a monster ... maybe it’s just too much to take on though (and pointless for anyone who hasn’t literally read it cover to cover and put hours of thought/study into it).
he forms of sensibility are time and space. These are a priori. We can't experience anything at all except through these forms. Matter, causality, phenomena or objects of any kind are experienced through these forms -- as representations.
Let me be precise about what you said. Space and time are a priori forms for sensitivity. Perceptions in our common language are formed in the conditions of space and time. This is studied in the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason. Causality, on the other hand, is an a priori form of physics. It is the condition for making empirical judgements. This is studied in the second part of the CPR.
Therefore, the phenomenon is what is perceived under the a priori conditions of space and time. Causality is not a phenomenon but a category of statements. Both are not objective but subjective although they are universal and necessary. Currently we would speak of "intersubjective". Everyone captures things under these conditions, but they are not properties of things in themselves, but fixed by our reason.
Hmmmm......here’s ridiculous: the claim, or even the intimation, that because noumena and the thing in itself are both unknowable to or by means of the human system, they are therefore the same thing. And the thing-in-itself is not crucial, per se, to the Kantian epistemology; it is merely given ontologically as extant, therefore inescapable and irrelevant. I
Ridiculous or not, phenomenon and thing in-itself are synonymous in Kant. They are very important concepts in a negative sense. They are the unattainable horizon of human research. They provoke the metaphysical illusions of God, of the Universe, of the soul and so on.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 06:34#3693070 likes
he noumenon (the unknown) is "internal" because it's "cognitated" by the pure understanding. The thing in itself (the unknown) is "external" because it's an object of sensibility.
This may be absurd, but it's the opposite of what Kant said. Noumenon and the thing itself cannot be known simply because they fall outside the human (a priori) conditions of knowledge.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 06:42#3693090 likes
I already pointed out that a subject has a mental life while an object doesn't. Aside from that what is the difference?
This is like men and women. A small difference. Long live the small difference!
All joking aside, the only difference you've noticed involves a lot of other big ones.
Anyway, I was just arguing against the distinction. Someone, perhaps you, had claimed that there was none.
I think Special Relativity provides a useful model here. Things can have different properties in different reference frames (and one can translate between reference frames). But there is no absolute reference frame for how things "really" are.
The most spectacular reference is quantum mechanics, where the act of measuring creates the measured.
Kantian epistemology is very relevant to the current theory of science with only one important correction: what he believed were a priori conditions of any form of understanding (intellect) were in fact the conditions of Newtonian science. The same is true of Euclidean mathematics.
Simply put, phenomenon is sensible experience and noumenon is not, and cannot, be experienced sensibly. The experience is given to us but the thing in itself isn’t and never can be - it is, as a phenomenal conception, useful as a realisation of limit (without which limit sensibility would be nought as if everything is sensible to us in full extension there is no ‘difference’ perceivable where there is no limit of experience).
These are to ways of speak of the same thing. Ontologically and epistemologically. This is said in your quote: Thing in-itself=phenomenon
calling thing in themselves (not considered as appearances) noumena.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 07:12#3693150 likes
I'm sorry I don't have the Critique of Pure Reason at home in English, but it's a major mistake to dissociate noumenon and thing in-itself in Kant. For example, one of Kant's reference manuals (Justus Hartnack: Kant's Theory of Knowledge) in its chapter 5 ("Phenomena and Noumena"):
"But from the fact that we call 'phenomena' what is sensed in space and time, it follows that it has to make sense to talk about what is not a phenomenon and what Kant calls the thing in-itself or 'noumena'." (My translation Spanish-English)
I think Special Relativity provides a useful model here. Things can have different properties in different reference frames (and one can translate between reference frames). But there is no absolute reference frame for how things "really" are.
But even in relativity, there is still an objective truth. Space and time may distort relative to an observer, but a spacetime interval is the same for all observers. Simultaneity may be relative to an observer, but cause and effect are still the same for all observers. And the impetus behind all of that, the speed of light is the same for all observers: all the things that are relative are reasoned to be so because they must be in order to account for the speed of light being an objective, non-relative value.
For analogy think of a geometric shape that is circular in profile along the X-axis, square in profile along the Y-axis, and triangular in profile along the Z-axis (so a cylinder with two very slanty ends). Three observers looking at it along those three axes would "disagree about its shape", and they would each be correct so far as the 2D profile of its shape goes, but nevertheless it still has one single objective 3D shape, of which each 2D view shows only part. Relativity is like that, but 3D-to-4D instead.
From CPR:
"it also follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general that something must correspond to it which is not in itself appearance, for appearance can be nothing for itself and outside of our kind of representation; thus, if there is not to be a constant circle, the word "appearance" must already indicate a relation to something the immediate representation of which is, to be sure, sensible, but which in itself, without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e., an object independent of sensibility. Now from this arises the concept of a noumenon, which, however, is not at all positive and does not signify a determinate cognition of something in general, in which I abstract from all form of sensible intuition". (A251–2)
Where is the opposition? In itself and noumenon are the same: out of any form of sensibility or cognition.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 08:08#3693260 likes
Reply to David Mo You said phenomenon in your initial post. I corrected you, which you acceded to.
And in any case, the quote you provided in this post says nothing about the in itself.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 08:21#3693280 likes
It's really quite simple:
The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible (it belongs to the order of the intelligible).
The thing in itself marks the limit of the conditions of possibility of knowledge.
The conditions of possibility of knowledge are not exhausted by sensibility ("intuitions without concepts are blind"!).
The noumenon =/= the thing in itself.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 08:44#3693290 likes
I think I see the problem.
The issue seems to be if we’re to only apply the term ‘noumenon’ in a negative sense (because it’s tangible), but at the heart of it the use of ‘noumenon’ is equivalent to ‘the thing in itself’ as neither are ‘objects of sensibility’ they’re only limiting factors of understanding (and necessarily limited).
The thing in itself is ‘positive noumenon’ - noumenon serves only in a negative sense, which is obvious enough given that we cannot know of anything beyond our sensible limits.
If we ask ourslves what is meant by ‘the thing in itself’ in a positive sense and in a negative (limiting sense) perhaps the similarity will become clear.
The subtler problem is addressing the concept of ‘noumenon’ as essentially unknowable as a known concept - that is where the seeming contrariness comes into play alongside the meaning of ‘transcendental’.
@Xtrix What does the OP have to say? Where are we to go from here? I still don’t quite grasp the intent of the OP regarding the direction this thread is meant to go?
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 09:16#3693320 likes
The issue seems to be if we’re to only apply the term ‘noumenon’ in a negative sense
Which is exactly what Kant says must happen:
"That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon' must be understood as being such only in a negative sense ... The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment ... It is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility". (B309/B311)
[quote=Wikipedia] 'In metaphysics, the noumenon (/?nu?m?n?n/, UK also /?na?-/; from Greek: ????????) is a posited object or event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term noumenon is generally used when contrasted with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to anything that can be apprehended by or is an object of the senses. ...
The Greek word ???????o? nooúmenon (plural ???????? nooúmena) is the neuter middle-passive present participle of ????? noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word ???? noûs, an Attic contracted form of ???? nóos[a] "perception, understanding, mind." A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought". ...
In Kant's Critique, our minds may attempt to correlate in useful ways, perhaps even closely accurate ways, with the structure and order of the various aspects of the universe, but cannot know these "things-in-themselves" (noumena) directly. Rather, we must infer the extent to which the human rational faculties can reach the object of "things-in-themselves" by our observations of the manifestations of those things that can be perceived via the physical senses, that is, of phenomena, and by ordering these perceptions in the mind infer the validity of our perceptions to the rational categories used to understand them in a rational system, this rational system (transcendental analytic), being the categories of the understanding as free from empirical contingency.
According to Kant, objects of which we are cognizant via the physical senses are merely representations of unknown somethings—what Kant refers to as the transcendental object—as interpreted through the a priori or categories of the understanding. These unknown somethings are manifested within the noumenon—although we can never know how or why as our perceptions of these unknown somethings via our physical senses are bound by the limitations of the categories of the understanding and we are therefore never able to fully know the "thing-in-itself".[/quote]
I actually think Kant's use of the term is rather confused. Early in his career he wrote a thesis on Plato's forms, but then later rejected the existence of forms. But it seems to me from the derivation of 'noumenal' as an 'object of thought' that it is rather close to the 'form' of the thing - that which makes a thing intelligible.
This is where I find hylomorphic dualism more credible. It sees matter as being basically unintelligible until it is 'impressed' with form (the analogy is, like a seal forms the wax.) But it's the form of a thing that makes it intelligible. So we sense the particular through the material senses, but we know the form intellectually:
if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.
I suspect that the resolution to this might be found in the writings of the analytical Thomists - who sought to reconcile Aquinas and Kant - but it's rather arcane and not especially accessible without knowledge of languages (especially French). Nevertheless I'm going to persist with it, I think perhaps via Karl Rahner and John Haldane.
In any case, I agree with the remark above, in that 'the thing in itself' is beyond our cognitive horizons, as our knowledge is limited to how it appears to us (which is the meaning of phenomena). I think a lot of trouble is caused by trying to second guess what this mysterious 'in itself' is, as if trying to peek behind the curtain. But that misses the point; knowledge is inherently limited or perspectival in some basic sense (although that doesn't mean that it's not empirically valid.)
ou said phenomenon in your initial post. I corrected you, which you acceded to.
And in any case, the quote you provided in this post says nothing about the in itself.
Right. I've already rectified it.
Isn't calling the pruychos "bolontes" relating the pruychos to bolontes? Hmm. One of us has a problem with English and I'm afraid it's not me this time.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 10:39#3693440 likes
Reply to Wayfarer I wouldn’t waste time using any distilled secondhand summation of Kant’s work as a means of coming to anything conclusive.
The same can, and probably should, be said of other major philosophical works. In my experience many students of philosophy (who’ve actually attended university) tend to have to rely mostly on secondhand accounts as tackling the works in and of themselves - in completion - is simply not viable within a few given years of youth (and generally speaking most students of philosophy attending university tend to be too inexperienced in life to grasp the broader implications posed by people who’ve lived a full life).
Wiki and stanford or britannica ency. are all decent ways of finding items of interest though.
As an example I remember someone expressing their opinion about Nietzsche to me many years ago. I was very interested and asked what they would recommend I read first ... then they admitted they’d never actually read anything of his other than a couple of wiki entries and heard him mentioned here and there in other historical references.
The reason I read Kant was because someone online kept harping on about him saying I had no idea what I was talking about (not that I was talking about Kant), so I read COPR and then confronted his views about Kant and questioned them ... he then admitted he’d never actually read it at university and only covered it via other philosophical commentaries that summed up his ideas.
Such is realm of academic philosophy. A great deal of it is merely parroting what the tutor says, or doing scholarly work (the latter has value the former just distances the actual work from the reader).
It seems to me the case, that each notion, the sum of which is expressed both by the noumenal, and objects of experience as they are in themselves, serves to restrict the boundaries of sensibility, and by extension, what may be conceived in thought, without acceding to the conditions of blind conjecture. One could then set forth in argument, that their respective function, yields the same effect, and holds thusly, the same object upon which the former is impressed, as though to falsely lay claim to it, in each case, as its own. Yet, this fails to address the cause of those general contentions which have hitherto prevailed. It is inferred, then, that to garner sight of those truths which lie in wait, one must first descend toward greater depth, within the field of the abstract.
The world stands' as mere appearance within the faculties of the subject, one for whom thought is an active exercise in reflection, and despite being rendered perceptible with an almost faultless clarity, there is much of substance that remains absent within its whole, as we perceive it to be. This, is an unassailable truth of which we are ever-aware, that takes primacy in all matters of the experiential. That which persists beyond the farthest reach of all that can be apprehended, by means of the preceding instruments of cognition, may nonetheless reside within the mind in the form of its object, as it is truly, amongst itself, for no sake but its own, and that may furthermore be conceived in much the same way as described before, without facilitating any transition within the understanding of those in question, the subject(s), to a state at which there is exceeded all ability of the mind to attain clearness therefore, in regard to the object as appearance of whatsoever is considered.
Herein, one is forced to confront the difficulty in imparting richness to its form, to what is known only insofar as one speaks of it in the sense of the intangible; an idealized notion that can be held as existent, only to the extent that it conforms to one's chosen intuitions of the object to which it pertains, yet is itself wholly detached from the intuitive. When one provides even the faintest reference to the 'Noumenal', one is left only with the impression of it being hollow; a contrived husk that defies all aspects of the sensible; contrary to all that can be found, as predicated by experience, though a necessary element, through which thought must be granted on account of the faculties deriving their object, from a broad conception thereof, which manifests only by virtue of the immaterial. The Noumenal.
For those whose preference is conciseness, see the following;
1. The world is made intelligible by the faculties of the mind, wherefore phenomena contained within it are represented as mirrored object(s), which in each case, is based upon the particular correlate of that to which it relates, and corresponds, distinctly.
2. The truth of which, as it is independent of observance, remains a necessary unknown. Yet, this isn't to preclude the freedom bore by the subject, to conceive of such objects of the world, as they are, with respect to the prior constraint. One might therefore, draw upon the force of reason alone, to cogitate, as to the sight of the world, how it would otherwise appear, in a manner that isn't merely bound by our own portrayal thereof. The latter notion however, denotes the maximal degree to which sensuous impressions can prove worthwhile, or at all be deemed fundamental to one's analysis.
3. Noumena thus confer a depth of substance, and form, to what appears in the case of one's judgement, as object; providing a mould of the universal, which the particular is allowed to occupy, and within which it need only dwell, to at last become wholesome.
Maybe this quote solve the problem of noumenon and thing in itself
“Noumena in a positive sense are simply noumena as Kant originally defined that notion in the A edition: objects of an intellectual (non-sensible) intuition. The negative concept of noumena, however, is simply the concept of objects that are not spatiotemporal (not objects of our sensible intuition, namely space and time). But then it follows that things in themselves are noumena in the negative sense, retrospectively clarifying the passage from the A edition quoted immediately above, where Kant seems to draw from the “Transcendental Aesthetic” the conclusion that there are noumena: the concept of appearance requires that something appears, and this must be a negative noumena”.
Stang, Nicholas F., "Kant’s Transcendental Idealism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
Would Kant say there are two tables (one for each of us)?
If there is one object affecting the sensibility of two similar rational agencies, all else being equal, each will cognize “table”, iff each have experience of tables such that their respective systems intuit, understand, and judge the object each one senses, such that each arrive at “table” without contradicting each other. So, yes, there will be two instances of “table” being cognized from one real physical object external to, and in common with, two people.
Tables are not that hard to cognize equally, but e.g., cloud shapes, a loud bang from around the corner, the meaning of the words to “Lucy In The Sky”.....not so easy. The reason the system is so complicated is to account for how it may be the case such agencies disagree on their judgements.
Mww is right to distinguish between the thing in itself and noumena.
The problem is that people attribute to noumena some reality it doesn’t have, and the thing-in-itself is given no reality when it is actual quite real. We call the second planet from Sol “Venus”, but the second planet from the sun is only that because we think it that way. Just because we name things in accordance to the way our own nature requires that we think about them, gives us no right whatsoever to then claim the object absolutely cannot be anything else. The thing-in-itself is nothing but the allowance for our own error in reason. It allows for the perception by rationalities other than our own, who may not cognize “Venus” such that we would even know what they’re talking about.
We know dolphins communicate with each other, but we will never know if they see via phenomena or noumena.....because we only perceive via the former and never the latter. I think it quite absurd to think dolphins will cognize “fish” as an object with fins, lays eggs, has scales. The thing-in-itself, known to us as fish, will be a thing-in-itself known to dolphins as.....something else.
The point of using ‘thing in itself’ alongside ‘noumenon’ is to show they are one and the same.
No. They are used in conjunction with each other to show they should be treated the same way. Treating them the same way does not make them the same thing.
The final reduction concerning both of them, is the fact we attribute no schema whatsoever to either of them, the thing-in-itself because we don’t know what they would even be, the noumena because our rational apparatus simply won’t allow it.
Remember...all this arises from a speculative epistemological theory. The theory falsifies itself if it is claimed that phenomena perform a certain task, then noumena are incorporated, as some unknown something, to do the some unknown task. The theory destroys its own credibility.
Logically, also remember the human system, no matter what theory is used to describe it, operates on the principle of complementarity, insofar as for every up, there is a down, for every left there is a right, ad infinitum. Therefore, logically, for phenomena, it is logically possible for there to be conceived its complement. I mean, c’mon...the title of the chapter is “The Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena”, and the ground is....logic!!!
Which may be the biggest stumbling block in Kantian metaphysics: not so much what noumena are supposed to be, but why did The Esteemed Professor even put those damn things in there in the first place!?!?!? They don’t do anything, they aren’t part of anything, and most of all, in a theory concerned with knowledge.....we don’t and can’t know a damned thing about them. Personally, because Kant knew Greek philosophy quite well....all academics did in those days......and had the utmost respect for Aristotle, obvious because all three Critiques are treatises in logic, he incorporated them as sort of a nod to him, because the Greeks gave great response to the notion of them. Same with the categories.
The thing in itself, however, is not defined by its relation to sensibility.
— StreetlightX
It is, and he says so. He must, necessarily, use sensibility to talk of any proposition.
Don’t know how he could say so, given it would seem pretty hard to define a thing when we know absolutely nothing about it. The thing-in-itself is not defined by its relation to sensibility because it doesn’t relate to sensibility at all. The “thing” does, the “thing-in-itself” does not.
In addition to what X said, CPR was written in response to Hume’s strict empiricism, which requires sensibility to talk about any proposition, which is the same as saying there is no such thing as a priori propositions, or that such things are silly and useless......slave of the passions and all that. Kant proved such things are indeed possible and very far from silly, thus permitting the notion that sensibility is necessarily required to talk of any proposition, to be false.
phenomenon and thing in-itself are synonymous in Kant. They are very important concepts in a negative sense.
You quoted me talking about noumena/thing-in-itself, but here you’re talking about phenomena and thing-in-itself.
Be that as it may, phenomena, while indeed very important, actually quite necessary, are in no way in any negative sense. Without phenomena, cognition is impossible. Without phenomena presented to understanding, there is nothing to cognize. There is no such thing as a negative phenomenon.
If he literally refers to a thing in itself being noumenon (on more than one occasion) I’m happy to assume he meant it.
— I like sushi
Both the quotes you provided didn't, but sure, perhaps somewhere so far unstated he did.
He does put them side by side, at first glance, a confusing manner, such that it appears they are meant to be the same:
“....An undetermined perception signifies here merely something real that has been given, only, however, to thought in general—but not as a phenomenon, nor as a thing in itself (noumenon), but only as something that really exists...”
That, taken by itself, sends the pro-noumena folk into a epistemological frenzy, But the context, which is rather long and involved, puts “...thing-in-itself (noumena)...” on the equally footing of being not subjected to the categories. In effect, Kant is saying the thing-in-itself is not subjected to the categories...oh, and by the way...neither are noumena.
Again, they are not the same. Just treated by understanding the same way, meaning the categories cannot be thought as governing them as they necessarily must for all empirical cognitions, or, which is the same thing, experience.
it follows that it has to make sense to talk about what is not a phenomenon and what Kant calls the thing in-itself or 'noumena'." (My translation Spanish-English)
This is correct. But one can see what Kant really meant to get across if we merely read it as, “...what Kant calls the thing-in-itself, or, what Kant calls the noumena...”. Then we see it does make sense to talk about either of them as distinguished from phenomena without saying they are therefore equal.
So, yes, there will be two instances of “table” being cognized from one real physical object external to, and in common with, two people.
When you modify "object" with "physical" aren't you talking about a thing that is known apriori to have spacial extension? And if not, how do you distinguish between real physical objects and phenomenal physical objects (in language)?
When you modify "object" with "physical" aren't you talking about a thing that is known apriori to have spacial extension?
Yes, as opposed to objects of reason. Objects of reason are, for example, the categories, numbers, geometric figures. Things not naturally residing in Nature but are put there as products of human reason. Existence, causality, plurality.....pure, non-empirical conceptions like that.
Within the confines of the present discussion, there is no such thing as a phenomenal physical object. A physical object is in space and time, has objective reality; a phenomenon is in a specific theoretical speculation, residing in the mind and having only objective validity. In the former, it is actual, in the latter it is merely justified.
Within the confines of the present discussion, there is no such thing as a phenomenal physical object. A physical object is in space and time, has objective reality; a phenomenon is in a specific theoretical speculation, residing in the mind and having only objective validity. In the former, it is actual, in the latter it is merely justified.
Unless I'm mistaking you, I think this viewpoint is more indirect realism than it is Kant. Specifically, it's John Locke. For Kant, we need to give up on spacial and temporal extension for things-in-themselves. The things we call "physical" are representations, and it doesn't really mean much to say representations aren't real since anytime we talk about reality, that's what we're talking about: the earth, the moon, electromagnetic fields, black holes, etc. For Kant, these things are all representations.
I really don't want to get into an argument about "what Kant said" because that's not really as interesting discussing philosophy. So it may be that we'll end up saying we have two different impressions of what Kant said?
Yes, representations for us. Couldn’t be any representations without something to represent.
———————
I can leave Kant out of it. Everything I think will still be predicated on transcendental idealism nonetheless. With a smattering of Copenhagen and healthy contribution from relativity, of course.
Wiki and stanford or britannica ency. are all decent ways of finding items of interest though.
I don't think that's advisable. If you want to get an exact idea of what Kant thinks, go to the Cambridge University Press edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (available online in pdf format). In the section "The Transcendental Doctrine of the Power of Judgment (Analytic of Principles); Third Chapter:
On the ground of the distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and noumena" (p. 354ss)
Here you will find a clear explanation of what a noumeon is, its identity with the thing in itself and its inaccessibility to human understanding.
I really don't want to get into an argument about "what Kant said" because that's not really as interesting discussing philosophy. So it may be that we'll end up saying we have two different impressions of what Kant said?
I would say that here are some obviously wrong interpretations of Kant. Go to the section on CPR that I recommended in my previous commentary and you will see why.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 14:54#3693850 likes
The problem is that people attribute to noumena some reality it doesn’t have, and the thing-in-itself is given no reality when it is actual quite real.
That’s called naive realism. I’m not one of those.
Don’t know how he could say so, given it would seem pretty hard to define a thing when we know absolutely nothing about it. The thing-in-itself is not defined by its relation to sensibility because it doesn’t relate to sensibility at all. The “thing” does, the “thing-in-itself” does not.
This is a another confusing point. The matter of the fact is Kant refers to some ‘thing in itself’ only because of pure intuition. Remove intuition and there is nothing to say, yet to refer to some item, any item - be it of thought or knowledge - must necessarily mean there is an attachment to sensibility and intuition (space and time). The number one is only given as a concept via sensibility, without sensible experience of a multitude of differentiated items of experience there would be no ground for the number one; or rather numbers in general.
The leap is identical from the referent of ‘thing’ which we view as ‘phenomenon’ and delineate between said phenomenon as ‘cat’ rather than ‘dog’ or ‘table’ rather than ‘chair’. There is no ‘chair in and of itself’ and there is no ‘thing in and of itself’, there is phenomenon that is given through sensible experience due to limitation.
Kant went back and rewrote an entire section to help elucidate what he meant - although by doing so he likely fell prey to his previous warning of ‘in trying to be too precise the writer can fall into ambiguity’ (to roughly paraphrase!)
My point about the bit in bold is hard to grasp as we’re immediately doing precisely what Kant warns against - claiming there is a ‘unknown’ we can refer to sensibly. The point here is that we can set up this logical illusion of referring to some ‘unknowable’ and believe we have it nailed down and sewn up neat and tidy. The thrust of the point is we’re limited.
Noumenon is ONLY ever applicable in the negative sense and to talk of noumenon in the ‘positive’ sense (the thing in itself) is an illusion only which Kant willingly partakes in to reveal that the most obvious statement there could be, along the lines of ‘What we can in no way ever know never exists for us no matter how many times removed or distant - such a ‘thing’ is not a ‘thing’ at all. It is, in its nonsense, a concept that is pointing out a limitation,’ or simpler still, ‘We cannot know what we cannot know.’
The positive sense of noumenon (as uttered) is necessarily negative. By revealing nothing Kant reveals the lay of the land not some striving across empty oceans for lands that don’t exist (as he put in his rare analogy).
The relevance to the thread here is likely the miscasting of what can reasonably be called ‘outer’ that isn’t a merely anything but ‘inner’. The phenomenon is all, what more is expected of being other than felt experience? It appears we’re prone to projecting ourselves bidirectionally through time.
Again though, getting to grips with what is meant by ‘transcendent’ and ‘transcendental’ is a matter for discussion I’m willing to partake in in a separate thread.
This subject matter often turns into a big old mess as there is often a lack of willingness to appreciate different interpretations of Kant regardless of agreement. His work has remained fresh because of the divides in opinions about several areas of his work.
I would say that here are some obviously wrong interpretations of Kant. Go to the section on CPR that I recommended in my previous commentary and you will see why.
Which section? Schopenhauer believed Kant intentionally obscured his message to avoid being harassed by christians. I know Schopenhauer much more thoroughly than Kant, and I'm afraid I probably use his interpretation (right or wrong).
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 14:59#3693880 likes
Reply to David Mo Er ... I was advising against relying on secondhand material. I believe you posted a quote from wiki not me?
The source is always best, and even better if read without someone telling you what to think the first time round.
Editted: Sorry, it was wayfarer not you. Still, bizarre given that what I wrote ...
Yes, give up for things-in-themselves out there (waves at the world), but not for how we think about them in here (taps his forehead).
— Mww
I'm not sure what you mean. Could you say more?
Oh hell, I can always say more. A-hem......
There are basketballs out there, there are no basketballs in my head. Therefore it is absolutely impossible that the basketball I know, in whatever way, shape or form I know it, can be the basketball out there.
————-
we don't represent black holes with an image of black holes.
Sure we do; in no other way can we cognize them, in order to talk about them. The images are indirect representations, therefore possibly false, but images nonetheless.
Yes, a representation of what mathematics predicts, and cosmology has shown evidence, comprised of the extant conceptions of black, hole, and all those swirling lights and stuff. But I get your point: we do not have a representation of black holes as physical objects given from appearance directly.
Which section? Schopenhauer believed Kant intentionally obscured his message to avoid being harassed by christians. I know Schopenhauer much more thoroughly than Kant, and I'm afraid I probably use his interpretation (right or wrong).
I don't know what Schopenhauer was exactly referring to. But some basic things are clear and distinct. For example:
"'The transcendental use of a concept in any sort of principle consists in its being related to things in general and in themselves; its empirical use, however, in its being related merely to appearances, i.e., objects of a possible experience". (Op. Cit. p. 356).
It is clear, it is not?
NOTE: Kant is sometimes difficult to read, but we don't need exaggerate.
Remove intuition and there is nothing to say, yet to refer to some item, any item - be it of thought or knowledge - must necessarily mean there is an attachment to sensibility and intuition (space and time).
Again, this is simply not true. Thought and knowledge are not the same for Kant. If there were, there could not be a critique of pure reason. There could not be transcendental illusions, and the whole point of the critique would be lost.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 15:35#3693980 likes
Reply to David Mo It was my quote ... it was massively taken out of context though.
I like sushiJanuary 07, 2020 at 15:41#3694000 likes
Reply to StreetlightX Never said they were. Anyway, I’m outta here. It’s a bit like Groundhog Day for me when it comes to Kant :)
I may start something up elsewhere regarding what is meant by ‘transcendental’ one day.
I see from this discussion that apparently this point is more controversial than I realized. Nevertheless, if we all agree that both the noumenon and the thing-in-itself are unknowable, doesn't this make them essentially the same?
The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible (it belongs to the order of the intelligible).
The thing in itself marks the limit of the conditions of possibility of knowledge.
I don't understand "belongs to the order of the intelligible." Is this saying it's intelligible in some other way than the thing-in-itself?
Noumena are "for-us", while things-in-themselves are indifferent to sensibility.
What possible good is it to say that noumena are "for us"? In what way are they for us? Something unknown, whether in reference to our "understanding" or our "sensibilities" or our "capacities for knowledge" are still unknowns and unknowable. They're "intelligible" in the same way, therefore: as unknowns. But that seems to be the extent of it.
Maybe you're right and there's a subtle difference here, but I'm not seeing it. And "cantankerous" as I'm accused of being, I'm actually really trying to see the point -- I have no stock in being right or wrong about this side discussion.
What possible good is it to say that noumena are "for us"? In what way are they for us? Something unknown, whether in reference to our "understanding" or our "sensibilities" or our "capacities for knowledge" are still unknowns and unknowable. They're "intelligible" in the same way, therefore: as unknowns. But that seems to be the extent of it.
In CoPR the noumenon's aligned with what we can experience. But what we can experience isn't coextensive with what is. The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible; the sensibility being a human faculty (or more precisely a faculty of the transcendental subject). The noumenon is the name for that which blocks the co-extension of our faculties (specifically sensible intiution) and being; it's generated through our faculties' limits, as a concept it's about our faculties (a for us). The thing-in-itself is the name for being insofar as it is not conditioned by our faculties; it is that which exceeds the limitations of our faculties. As a concept it's about that which exceeds the limitation of our faculties (it's not a for-us).
he thing-in-itself is the name for being insofar as it is not conditioned by our faculties; it is that which exceeds the limitations of our faculties.
So the noumenon doesn't exceed our faculties? But the thing-in-itself does.
Both are unknowable, yet both are somehow different unknowable things.
One is a limit of sensibility and for us, the other is a limit of our faculties and outside us.
I just see no evidence for these positions whatsoever. I realize now it is held by quite a few people, but in my view it's a mistake. But at this point whatever the supposed difference is between noumenon and thing-in-itself, we can't say a word about either because they're beyond time and space, which is the basis for knowing anything at all. So, I guess, who cares?
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 16:11#3694140 likes
I don't understand "belongs to the order of the intelligible."
I mean exactly what Kant says:
"Appearances, insofar as they are thought as objects according to the unity of the categories, are called phenomena. But if I assume things that are objects merely of the understanding and that, as such, can nonetheless be given to an intuition--even if not to sensible intuition - then such things would be called noumena (intelligibilia)" (A249)
"If, on the other hand, by merely intelligible objects we mean merely objects of a nonsensible intuition-objects for which, to be sure, our categories do not hold and of which therefore we can never have any cognition at all (neither intuition nor concept) - then noumena in this merely negative signification must indeed be admitted". (A286/B343)
Noumena are intelligible objects: they belong to intelligibility (as distinct from sensibility), and thus to the understanding. More specifically, noumena are intelligible objects that are not sensible, hence why the mark the limit of the sensible, and hence why so-called 'positive noumena' would be the same as objects of intellectual intuition.
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One way I like to think of it is as the difference between not-X (noumena) and not X (thing-in-itself). Not-X is determinate: if you draw a Venn diagram of X and not-X, not-X is everything X is not. They are mutually exhaustive. This is the case with phenomena and noumena. All that is phenomena is not noumena and vice versa. On the other hand, not X (thing-in-itself) is simply something else: Not X is not defined by it's relation to X: the only thing you know of it is that it isn't X. The TII is like this: it is not defined in relation to the phenomenal.
In simple language, if I ask you what you are looking for and you tell me 'not that' (and point to something), it could be anything ("whatever it is, it isn't that"). But if you tell me 'not-that', you mean something quite specific: you mean every other thing that isn't that thing you just pointed to. tTII and noumena relate negatively to the transcendental in just these ways, respectively.
Remove intuition and there is nothing to say, yet to refer to some item, any item - be it of thought or knowledge - must necessarily mean there is an attachment to sensibility and intuition (space and time)
If this is true, we have no account for justice, beauty, mathematics, or anything that does not have an object strictly of its own. We think justice only by means of things being relatively just, those things being in space and time. But the thing said to be just isn’t justice itself, justice being merely a judgement.
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The number one is only given as a concept via sensibility
True enough, but we could never conceive the number one if not first having the concept of quantity. We only use numbers because, e.g, we look at our hands and see there are many little thingys sticking out of them. In the same way, we see a snowflake melt, and iff we ask....how did that happen, we’ve already presupposed there was a reason. Which gives us the principle of cause and effect a priori in understanding. Even if we don’t know why, we know there must be a why....because we watched something happen.
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There is no ‘chair in and of itself’ and there is no ‘thing in and of itself’, there is phenomenon that is given through sensible experience due to limitation.
Do you see that you’ve named something in the former, but not in the latter? If you name a thing a chair, you’ve cognized what was once a mere thing of sense, into an object known as a specific thing. So there is a chair in and of itself, because you said so. Before you named it, before you did all the mind stuff, when it was nothing but some thing you perceived, it was merely a thing-in-itself with no name.
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we don't represent black holes with an image of black holes.
— frank
Sure we do; in no other way can we cognize them, in order to talk about them. The images are indirect representations, therefore possibly false, but images nonetheless.
I'm pretty sure you're interpreting Kant as an indirect realist.
More specifically, noumena are intelligible objects that are not sensible
OK. Examples of such intelligible objects would be what exactly? And whatever is given as an example, is this not therefore phenomenal (as objects)? I see the difference being made between understanding and sensibility, but my point is that it's completely irrelevant. Why? Because both the noumenon and the thing in itself are unknowns -- in any way other than that they're unknown. If you're arguing one is known in some other way, then it's no longer unknown.
The thing in itself isn't generated by our faculties limits, or anything to do with us, rather it's that which generates whatever appears to us; in order for us to grasp something with a sensible intuition, there has to be a certain movement in the thing in itself that facilitates the generation of appearances in us. The thing in itself being necessary but not sufficient for our appearances.
CoPR:...though we cannot know (sensibility + cognition) these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think (thought) them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.
Moreover, it's helpful to mark the boundary between the capacities of our representation and the objects represented. We can have this as a concept without there being any sensible intuition associated with it.
CoPR:Further, the concept of a noumenon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition from being extended to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible knowledge
So the noumenon functions as the name of the limit of applicability of sensible intuition; it's about the limit of our subject's faculties; the thing-in-itself is about things conceptualised apart from how they embed in sensible intuition. The distinction between boundary (noumenon) and what lays outside the boundary (thing in itself), what lays within the boundary are phenomena and appearances.
Kant is an indirect realist, if such be synonymous with being a representationalist. His entire academic catalog is dedicated to a representational human epistemological and moral system.
He calls himself a transcendental realist, in order to grant Hume his empiricism, but also to add the faculty of pure reason to it, as a supplementary, but no less necessary, human condition.
StreetlightJanuary 07, 2020 at 16:53#3694340 likes
Reply to Xtrix The importance of the distinction as I understand it lies in Kant's desire to remain a certain kind of realist (an 'empirical realist', as he famously calls himself). As is well known, Kant is keen to distinguish himself from idealism of Berkeley, and does so precisely by positing the thing-in-itself which gives rise to appearance. The importance of the fact that the TII is not relative to us (or to our transcendental constitution) means that in some way, the universe exists 'out there' regardless of whether we are there to cognize it or not.
If, on the other hand, the TII were merely 'for us' in the way that noumena are (noumena are 'faculty-relative' - not-X, rather than not X), then Kant cannot in good conscience call himself a realist. It would simply be the limit of a faculty (which already belongs to the transcendental subject), that would itself make the subject finite, and not the universe 'out there' which outruns any conditions of possibility of knowledge. The distinction has bearing on the status of the transcendental subject: it tells us something about its (our) place in the cosmos, as it were. @fdrake's explanation is, I believe, pretty much along the same lines.
Examples of such intelligible objects would be what exactly?
God, soul, Universe as Totality... It can be thought, but not known. It is thought as a mere boundary of what I cannot know. My intelect push me to it, but knowledge fails because only phenomena can be known.
"The concept of a noumenon, i.e., of a thing that is not to be thought of as an object of the senses but rather as a thing in itself (solely through a pure understanding), is not at all contradictory; for one cannot assert of sensibility that it is the only possible kind of intuition. Further, this concept [noumenon] is necessary in order not to extend sensible intuition to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible cognition(...) . In the end, however, we have no insight into the possibility of such noumena, and the domain outside of the sphere of appearances is empty (for us)(...)The concept of a noumenonf is therefore merely a boundary concept, in order to limit the pretension of sensibility, and therefore only of negative use". (Kant, Op. cit. p. 362)
Kant is an indirect realist, if such be synonymous with being a representationalist. His entire academic catalog is dedicated to a representational human epistemological and moral system.
He calls himself a transcendental realist, in order to grant Hume his empiricism, but also to add the faculty of pure reason to it, as a supplementary, but no less necessary, human condition.
I feel things gearing up toward a conflict about "what Kant really meant."
I'll just leave it at this; what Xtrix has been saying is a common interpretation which has the benefit of solving the problem of induction, which is something indirect realism can't do.
Whatever you may think of this interpretation, it deserves a nod for its prevalence and effectiveness.
It exists. It must, or we would have no perception of it.
Then in this sense both thing-in-itself and noumenon exists, otherwise we wouldn't say anything about either. Although to use "perception" is misleading -- we don't strictly perceive either.
The thing in itself isn't generated by our faculties limits, or anything to do with us, rather it's that which generates whatever appears to us
So the thing in itself is what's represented, though we don't know what it is "in itself." Fine. Either the same is true of noumena, or else noumena are representations of some kind, which would make them phenomena. If noumena are something in between, it's not been demonstrated here.
The distinction between boundary (noumenon) and what lays outside the boundary (thing in itself), what lays within the boundary are phenomena and appearances.
"Distinction between the boundary" is meaningless to me. There's phenomena and noumena, in my reading. In yours, there's phenomena, noumena, and the thing in itself. Fine. But I'm not seeing it in anything that's been quoted from Kant so far.
The importance of the distinction as I understand it lies in Kant's desire to remain a certain kind of realist (an 'empirical realist', as he famously calls himself). As is well known, Kant is keen to distinguish himself from idealism of Berkeley, and does so precisely by positing the thing-in-itself which gives rise to appearance. The importance of the fact that the TII is not relative to us (or to our transcendental constitution) means that in some way, the universe exists 'out there' regardless of whether we are there to cognize it or not.
Sure. What I'm failing to see is where noumena play a role if they're not representations and not the thing-in-itself. If noumenon is used as word for the "boundary" between phenomena and the thing-in-itself, I'm just not yet convinced by that. Kant, in many passages, also clearly links both the noumenon and the thing in itself -- one passage was already cited earlier. It would be hard to square the two interpretations.
Maybe I'm just hopeless, but I'm still not understanding exactly where noumena are supposed to fit in your (and others') readings.
God, soul, Universe as Totality... It can be thought, but not known. It is thought as a mere boundary of what I cannot know. My intelect push me to it, but knowledge fails because only phenomena can be known.
Things we think aren't phenomena? "God" and "soul" and the "Universe" are not phenomena or knowledge? Than how can you speak about them at all?
If you're not including thoughts as phenomena, I don't agree with that at all. If Kant says that somewhere I missed, I think it's just a mistake.
I read the exact quotation and yet I don't see your point. Kant is discussing the limits of what we can know and is equating the thing-in-itself with the noumenon in that passage, in my reading. It's actually a little baffling that you you interpret it as supporting you, but so it goes.
[i]Many accounts of Kant's philosophy treat "noumenon" and "thing-in-itself" as synonymous, and there is textual evidence for this relationship.[14] However, Stephen Palmquist holds that "noumenon" and "thing-in-itself" are only loosely synonymous, inasmuch as they represent the same concept viewed from two different perspectives,[15][16] and other scholars also argue that they are not identical.[17] Schopenhauer criticised Kant for changing the meaning of "noumenon". However, this opinion is far from unanimous.[18] Kant's writings show points of difference between noumena and things-in-themselves. For instance, he regards things-in-themselves as existing:
...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.[19]
He is much more doubtful about noumena:
But in that case a noumenon is not for our understanding a special [kind of] object, namely, an intelligible object; the [sort of] understanding to which it might belong is itself a problem. For we cannot in the least represent to ourselves the possibility of an understanding which should know its object, not discursively through categories, but intuitively in a non-sensible intuition.[20]
A crucial difference between the noumenon and the thing-in-itself is that to call something a noumenon is to claim a kind of knowledge, whereas Kant insisted that the thing-in-itself is unknowable. Interpreters have debated whether the latter claim makes sense: it seems to imply that we know at least one thing about the thing-in-itself (i.e., that it is unknowable). But Stephen Palmquist explains that this is part of Kant's definition of the term, to the extent that anyone who claims to have found a way of making the thing-in-itself knowable must be adopting a non-Kantian position.[21][/i]
So, again, it's more controversial than I thought. But I'm still not seeing much textual evidence to support many of the claims being made here.
It exists. It must, or we would have no perception of it.
— Mww
Then in this sense both thing-in-itself and noumenon exists, otherwise we wouldn't say anything about either. Although to use "perception" is misleading -- we don't strictly perceive either.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things. Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived. That which is merely perceived is unknown to us. Things-in-themselves are unknown to us.
That which is conceived can be talked about. To be conceived does not require existence.
We perceive the thing-in itself. We don’t perceive noumena because there is nothing in the human faculty of representation that allows for it.
Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things.
Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived.
Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. What we perceive -- our representations, our sensations in time and space -- are phenomena. You grant this.
If something is perceived, it's phenomena. To say the thing in itself is perceived is therefore saying it's a phenomenon or representation of some kind. It's not. Kant's postulating something that may be "outside" our representations, apart from spatial and temporal forms. This is what "in itself" means -- in itself as opposed to the forms of our knowing anything (in space and time). Sensations, and hence perceptions, are spatial and temporal, and hence representation, and hence phenomena. So we can't "sense" the thing-in-itself, we can't "perceive" it, we can't "know" it. This is why the concept of thing-in-itself has been so controversial for so long.
Human beings have scope and limits, and the thing in itself has always appeared to me to mean simply whatever there is outside this scope.
You just said perception is an affect of our sensations, of our senses. Some sensations and perceptions are "unknown"? I still don't see your point I'm afraid.
We perceive the thing-in itself. We don’t perceive noumena because there is nothing in the human faculty of representation that allows for it.
In my reading we don't strictly perceive either. Our perceptions, our representations on the occasion of sense, are phenomena. What's represented apart from our spatial-temporal "cognoscitive powers" is noumenon, the thing-in-itself. We don't perceive it, because we have no knowledge of it -- what we perceive is whatever shows up for us in time and space: representations. You see what I'm saying?
If you're just using "perception" in the same way I'm using "representation," then sure, representations of something makes sense -- but we have no idea what that something is, and as soon as we try to attribute to it any property whatsoever we're assigning to it something spatial-temporal -- that's the whole point of bringing in the "in itself."
objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...
(1) Outward objects = representations of our sensibilities.
(2) Objects in themselves = quite unknown. (Notice he doesn't say they're "unknown, yet we perceive them." That would make them representations of our sensibilities [1].)
Now what about "inner objects" like thoughts and the like? Maybe this is what you're getting at. I would argue they're phenomena as well, but perhaps that's off topic.
What I'm failing to see is where noumena play a role if they're not representations and not the thing-in-itself.
“...But there is one advantage in such transcendental inquiries which can be made comprehensible to the dullest and most reluctant learner—this, namely, that the understanding which is occupied merely with empirical exercise, and does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may exercise its functions very well and very successfully, but 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....”
Yadda yadda yadda...transcedentally generated, empirically employed, this and that....
“...But we are met at the very commencement with an ambiguity, which may easily occasion great misapprehension. The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects. Now as the understanding possesses no other fundamental conceptions besides the categories, it takes for granted that an object considered as a thing in itself must be capable of being thought by means of these pure conceptions, and is thereby led to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible existence (noumenon), a something out of the sphere of our sensibility, for a determinate conception of an existence which we can cognize in some way or other by means of the understanding....”
Phenomena are the only “input” to understanding, to which are synthesized concepts and from which cognitions are the “output”. Understanding thinks....
(“...understanding cannot intuit and intuition cannot think, neither of these can be exchanged....”)
......of phenomena as an object in the same way imagination treats an appearance. Imagination synthesizes appearance with intuition to give phenomena....
(“....undetermined object of empirical intuition...”)
.......understanding says....hey I can do that. I’m just gonna synthesize phenomena, the object in a certain relation I think of as an object in itself, with conceptions and get me, not the undetermined object of empirical intuition, but rather, the undetermined conception of an intelligible existence, thereby cognizable in some way.
Whoa, hoss. Two things, yo.
1.) The only concepts understanding can use in its synthesizing are the categories, which are already claimed in the synthesis with empirical real objects, in order to get cognitions. Therefore, the categories won’t fit and the intelligible existence is illegitimate, and,
2.) You can’t go changing a phenomenon into an object in itself. You have no ground to do that, And just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
No...you whoa hoss. If I can think it, it must be conceivable.
(Yeah, conceivable, but nothing can be done with. No cognition, no experience, no knowledge....zip, nada.)
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So you see, boys and girls, what happens when a big-shot faculty gets too big for his britches.
( I made all that up. Made perfect sense at the time.)
You quoted me in this post, but don't address noumena at all -- which is what I was questioning. I appreciate the attempt, and don't want to be accused of "cantankerousness," but I still fail to see what role the noumenon plays if it's not representations and not the thing-in-itself.
"it also follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general that something must correspond to it which is not in itself appearance, for appearance can be nothing for itself and outside of our kind of representation; thus, if there is not to be a constant circle, the word "appearance" must already indicate a relation to something the immediate representation of which is, to be sure, sensible, but which in itself, without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e., an object independent of sensibility. Now from this arises the concept of a noumenon, which, however, is not at all positive and does not signify a determinate cognition of something in general, in which I abstract from all form of sensible intuition". (A251–2)
Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. What we perceive -- our representations, our sensations in time and space -- are phenomena. You grant this.
No, I do not grant that what we perceive are representations. Or, if I said something to that effect, then I shall go beat myself up.
One needs to keep in mind perception actually is nothing but reception of incoming empirical data. If incoming data, not in but incoming, are representations, how were they created? We can say how representations are created on the backside of sense organs, but we cannot use the equipment from the inside of us to create representation on the outside of us. Inside, everything relates to something, on the outside, what would data relate to except other data, which tells us nothing.
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That which is merely perceived is unknown to us.
— Mww
You just said perception is an affect of our sensations, of our senses. Some sensations and perceptions are "unknown"? I still don't see your point I'm afraid.
An affect on our senses, not of. It isn’t that perceptions are unknown, as in we don’t know we have been affected. We don’t know what we’ve been affected by.
Try this: incoming data is information in certain forms of energy. The output of the sense organs is still energy, but a different form. The translation from one to the other is unknown to us, but it must have happened, because we did perceive something. What we perceived needs more equipment doing different things, just as e.g., the optic nerves are different than the rods and cones.
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We don't perceive it, because we have no knowledge of it
Thing is...to say we have no knowledge is to say we have no experience. But we often perceive things of which we have no experience, every time we learn something new. Or just a loud bang from around the corner caused by something not known. So the lack of knowledge, or, experience, cannot be the reason we don’t perceive noumena. Either noumena just aren’t there to be perceived, or there is no such thing as noumena to be perceived.
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Not yet. If something is perceived, it will be a phenomenon. It isn’t phenomenon merely by being an affect on the senses. That is sensation and tells us something has appeared to the faculty of representation.
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To say the thing in itself is perceived is therefore saying it's a phenomenon or representation of some kind. It's not.
Correct. It’s not. See above. The thing-in-itself perceived is just another something perceived. Same-o, same-o. See waaaayyyy above: object in itself equals thing-in-itself, and we certainly perceive objects, so.......
Don’t forget. We cognize representations, not things. There’s no contradiction in allowing things-in-themselves to be the objects of perception, because they have nothing to do with the system, other than to kick-start it.
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but we have no idea what that something is, and as soon as we try to attribute to it any property whatsoever we're assigning to it something spatial-temporal -- that's the whole point of bringing in the "in itself."
We can’t have an empty object affect us. How would we know we’d been affected? We have no knowledge of a thing as it is in itself. That doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the thing that affected us. We are given an object, that object must have characteristics of some kind which show up in its appearance.
Then the fun begins!!!
Imagination pulls intuitions out of consciousness, throws them at the appearance, finds out what sticks. Experience helps by telling imagination it can pull a narrower range of intuitions. Whenever imagination is all happy, it gives understanding...the faculty that thinks....a phenomenon. Understanding thinks whether its conceptions match the intuitions experience says belongs to the phenomenon......
( yep....wood, paint, wheels....all cool.)
....then thinks the pure conceptions, the ones understanding possesses regardless of phenomenon, and thinks a phenomenon must have regardless of any of its empirical properties......
(Does the phenomenon have shape? Can the phenomenon be a cause or an effect? Is the phenomenon even possible? Oh oh. No, the phenomenon has been imagined as having wings. In light of the manifold of intuitions imagined, that contradicts experience, this object is not possible. Scratch the wings)
......and if the phenomenon meets the criteria, it is judged as a proper cognizable object with a name, and “soapbox racer” becomes knowledge.
So you see, we don’t bring in the “in-itself”; we only bring in the thing. The in-itself is determined by its own nature, not ours. What we don’t know, and is impossible to ever know, is whether the nature of the thing-in-itself attributes to the thing, the same properties we think the thing has.
And this says nothing about a priori cognitions. Well....lemme tell ya all about....wha? No? Too much?
The most spectacular reference is quantum mechanics, where the act of measuring creates the measured.
That's an interesting statement in the context of this thread. The relevant question is whether it points to a subject/object duality or to an underlying symmetry. That is the measurement problem.
But even in relativity, there is still an objective truth. Space and time may distort relative to an observer, but a spacetime interval is the same for all observers. Simultaneity may be relative to an observer, but cause and effect are still the same for all observers. And the impetus behind all of that, the speed of light is the same for all observers: all the things that are relative are reasoned to be so because they must be in order to account for the speed of light being an objective, non-relative value.
Yes. So I'd just like to note the symmetry here with respect to observers. The train has a velocity relative to the platform or, symmetrically, the platform has a velocity relative to the train. No subject/object duality is implied.
One needs to keep in mind perception actually is nothing but reception of incoming empirical data. If incoming data, not in but incoming, are representations, how were they created? We can say how representations are created on the backside of sense organs, but we cannot use the equipment from the inside of us to create representation on the outside of us. Inside, everything relates to something, on the outside, what would data relate to except other data, which tells us nothing.
The incoming stimuli, our sensations, are data, yes. The second they hit the sense organs, they become representations to us, unless you argue that what effects us from "outside" corresponds exactly to what we sense, perceive, etc. That's fine, but it's not Kant. So how are representations created? By the brain and nervous system on the "occasion of sense," through our cognitive faculty. Whatever our representations are representations of, outside of our cognitions, is the thing in itself. Things in themselves are what is represented to us, but because we are bounded by space and time, there's nothing whatever to say about them (or it).
Saying we can't create representations "outside of us" is not true -- there's all kinds of things outside me: trees, books, rivers, anything at all. Who said representations are limited to "internal" things like feelings or thoughts? If that's not what you're saying, OK, but then surely you admit trees aren't "internal" -- and if you do, then everything we can know or talk about is technically "internal", bounded by our skin so to speak, and so the "internal/external" or "inside/outside" distinction is useless.
An affect on our senses, not of. It isn’t that perceptions are unknown, as in we don’t know we have been affected. We don’t know what we’ve been affected by.
We don't know what we've been affected by in themselves, you mean? We certainly know what we've been affected by otherwise -- as objects in space and time; our representations. I already granted we don't know what our sensations or representations are of in themselves, apart from our spatial-temporal boundedness.
Try this: incoming data is information in certain forms of energy. The output of the sense organs is still energy, but a different form.
This is saying the same basic thing, yes. And I agree. But the "different form" is our representations -- how we experience the world, bounded by our brain and nervous system.
But we often perceive things of which we have no experience, every time we learn something new.
That's not using experience the way I'm using it here, of course. I mean human experience in general, not, say, an "experienced doctor." The forms of any experience whatsoever is space and time. Anything we experience at all will be experienced in this way. Thus, to say we have experience of the thing in itself isn't correct.
Not yet. If something is perceived, it will be a phenomenon. It isn’t phenomenon merely by being an affect on the senses. That is sensation and tells us something has appeared to the faculty of representation.
Ok, you're using the term in a different way from me. I consider sensations to be phenomena. What would it be prior to "becoming" phenomena, exactly? How do we know we even have sensations at all "before" they become phenomena. Either something is experienced (as phenomena of experience) or it isn't. I don't understand these extra steps you seem to put in. Doesn't make much sense to me.
Correct. It’s not. See above. The thing-in-itself perceived is just another something perceived. Same-o, same-o. See waaaayyyy above: object in itself equals thing-in-itself, and we certainly perceive objects, so.......
Yes, we perceive objects. We don't perceive objects in themselves. I don't know what that would mean. How can we perceive an object that isn't spatial or temporal? What would it look like? What properties does it have? We don't know, because we can't say a thing about it. We can certainly say plenty about objects -- as objects of our sensations and perceptions, and thus representations.
I think this stems from the above and not using sensation and perception in the same way I am. Again, I consider them phenomena, and by phenomena I mean literally anything experienceable. Out experiences are bounded, again, by space and time. Thus, whatever else sensations, perceptions, phenomena, etc. are outside of these forms we really cannot experience or perceive in any way. That would be the thing-in-itself. it's almost a matter of logic.
Don’t forget. We cognize representations, not things. There’s no contradiction in allowing things-in-themselves to be the objects of perception, because they have nothing to do with the system, other than to kick-start it.
That's exactly what I think, yes -- it's a contradiction. I don't see how "things" and "representations" are different. Things-in-themselves (thus outside our spatial-temporal modes of experience) is a different story.
We can’t have an empty object affect us. How would we know we’d been affected? We have no knowledge of a thing as it is in itself. That doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the thing that affected us. We are given an object, that object must have characteristics of some kind which show up in its appearance.
Of course it has characteristics -- in space and in time. A weight, a mass, color, shape, a quality of feeling, etc. We know we're affected because we experience things, as representations -- not in themselves. So whatever affects us certainly isn't empty to us -- it's any object at all, and not just trees and books but feelings, emotions, pains, thoughts, etc. Anything else whatever is the thing in itself, which you admit is not knowable. There isn't a third realm between knowable and unknowable, in my view -- or between experience and nothing, or between life and death. There's one or the other.
You almost seem to be saying there's an object out there affecting us that isn't yet a phenomenon but isn't empty, and that we can still know something about. I still have no idea what this means.
No, the phenomenon has been imagined as having wings. In light of the manifold of intuitions imagined, that contradicts experience, this object is not possible. Scratch the wings)
Imagining a pink unicorn is still an idea, yes? Imagination is an experience as well, bounded by our human limits. That's still part of phenomenology.
Reply to Xtrix Putting it very simply and in a way that Kant may not have specifically explained it: a noumenon is the idea of an idea; the concept of something beyond our (sensible) knowledge; an idea of the in itself. A thing in itself is the idea of an actuality beyond not merely our knowledge, but our very ideas.
This shit is all very hard to speak coherently about: hence the disagreements and misunderstandings.
Putting it very simply and in a way that Kant may not have specifically explained it: a noumenon is the idea of an idea; the concept of something beyond our (sensible) knowledge; an idea of the in itself. A thing in itself is the idea of an actuality beyond not merely our knowledge, but our very ideas.
So they're both "ideas"? This seems so riddled with confusion I really don't know how to respond. But if it makes sense to you, you're a smarter guy than me.
This shit is all very hard to speak coherently about: hence the disagreements and misunderstandings.
Key point! It is not really worth claiming this or that is ‘correct’ when it comes to interpreting Kant. The great value is in understanding why and how different interpretations exist.
The reason I always recommend this work to anyone with any serious regard for philosophy is precisely for this reason - it forces you to question your own position and come to understand other positions.
Complete agreement about what Kant meant is not necessary. Taking onboard different views surrounding Kant is an extremely fruitful and intriguing exploration.
I like sushiJanuary 08, 2020 at 02:47#3696460 likes
Picture, Canvas and Paint would be a decent analogy.
The Picture painted only exists due to Paint and Canvas. We cannot see the Picture if only one or the other is present. We need both to acquire ‘knowledge’ - the question is more or less about the limit of inference.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 03:03#3696510 likes
Maybe I'm just hopeless, but I'm still not understanding exactly where noumena are supposed to fit in your (and others') readings.
I'm not sure how else to explain it that hasn't already: noumena mark a limit of sensibility.
Perhaps one source of confusion is the asymmetry between noumena and the things-in-themselves: it's true that noumena are thing-in-themselves, but the converse does not hold. One might say: noumena are things-in-themselves under the aspect of the transcendental subject. However, get rid of the transcendental subject, and one similarly 'gets rid' of noumena - but not things-in-themselves, which are subject-independant.
One might say: noumena are things-in-themselves under the aspect of the transcendental subject. However, get rid of the transcendental subject, and one similarly 'gets rid' of noumena - but not things-in-themselves, which are subject-independant.
So noumena are subject-dependent, unlike things in themselves -- and they mark the limit of sensibility.
So the limit of sensibility is what exactly? Not phenomena or representations, and not really the thing-in-itself. It's just another word for the boundary between what can be known and what can't?
It's clear that we have limits. We're limited by space and time. Something in itself isn't part of that. Are noumena part of space and time or not? If not, and yet they differ from things in themselves, then what are they (is it)? Saying noumena "mark the limit" just isn't clear to me.
Or put it this way: what exactly is "gotten rid of" when the subject goes away? In that case, why not just say the thing in itself goes away too? Who's to say?
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 04:11#3696720 likes
Are noumena part of space and time or not? If not, and they differ from things in themselves, then what are they (is it)? Saying noumena "mark the limit" just isn't clear to me.
Insofar as noumena as quite literally defined by their being non-sensible intuitions, no, they are not subject to the forms of space and time. And if the fact that noumena mark the limit of the sensible is unclear, perhaps your beef is with with Kant:
"The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is no arbitrary invention; it is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility." (B311)
What exactly is "gotten rid of" when the subject goes away? In that case, why not just say the thing in itself goes away too? Who's to say?
The transcendental constitution of reality goes away - at least, in its human form (Kant leaves it an open as to whether there are other forms of (non-human?) intuition: "our kind of intuition does not extend to all things, but only to objects of our senses, that consequently its objective validity is limited, and that a place therefore remains open for some other kind of intuition, and so for things as its objects" (B342)). As for who's to say - Kant's to say:
"Understanding accordingly limits sensibility [via the noumenon - SX], but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances" (A288, my bolding). There could hardly be a clearer distinction between the remit of noumena and the thing-in-itself than in this passage.
"The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is no arbitrary invention; it is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility." (B311)
Yes, a limiting concept. Just as the thing in itself is a limiting concept. He's not saying noumena ARE the limit, as you stated, he's saying it's a limiting concept. You could just as easily replace "noumenon" here with "thing-in-itself" and Kant would be make exactly the same point. I still see no grounds for a distinction, or at least the one being made here on this thread.
"Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances" (A288, my bolding). There could hardly be a clearer distinction between the remit of noumena and the thing-in-itself than in this passage.
Our understanding limits sensibility, and can claim applicability to appearances only, not to things in themselves. This is what he says. If this is the clearest distinction, then I'm truly unconvinced and don't see how anyone can arrive at the conclusion that noumena are somehow different from things-in-themselves.
If both are not subjected to space and time, then what's the difference? Nothing. In my view these passages cited certainly don't support any such differentiation, and in fact at least one has been cited that clearly states they're the same thing.
I think it's unmotivatable to make this move, and really don't see what it adds, but to each his own.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 05:03#3696770 likes
Reply to Xtrix But Kant does not say that the thing in itself is a limiting concept. Really, find me a passage. You won't be able to. Which follows from that fact that the thing-in-itself, as I keep saying, is not defined by it's relation to the subject, as the noumenon is.
Your argument in general is somewhat odd: it's true that both share a certain 'quality' (that of not being subject to space and time), but this alone cannot say anything as to their idenity. Two apples may be green, but that does not make them the same apple.
So they're both "ideas"? This seems so riddled with confusion I really don't know how to respond. But if it makes sense to you, you're a smarter guy than me.
I probably didn't explain it that simply after all. The way I understand it is that 'noumenon' is an idea of a limit beyond which sensory experience cannot go. A limit is itself an idea or at least a conceptual 'object' so 'noumenon' is in that sense an idea of an idea.
'Thing in itself' is an idea of an actuality which is totally independent of (and not merely a limit to) sensory experience and any and all human knowledge and understanding.
It's a subtle and, on some interpretations, perhaps a barely coherent, distinction, so....
Your argument in general is somewhat odd: it's true that both share a certain 'quality' (that of not being subject to space and time), but this alone cannot say anything as to their idenity. Two apples may be green, but that does not make them the same apple.
True, but if both noumenon and thing in itself are beyond space and time (green), what ELSE makes them different? You say the relation to the subject, that noumena is the limit or the mark of the limit. I say both can be applied to things in themselves as well.
If both are unknowable, how can we differentiate? It's like saying there are numberless, timeless, spaceless apples -- but there are two, and they're different somehow, but both are also unknowable. It makes no sense to me. Better to just say that human beings have scope and limits -- a scope bounded by space and time. Beyond this limit (of space and time), whatever there is we can't know -- because what we know is, again, bounded, and thus if we could know something about it it wouldn't be noumenal, it'd be phenomenal. What's the point of saying, "From the subjects point of view, the word for our limit is noumenon, which would disappear if we disappeared -- but from the point of view of nowhere, there's a thing in itself which lives on regardless"?
It frustrating to me. If there's something I'm truly missing, I want to know. Obviously it's convincing to a lot of people here -- more than I realized -- so I don't disparage it, but I still think my reading is more accurate.
I probably didn't explain it that simply after all. The way I understand it is that 'noumenon' is an idea of a limit beyond which sensory experience cannot go. A limit is itself an idea or at least a conceptual 'object' so 'noumenon' is in that sense an idea of an idea.
'Thing in itself' is an idea of an actuality which is totally independent of (and not merely a limit to) sensory experience and any and all human knowledge and understanding.
Ok, I follow you here a little more. If noumenon is a word for (or idea of) the limit of our understanding, fine. That's, I believe, what Streetlight and Mmw are saying as well. But I don't see any need for it. Why not just say "the limit of our understanding"? Why the idea of an idea, to use your phrase? It sounds to me like "noumenon" now becomes a word for "boundary," like being on the fence -- not a thing in itself, but not appearance/representation ("phenomenal"). I suppose you could read some passages this way (and only some), but I don't really see what it adds or why it's important.
Similarly we talk about rivers of honey or flying horses. Mixing concepts or using meaningful words in wrong contexts where they mean nothing.
OK, but that's all phenomena as well, in my view. It's all experience -- the experience of imagination, of creative use of words, metaphor, etc. Again, thinking is an activity and thus phenomenal.
Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things. Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived. That which is merely perceived is unknown to us. Things-in-themselves are unknown to us.
Your argument is wrong. To think that an undetermined "something" has caused A is not the same as knowing the cause of A. Moreover, Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR.
That's an interesting statement in the context of this thread. The relevant question is whether it points to a subject/object duality or to an underlying symmetry. That is the measurement problem.
I have not understand what symmetry you refer.
Anyway, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg et alia thought that quantum mechanics posed a problem of subjectivity to science. Bernard d'Espagnat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_d%27Espagnat) devoted an article to the importance of Kant to understand quantum mechanics.
One might say: noumena are things-in-themselves under the aspect of the transcendental subject. However, get rid of the transcendental subject, and one similarly 'gets rid' of noumena - but not things-in-themselves, which are subject-independant.
It's the same thing even if you call it by different names. "Noumena" is another way of saying "thing in-itself". If the subject disappears, the name disappears, not the named thing.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 06:24#3696890 likes
By their respective relation to the subject! I keep repeating this - in fact it was the first thing I said here: noumena are the limit of sensibility. They are only defined in relation to our capacity for knowledge. Things-in-themselves, by contrast, are defined by having no relation to our capacity for knowledge. The difference between not-X and not X.
@fdrake made the same point in a different way: "The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible; the sensibility being a human faculty ... The thing-in-itself is the name for being insofar as it is not conditioned by our faculties; it is that which exceeds the limitations of our faculties."
OK, but that's all phenomena as well, in my view. It's all experience
This is your way of saying it, not Kant's. Besides, there's a difference between imagination and the world of noumena in Kant. In the imagination, sensitive objects are mixed up in the wrong context. The fantastic entity could be perceived in strange circumstances, outside of normal life. This is not the case with noumena because they are outside of any perceptible circumstance: outside of space and time.
By their respective relation to the subject! I keep repeating this - in fact it was the first thing I said here: noumena are the limit of sensibility. They are only defined in relation to our capacity for knowledge. Things-in-themselves, by contrast, are defined by having no relation to our capacity for knowledge. The difference between not-X and not X.
And when Kant says that the thing itself cannot be known, does he not put it in relation to our knowledge? To say that it marks the limit of our knowledge is the same as saying that it is outside our knowledge.
It's not true that numena are "only defined" by their relationship to knowledge. Noumenon is defined as "the way we call things in themselves". Two ways of calling the same thing!
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 06:57#3696940 likes
It's not true that numena are "only defined" by their relationship to knowledge.
Incorrect. Here is Kant: "The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is no arbitrary invention; it is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility." (B311) No sensibility, no noumena. The two are inextricable concepts.
As for the thing-in-itself, it has a relation with our capacity for knowledge, but is not defined by it, unlike the noumenon. I may be a brother to my sister, but my sister is not nothing other than a sibling to me. The noumenon, however, is nothing other than the insensible - non-sensible intuition (intelligible entity). Difference between not-X and not X. Again.
"The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept,
Here you see:
"Now the doctrine of sensibility is at the same time the doctrine of the
noumenon in the negative sense, i.e., of things that the understanding
must think without this relation to our kind of intuition, thus not
merely as appearances but as things in themselves, but about which,
however, it also understands that in this abstraction it cannot consider
making any use of its categories, since they have significance only in re-
lation to the unity of intuitions in space and time, and can even deter-
mine this unity a priori." (CP308) [Emphasis mine]
If the sensitivity disappears, the concept of the thing itself also disappears, because it is defined in contrast to the phenomena, which Kant also calls appearances. You see that in this text Kant opposes the thing itself to the phenomenon (appearances). That is, the thing itself is the same as the noumenon: that which is opposed to the phenomenon.
I think you are confusing Kant's words: He says that noumenon in the negative sense is nothing more than the concept that specifies the limits of knowledge, as opposed to noúmeno in the positive sense, which seeks to go beyond them (classical metaphysics). It does not say that the only being of the noumenon is in the understanding.
He says that the concept of noumenon "only" is limiting. Not that noumenon is just a concept.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 07:13#3696990 likes
If the sensitivity disappears, the concept of the thing itself also disappears
This makes of Kant an idealist in the Berkeleyian sense, which he militates against throughout the CoPR. As I said, noumena are indeed things-in-themselves, but the converse does not hold.
Either way you need to make up your mind: either the noumena are defined only in relation to the understanding, or they are not. You can't have it both ways.
This makes of Kant an idealist in the Berkeleyian sense,
If the concept of imbecility disappeared, imbeciles wouldn't disappear. Unfortunately. You keep confusing the concept of noumenon or thing in itself with the existence of things.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 07:21#3697010 likes
You keep stringing the two together without argument.
Does this one work?
"The concept of a noumenon, (...) as a thing in itself" (B310)
Not only I, but other participants in the forum have already given you several texts in which Kant identifies noumenon and thing in itself in the same way: what falls outside the conditions of understanding, but you ignore them.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 07:34#3697030 likes
Not at all. I've repeatedly acknowledged that noumena can be understood as things-in-themselves. Only that the converse does not hold in all cases. There is an asymmetry.
Can you quote Kant to demonstrate that distinction?
I already did!: "Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances". (A288)
That is: the limitation set by the understanding on sensibility does not apply to things-in-themselves. Noumena are 'appearence-relative', and only appearence-relative. Things-in-themselves are not.
Further down: "If we want to call this object a noumenon because the representation of it is nothing sensible, we are free to do so. But since we cannot apply any of our concepts of the understanding to it, this representation still remains empty for us, and serves for nothing but to designate the boundaries of our sensible cognition" (B346, my emphasis)
It should be noted to that your partial quote (B346), in context, comes at the end of a discussion in which the idea that limitations of understanding extends beyond sensibility, is a mistake. So the start of Kant's sentence, which you conveniently cut off, reads:
"We therefore think something in general, and on the one side determine it sensibly, only we also distinguish the object represented in general and in abstracto from this way of intuiting it; thus there remains to us a way of determining it merely through thinking that is, to be sure, a merely logical form without content, but that nevertheless seems to us to be a way in which the object exists in itself (noumenon), without regard to the intuition to which our sensibility is limited".
But this 'seems' is precisely, a mistake. To regard the noumenon as that 'without regard to which the intuition to which our sensibility is limited' is an error: the whole section is a 'critique of pure understanding': a critique which posits that to think noumena as abstracted from sensibility is a total mistake. What you quote in defence of your position is for Kant paradigmatic of a transcendental exercise of the understanding which must be avoided at all costs!
I don't know why this thread has been hijacked by people talking about Kant, it must be a kind of Twister played by philosophers.
It's really very simple as Wayfarer pointed out in the first reply. The distinction between subject and object is a function of the mind body duality of humans.
So subject is that perceived, understood, inferred and discussed by the mind.
The object is what is sensed, or encountered by the body.
The second they (stimuli) hit the sense organs, they become representations to us, unless you argue that what effects us from "outside" corresponds exactly to what we sense, perceive, etc. That's fine, but it's not Kant.
Yes, what effects us from outside corresponds exactly to what we sense. That which effects our eyes exactly corresponds to what we see; that which effects our ears corresponds exactly to what we hear, etc. We have to have consistency between incoming data and what the cognitive system works with.
The stimuli become sensation (rods and cones, eardrum, pressure...), that which becomes an appearance (optic nerve, those little tiny bones....I forget the name, skin), from a sensation is a representation of it.
——————
So how are representations created? By the brain and nervous system on the "occasion of sense," through our cognitive faculty.
The brain and nervous system have nothing to do with a speculative epistemological system. Just as intuition, conceptions and representations have nothing to do with cognitive neuroscience. Two different domains of investigation. When it comes right down to life and living, all our mental mechanics are done by the brain, but that is soooooo boring for the philosopher.
As to how representations are created: “....we have not here anything to do....”. We don’t know., and it really doesn’t matter, in a purely speculative epistemological theory.
——————
Saying we can't create representations "outside of us" is not true -- there's all kinds of things outside me: trees, books, rivers, anything at all.
All kinds of things are outside us, but they are not representations, they are real, physical objects of experience, because they have particular names in accordance with the conceptions understood as belonging to them, thus cognized as a certain thing.
——————
Yes, we perceive objects. We don't perceive objects in themselves.
I just quoted Kant as saying that’s exactly what we do.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
Object are quite unknown to us in themselves says exactly the same as objects in themselves are quite unknown to us.
——————-
I think this stems from the above and not using sensation and perception in the same way I am. Again, I consider them phenomena, and by phenomena I mean literally anything experienceable.
Fine. Go right ahead. That’s the easy way out of digging the subtleties from the theory. Literally anything experienceable is a possible experience. No merely possible experience can be a phenomenon. A merely possible experience will have a merely possible phenomenon as it condition. I can think swimming the English Channel, and it is experienceable, but the perception, the sensation and indeed the very phenomenon, are entirely absent.
——————-
I don't see how "things" and "representations" are different.
“....The capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is called sensibility....”
This tells you representations are a consequence of objects, or, of things, and if they are a consequence, they cannot be antecedent to or simultaneous with, that which is their cause. And don’t be confused by “receiving representations” such that they appear with the object. When conditioned by “the mode in which we are affected” makes clear all representations are generated after they are perceived.
——————
So whatever affects us certainly isn't empty to us -- it's any object at all, and not just trees and books but feelings, emotions, pains, thoughts, etc.
Again, a common misunderstanding. Books, trees, yes. Feelings, emotions, pain, thought.....no. None of those are given representations by sensibility, even if the object which causes them, may be, thus can never be empirical cognitions. Feelings are relative subjective conditions alone, and have no object of their own. You cannot draw a feeling on a piece of paper as you can draw a tree; you can only draw that which you think is responsible for that feeling.
—————-
Imagining a pink unicorn is still an idea, yes? Imagination is an experience as well, bounded by our human limits. That's still part of phenomenology.
We don't care about the phenomenology. Just because Kant gave a very specific task to a relatively small part of his system doesn’t make him one. Besides, phenomena are not even used in pure reason, in which the faculty of sensibility is not in play.
Imagination is not an experience. Empirical cognition is. Imagination is at the beginning of the thought process and is below our attention, while experience is the culmination of the thought process and is quite apparent to us. While we certainly think the object of imagination, in this case the pink unicorn, such is not an experience, because it is not an empirical cognition given from an object of sense.
A pink unicorn is an idea, yes, Imagining a pink unicorn is not an idea, it is a rational activity of the thinking subject. So called because imagination is supposed to synthesize appearance with intuition, but with e.g., pink unicorns, nothing appears, which means imagination is creating a phenomenon from intuition alone without synthesizing anything, but rather, is merely combining like content. This is why we can imagine weird stuff, because understanding can find no contradictions in an object comprised of just one kind of content.
And as I said before, they're both related to the subject. If you argue the thing in itself somehow sticks around with no subject, yet the noumenon disappears with the subject gone, then the noumenon is either subject-dependent and thus phenomenal, or there's no difference between it and the thing in itself, which (at least as a concept) disappears with no subject as well. I see no difference, and the point was to differentiate the two.
Per symmetry, a measurement is simply an interaction between two quantum systems (with no implication of consciousness or subjectivity in either system).
Anyway, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg et alia thought that quantum mechanics posed a problem of subjectivity to science.
They didn't. Heisenberg, for example, said:
Werner Heisenberg - Physics and Philosophy:Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the "possible" to the "actual," is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory.
Bernard d'Espagnat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_d%27Espagnat) devoted an article to the importance of Kant to understand quantum mechanics.
I'm not familiar with his writings. Can you, or anyone else, explain why Kant should be considered important for understanding QM or science generally?
Not at all. I've repeatedly acknowledged that noumena can be understood as things-in-themselves. Only that the converse does not hold in all cases. There is an asymmetry.
Clear enough. I just cannot for the life of me understand the justification for this. They can be understood as things in themselves, but they're NOT things in themselves? What's added or subtracted? You claim it's in relation to the subject, but I have said repeatedly you can make the exact same argument by substituting "thing-in-itself" for "noumenon" in that case, and it still works.
But even if your point is granted, and there is a difference -- it doesn't seem to illuminate Kant's argument in any way, it doesn't give us insight into human understanding, sensation, perception, our scope or limits...who cares? Earlier you said it's important to insist about this "subtle" distinction. Why?
Things-in-themselves (thus outside our spatial-temporal modes of experience)
This is a classic misunderstanding of thing-in-itself. “In-itself” is a knowledge claim, not a claim of condition. We label objects as thing-in-themselves only to tell us we have no way to prove that what we know about objects is what they actually are. Things, without respect to whatever they are in themselves, absolutely must conform to our necessary conditions of space and time, otherwise, we would never be affected by them. Therefore, “things-in-themselves (thus outside our spatial-temporal mode of experience)”, is a false conditional. Things and things-in-themselves are equal as objects, just not as knowledgeable objects. Things as they are in themselves are still spatial-temporal things.
Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things. Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived. That which is merely perceived is unknown to us. Things-in-themselves are unknown to us.
— Mww
Your argument is wrong.
All of mine you quoted above is assembled from my quote below:
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
(B45)
Simple substitution, object in itself for thing in itself. It is done by the author repeatedly. Please show how my argument is wrong.
That is: the limitation set by the understanding on sensibility does not apply to things-in-themselves. Noumena are 'appearence-relative', and only appearence-relative. Things-in-themselves are not.
The quote does not demonstrate this at all. In fact it does not MENTION noumena, it mentions things in themselves as apart from our (limited) understanding. Of COURSE the things-in-themselves are appearance-relative. How could it be otherwise?
Further down: "If we want to call this object a noumenon because the representation of it is nothing sensible, we are free to do so. But since we cannot apply any of our concepts of the understanding to it, this representation still remains empty for us, and serves for nothing but to designate the boundaries of our sensible cognition" (B346, my emphasis)
Again, substitute "thing-in-itself" in this and see if it works. I think it does, without any contradiction whatsoever.
Yes, what effects us from outside corresponds exactly to what we sense. That which effects our eyes exactly corresponds to what we see; that which effects our ears corresponds exactly to what we hear, etc. We have to have consistency between incoming data and what the cognitive system works with.
Then the stimuli would be the thing in itself, not representation.
All kinds of things are outside us, but they are not representations, they are real, physical objects of experience,
Saying they're real physical objects and representation is the same thing. Of course they're representations. If not, you're arguing some kind of correspondence theory of truth. Again, that's not Kant.
Yes, we perceive objects. We don't perceive objects in themselves.
— Xtrix
I just quoted Kant as saying that’s exactly what we do.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
I'm utterly baffled. I say we don't perceive objects in themselves (which is obvious), then you disagree and quote Kant and the first thing he says is "objects are quite unknown to us in themselves" and "mere representations of our sensibility," which is exactly what I said. What's the deal here?
I can think swimming the English Channel, and it is experienceable, but the perception, the sensation and indeed the very phenomenon, are entirely absent.
Fair enough. Like I said earlier, I do consider thought to be phenomenal. It is true that Kant isn't the exemplar of clarity on this.
Imagination is not an experience. Empirical cognition is.
I just don't see this as true at all. Imagination is, of course, an experience. Reducing experience to "empirical" experience is pretty limiting, and not very clear. But I see now how you define the terms, and the source of misunderstanding in this conversation. So be it.
Yeah, I think we're getting into the weeds. The last thing I wanted to do was defend Kant in some way or other. I don't really care! The initial response was about my saying the subject/object variation I was thinking of was Kant's. But at this point, I'll concede it's not Kant's -- it's my interpretation of Kant. And could be completely wrong.
"The concept of a noumenon, (...) as a thing in itself" (B310)
Your (...) leaves out the most important part, that act having its own special name.
“.....giving the name of noumena to things, not considered as phenomena, but as things in themselves...” (B310, 1985)
“....the concept of noumena, not to be thought as objects of the senses, but as a thing-in-itself...” (B310, 1929)
Your comment says what a noumenon is like, the author says how it should be treated. The two iterations are very far from being consistent with each other,
Things, without respect to whatever they are in themselves, absolutely must conform to our necessary conditions of space and time, otherwise, we would never be affected by them.
Things and things-in-themselves are equal as objects, just not as knowledgeable objects. Things as they are in themselves are still spatial-temporal things.
This doesn't make any sense I'm afraid. The thing-in-itself is exactly what Kant, repeatedly, says is what cannot be known. Why? Because we're bound by space and time. You seem to keep wanting to bring the thing-in-itself back into the spatial-temporal world somehow.
This is the closest anyone has come to providing an answer: Quoting Mww
It is quite clear Kant thought science to be the direction metaphysics should follow, which is pure reason applied to something, not that pure reason should be the direction science should follow.
I've not read anything in this thread since that comment which convinces me that Kant has anything to do with Science generally. But there has been alot of entertaining chest thumping and ass covering.
Taking Kant's advice (per @Mww, above), let Metaphysics be informed by modern Psychology regarding the subject/object distinction/complementarity.
Yes, what effects us from outside corresponds exactly to what we sense. That which effects our eyes exactly corresponds to what we see; that which effects our ears corresponds exactly to what we hear, etc. We have to have consistency between incoming data and what the cognitive system works with.
— Mww
Then the stimuli would be the thing in itself, not representation.
Correct. We can shorten thing-in-itself to just object or thing, without changing anything but the words.
—————-
All kinds of things are outside us, but they are not representations, they are real, physical objects of experience,
— Mww
Saying they're real physical objects and representation is the same thing. Of course they're representations.
No. Things outside us are real physical objects that become represented in and by the system. They cannot be representations antecedent to the system that causes them.
Now, if you wish to call representations and objects the same thing, you certainly can. But can you say how the representations are determined, if they reside outside the mind, as objects reside outside the body? If you use the Kantian system, you end up with representations of representations, which is catastrophic to the system itself.
—————
I say we don't perceive objects in themselves (which is obvious), then you disagree and quote Kant and the first thing he says is "objects are quite unknown to us in themselves"
That was supposed to show perception of objects in themselves is actually true where you say it is false, and it is actually the case that knowledge of objects in themselves that is false.
Object are quite unknown to us in themselves says exactly the same as objects in themselves are quite unknown to us.
— Mww
Sure. So you agree?
Of course; I wrote it. You’re talking about perception of, I’m talking about knowledge of. You’re saying it’s obvious objects-in-themselves are not perceived when they actually are. Perception, and the faculty of sensibility cannot tell the difference between a thing and a thing in itself. There is no difference in the data received from a thing and the data received from that very same thing in itself. Which is probably why we just call it an object. Reconciles the whole mess.
——————
Reducing experience to "empirical" experience is pretty limiting, and not very clear.
The theory is touted by its author as being “...complete and self-contained, with nothing not of account...”. Best way to do that is keep everything in a place exactly created for it, so nothing overlaps and gets in the way. Commonly called self-contradiction. Experience is called one thing, in order to prevent it from being something the conditions for that one thing, simply won’t allow. So, yes, it is limited, intentionally.
—————
The initial response was about my saying the subject/object variation I was thinking of was Kant's.
It is. Or, it can be. Kant goes to great length to give a dissertation on logic and how logic is the form of all a priori cognitions of pure reason. And of course, all logical propositions are constructed on the subject/object dualism. We got side-tracked by the present discussion on different topics that don’t require a subject/object dualism for understanding them, but they would come into play when discussing what the subject himself is actually doing when he thinks, without getting as far as knowledge and experience, which is what phenomena/noumena and things in themselves are all about.
I’ll love weeds. Metaphysical weeds, not common garden variety weeds.
"Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances". (A288)
Let's take it one step at a time:
Your first quotation says nothing of distinction noumenon- thing in itself. Only says that intellect is not appliable out of world of senses (phenomena-appearances).
"Noumena are 'appearence-relative', and only appearence-relative" is an invention of yours. Noumena is not even mentioned.
"If we want to call this object a noumenon because the representation of it is nothing sensible, we are free to do so. But since we cannot apply any of our concepts of the understanding to it, this representation still remains empty for us, and serves for nothing but to designate the boundaries of our sensible cognition"
According with your first quote, Kant says that intellect cannot understand the world from beyond phenomena. Therefore the attempts to give a content to this world (noumena) are empty. Nothing can be said of things in themselves other than they might exist.
Once again nothing is said of the difference between noumena and thing in itself.
Your comment has no sense: "limitations of understanding" es exactly what impede it to go beyond phenomena. What should not extend beyond sensitivity is not limits, but understanding. "Does not" is singular: it refers to understanding; not "the limits", plural. I'm sorry, but you misread that.
but that nevertheless seems to us to be a way in which the object exists in itself (noumenon),
Whether it is a mistake or not, what this sentence does is to equate the thing that exists in itself with the noumenon The error does not consist in this equality (expressed with the use of a parenthesis, which the parenthesis gives for a fact), but in the idea that the object of understanding, the thing in itself or noumenon can be considered without taking into account the kind of intuition that makes it accessible or not.
Summarizing: Your quotes have nothing to do with matching noumena-thing in itself. Only one mentions both like they are the same. Besides, they contain some reading mistakes.
StreetlightJanuary 08, 2020 at 15:15#3697560 likes
I need to sleep but since both of you mentioned this:
The quote does not demonstrate this at all. In fact it does not MENTION noumena, it mentions things in themselves as apart from our (limited) understanding.
Your first quotation says nothing of distinction noumenon
A quick response - anyone familiar with the subject would know immediately that the limitation set by the understanding is the noumenon, as is made clear by the preceding passage:
"The concept of the noumenon is, therefore, not the concept of an object, but is a problem unavoidably bound up with the limitation of our sensibility ... Understanding accordingly limits sensibility" (my bolding). This is obvious for anyone who understands that understanding = intelligibility = that to which the noumenal belongs = non-sensible intuition. As I already spelt out previously. Hence the 'accordingly' which refers to nothing else but the noumenon.
Your comment has no sense: "limitations of understanding"
This is easy enough to deal with too: the 'of' in 'limitations of understanding' is an objective, not subjective genitive: as in, the limitations set by understanding for the sensibility, i.e. noumena. Not 'limitations on the understanding'. You made the grammatical mistake, not me.
(with no implication of consciousness or subjectivity in either system)
I said that the problem of subjectivity in measurements was raised, not that everyone had the same answer. And subjectivity does not only mean consciousness, but also relativity with respect to measurement, something that nobody or almost nobody denies in quantum mechanics: the collapse of the wave function.
Heisenberg deals with the subject especially in chapters 8 and 10 of the book you quote. His conclusion is not as emphatic as you seem to indicate with your quotation. Here is another one (the translation is mine):
"But atoms or elementary particles themselves are not
so real; they constitute a world of potentialities or
possibilities rather than one of things or facts". (Final lines of chapter 10).
Things and things-in-themselves are equal as objects, just not as knowledgeable objects. Things as they are in themselves are still spatial-temporal things.
— Mww
This doesn't make any sense I'm afraid. The thing-in-itself is exactly what Kant, repeatedly, says is what cannot be known.
You continue to confuse, or equate, the knowledge of a thing with the existence of it. A thing to be known must exist, but a thing that exists may not be known. Things existing before knowing beings, are the very same things existing and known by humans. Merely adding thinking subjects to the total of reality makes no difference to the thing. The thing doesn’t give a hoot about humans, it will remain always just itself.
————
We label objects as thing-in-themselves only to tell us we have no way to prove that what we know about objects is what they actually are.
— Mww
"Actually are" apart from our way of knowing them, which is spatial-temporal. There's nothing left over, hence why we cannot say anything about it.
The subtlety is.....our knowledge of a thing may be exactly what it is in itself. But without proof, which we don’t have and can’t get, because we have nothing with which to compare, we can’t know with apodeictic certainty. And we don’t have and can’t get proof because we don't know things, in themselves or otherwise, because we only know representations of things. It follows that our representations may perfectly exemplify things as they actually are in themselves, but once again, we can’t prove it.
All human empirical knowledge is grounded in the principle of induction. The more we know about a thing, the more conceptions we can logically understand as belonging to it, the closer we are to total knowledge of it, knowing exactly what that thing is. We cannot possibly have complete knowledge of some things (the quantum, the cosmological, because we have no idea what conceptions might even apply), which makes explicit the difference between what we do know and what there is to know, is exactly the same difference between the thing known and the thing in itself unknown.
FYI, and of no particular import, Kant demonstrated the refutation of Newtonian absolute space and time (1786), advanced the first iteration of the nebula theory of star-generation (1755), the first iteration of plate tectonics (1756), the first to use “quantum” in its current meaning as “minimally discrete”. The absolute space thesis was metaphysical, having no mathematical proofs so not really science, the nebula essay inspired LaPlace and is still the core principle, the plate tectonics was way off-base, the point being he was the first to think what would eventually become current science.
These semantic games are tiresome. The thing in itself is beyond our knowledge, as I said before. The rest is irrelevant to me.
I’m unconvinced by your arguments- my reading is clearer, and every quote given so far either clearly agrees or can very easily be interpreted as much. Yours makes sense after much a linguistic gymnastic. Regardless, I’m sure you’ll simply claim the opposite- so be it. There’s no sense prolonging this discussion. I appreciate the effort.
Of COURSE the things-in-themselves are appearance-relative. How could it be otherwise?
Both noumena and things in themselves insofar as they are both considered as being thoughts are obviously "appearance relative". But in terms of what they refer to, noumena (or better the noumenal) is thought as being appearance relative (insofar as it is the "limit" of appearance) whereas things in themselves are thought as being utterly independent of all appearance (and human thought, understanding and knowledge). This is not a distinction without a difference, but a fundamental ontological distinction.
But in terms of what they refer to, noumena (or better the noumenal) is thought as being appearance relative (insofar as it is the "limit" of appearance) whereas things in themselves are thought as being utterly independent of all appearance (and human thought, understanding and knowledge).
"limit of appearance" is meaningless at this point. It can be repeated again and again, sure, but until it's explained it's just nonsense. I'm tired of pointing this out. Might as well say the noumenon is the limit in the Twilight Zone between appearance and thing-in-itself. Whatever the case may be, if there is a distinction it's so trivial it's a wonder we've spent so much time on it. According to Wikipedia there is debate about what it is in serious scholarship, so I suppose it doesn't make one dim to struggle with it. But I fail to see it. Simply declaring "it's the limit" or "the boundary" isn't saying anything at all. Nor has there been any definitive, clear textual evidence presented of anything remotely like this being said.
So far you just said:
Thing in itself = independent of appearance.
Noumenon = relative to appearance.
So both are at least contrasted with appearances in some way. Regardless, neither can be known, neither have properties of any kind, etc., but yet they're different. In what other way are they different than what's stated above? Can you give me anything else whatsoever?
You remove the subject, you remove both. Or you can say if you remove the subject, both still exist. But to say removing the subject and one stays around due to it's independence, but the other disappears because it's defined as the limit is just unnecessary. Just call the damn thing the limit of understanding in that case. Calling it a different word is an extra step.
This is the closest anyone has come to providing an answer:
It is quite clear Kant thought science to be the direction metaphysics should follow, which is pure reason applied to something, not that pure reason should be the direction science should follow.
— Mww
I've not read anything in this thread since that comment which convinces me that Kant has anything to do with Science generally.
In terms of Kant's philosophy, that's my conclusion as well (his specifically scientific contributions notwithstanding as Mww mentions).
And subjectivity does not only mean consciousness, but also relativity with respect to measurement, something that nobody or almost nobody denies in quantum mechanics: the collapse of the wave function.
OK, but per consciousness, almost everybody in quantum mechanics denies that consciousness causes collapse.
Here are the definitions of subject and object that seem to best fit the OP's meaning:
A subject is a being who has a unique consciousness and/or unique personal experiences, or an entity that has a relationship with another entity that exists outside itself (called an "object").
A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. This concept is especially important in Continental philosophy, where 'the subject' is a central term in debates over the nature of the self.[1] The nature of the subject is also central in debates over the nature of subjective experience within the Anglo-American tradition of analytical philosophy.
The sharp distinction between subject and object corresponds to the distinction, in the philosophy of René Descartes, between thought and extension. Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter.[2]
I've been arguing in this thread that relativity with respect to measurement is the natural framework here (I earlier mentioned Einstein's special theory of relativity). But that rejects subject/object dualism per the above definitions.
Deleted UserJanuary 09, 2020 at 02:14#3699520 likes
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StreetlightJanuary 09, 2020 at 02:33#3699540 likes
In lieu of agreeing on this whole noumenon/TIT stuff, it's perhaps worth drawing attention to one thing that often gets lost in modern appropriations of Kant's vocabulary: for Kant, the very form of the 'object' (the 'object-form') is itself supplied or imputed by the subject (or the faculty of understanding more specifically) onto the world (the-thing-in-itself). That is, the-thing-itself is so inaccessable to knowledge that we can't even say of it that it is an object, or that it has the form of an object. The world is not composed of objects! Instead, objects are strictly 'epistemological' posits, the form under which the world is grasped, which is itself provided by the transcendental subject. Another way to put this is that the object-form is ideal, and is nothing but a correlate of the subject.
I've always found this to be a far more interesting take on the subject/object dichotomy than the usual reading which substantializes the object (or ontologizes it) as something 'out there' and for which it is the role of the 'subject' to grasp or engage with.
Yeah.....just think of how many meanings can be changed merely by gutting a quotation.
Kant is not always clear, but this paragraph (B310) is.
In the first sentence he defines what he means by a problematic concept.
A concept is problematic when it is not contradictory, but pretends to refer to a reality that is not cognizable.
In the second sentence defines noumenon: the concept of a thing in itself that is not contradictory but escapes the unique intuition possible: sensible intuition. That is to say, noumena are problematic. [You may think here there is a difference: noumena are the concepts and things in themselves are its reference. In reality Kant uses the name noumenon in both senses. In the twelfth line he speaks of "phenomena" as objects outside of the appearances, that is the same way he speaks of things in themselves.]
In the subsequent lines to the end he reinforces the idea of emptiness of noumena (according to the Kantian principle that concepts without intuitions are empty) and concludes that, even being empty, they have a double utility. They show that they cannot been get by sensibility [against English empiricism -Hume] and so they mark the limits of intellect that cannot be overstepped.
I think the seeming contradiction you have marked is due to the two different uses of the word "noumenon" that Kant envisages here. Problematicity summarizes it and its utility.
Anyway, Kant only say in these sentences that noumena cannot be explained by sensibility because they point to an impossible-pure knowledge of metaphysical entities.
Noumenon is just the opposite of appearance in the sense that appearance is the phenomenon. We can see houses (phenomenon). We cannot see God (noumenon). In this case appearance is known by sight. If "relative" means the opposite, well, but it is a strange way to say it.
The concept of limit is not trivial. It is the battlefield of any philosophy: What can I know?
OK, but per consciousness, almost everybody in quantum mechanics denies that consciousness causes collapse.
Yes. But in quantum mechanics (not philosophy) the subjective means the problem of measurement, that is to say, the fact that some objects cannot be known -or even exist- independently of the fact to be measured. May be "intersubjective" would be more accurate, but usually they are called "subjective". In any case not "objective".
eft is the question of Kant and modern science. For the purposes of modern science, Kant is usually ignored. But there's also an inclination to dismiss his thinking, and imo that's an error. What his thinking is about, is things that are perceived, or that reason gives us.
Welcome, Tim.
I agree. The fathers of 20th' Scientific Revolution were obsessed with Mach, Hume or Plato and let in oblivion Kant (with d'Espagnat exception, but he was not a father, just an older brother). Maybe Kant was too attached to Newtonian science that they were trying to overcome. But if this was the case, they got muddled with Kantian details and overlooked Kantian principles.
What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking.
I'm not familiar with his writings. Can you, or anyone else, explain why Kant should be considered important for understanding QM or science generally?
But in quantum mechanics (not philosophy) the subjective means the problem of measurement, that is to say, the fact that some objects cannot be known -or even exist- independently of the fact to be measured. May be "intersubjective" would be more accurate, but usually they are called "subjective". In any case not "objective".
Agree. Really glad to see someone here who appreciates this. Are you familiar with philosopher of science Michel Bitbol? He has some very interesting things to say about this.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
(B45)
Simple substitution, object in itself for thing in itself. It is done by the author repeatedly. Please show how my argument is wrong.
In this paragraph Kant is criticizing the "ordinary" representation of things in themselves, purely empirical. His criticism begins from "But if we consider..." The idea is that the in thing itself cannot be reached through the generalization of the senses.
Reply to David Mo I was halfway through making that post and posted it accidentally, I’ll come back to it later.
I like sushiJanuary 09, 2020 at 07:37#3700150 likes
@Xtrix Just started listening to the latest podcast on Sean Carroll’s ‘Mindscape’ with Dennett.
From the poscast:
Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term. (Substitute “exploring” for “explaining” and you’d have a good mission statement for the Mindscape podcast.) Few modern thinkers have pursued this goal more energetically, creatively, and entertainingly than Daniel Dennett. One of the most respected philosophers of our time, Dennett’s work has ranged over topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, metaphysics, free will, evolutionary biology, epistemology, and naturalism, always with an eye on our best scientific understanding of the phenomenon in question. His thinking in these areas is exceptionally lucid, and he has the rare ability to express his ideas in ways that non-specialists can find accessible and compelling. We talked about all of them, in a wide-ranging and wonderfully enjoyable conversation.
Sounds like it would interest you. I’m just 15mins in up to now.
In that chapter on noumenon Kant once refers* to categories as noumena. Categories are the only legitimate noumena? Categories as problematic or possible "objects" are legitimate because they exist only with regard to empirical knowledge that they are conditioning. Here noumenon is not a positive concept or object with its own kind of "seeing" but a negative concept where is only abstracted from the conditions of sensible experience. Negative concept of noumenon doesn't entirely reject the sensible intuition as the legitimizing basis. (Positive and negative noumenon is Kant's own distinction.)
* Kant actually refers to "pure understanding" here
Reply to I like sushi the problem with Dennett is that he believes humans are moist robots. Nice guy, and all, but not on account of anything he believes.
I like sushiJanuary 09, 2020 at 08:18#3700200 likes
Reply to Wayfarer Thanks for the pointless personal comment. Here’s my reciprocal contribution to the category of ‘personal pointless comment’ ;)
Reply to I like sushi You're welcome, but as you know, the exchange consisted wholly of pointless impersonal neuronal reactions. ;-) (So, scientifically pointless, not just socially gauche.)
One meaning of noumenal is ‘object of pure thought’ or actually of nous.
— Wayfarer
Etymologically, yes. But that compromises us with Greek philosophy, which is what Kant wants to criticize.
I suspect it is rather because he wanted to distance himself from scholasticism, as all the early moderns were obliged to do.
But if you unpack the notion of 'noumenal', it means 'an object of mind'. And what Aristotle meant by that, as I understand it, is close to what the Platonic tradition calls an 'intelligible object'. What intelligible objects are, are concepts, as distinct from mental images and sensations. An example is given in Descartes' sixth meditation, that being the chiliagon, a thousand-sided polygon. 'Descartes says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, the philosopher does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination.' And even though it might be impossible to validate whether the chiliagon is genuine by mere sensory inspection, because one has grasped the concept, one could validate the model by the painstaking task of counting the sides. But one can only do this because one understands the concept.
You see, nowadays, the whole nature of 'concepts' has become rather indefinite and vague, whereas for the rationalist tradition, it was really rather rigorous. But as we nowadays operate within a consensus view which sees the intelligent subject representing images of the external reality in ideas, then the rationalist understanding is no longer intelligible at all (which is ironic, considering.)
In any case, the point for this discussion is that intelligible objects possess a reality which actual objects rarely do, in that they're perfect and imperishable - after all, a chiliagon will be thus in all possible worlds. But nowadays, with our inclination to validate everything empirically, we want to know if it's something that exists 'out there somewhere' - and, if not, then of course we're inclined to doubt its reality. It is, we say, something that only exists in the mind.
And this is a point which I don't think Kant fully appreciated, although I would be more than happy to be shown to be wrong.
StreetlightJanuary 09, 2020 at 09:04#3700330 likes
Well the noumenal belongs to the (faculty of the) understanding, which is the faculty that deals with the intelligible, so the choice of word makes rather perfect sense.
"It is implied in this distinction [between noumena and phenomena] ... possible things, which are not objects of our senses but are thought as objects merely through the understanding, in opposition to the former, and that in so doing we entitle them intelligible entities (noumena)." (B306).
"The Transcendental Aesthetic, already of itself establishes the objective reality of noumena and justifies the division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and so of the world into a world of the senses and a world of the understanding (mundus sensibilis et intelligibilis)" (A249)
And of course, the understanding is what furnishes us with the concepts necessary for the cognition of objects. Kant is very much drawing on a modified classical vocabulary and grammar in his use of these terms.
Kant is very much drawing on a modified classical vocabulary and grammar in his use of these terms.
Agree. That is a subject I would like to read more about. As I said in an earlier post, it seems to have many points of convergence with hylomorphism, but this is not something that I've often seen commented on.
StreetlightJanuary 09, 2020 at 09:26#3700360 likes
Reply to StreetlightXMarvellous. One for the wishlist. Worth reflecting on the opening quote:
[quote=Immanuel Kant]Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason. [/quote]
I like sushiJanuary 09, 2020 at 12:15#3700460 likes
Reply to Wayfarer Read Kant in full. Guides are generally opinions of Kant - and there are MANY differing opinions.
In lieu of agreeing on this whole noumenon/TIT stuff, it's perhaps worth drawing attention to one thing that often gets lost in modern appropriations of Kant's vocabulary: for Kant, the very form of the 'object' (the 'object-form') is itself supplied or imputed by the subject (or the faculty of understanding more specifically) onto the world (the-thing-in-itself). That is, the-thing-itself is so inaccessable to knowledge that we can't even say of it that it is an object, or that it has the form of an object. The world is not composed of objects! Instead, objects are strictly 'epistemological' posits, the form under which the world is grasped, which is itself provided by the transcendental subject. Another way to put this is that the object-form is ideal, and is nothing but a correlate of the subject.
I've always found this to be a far more interesting take on the subject/object dichotomy than the usual reading which substantializes the object (or ontologizes it) as something 'out there' and for which it is the role of the 'subject' to grasp or engage with.
Anyway, Kant only say in these sentences that noumena cannot be explained by sensibility because they point to an impossible-pure knowledge of metaphysical entities.
Understood, and all well and good. Some groundwork, if I may:
Thought. A thought. Full stop. No ways and means, no object, no terminology. Just a split-second instance of what a human does as a private rational agency. A form of something as yet without content. Then, consider its spontaneity. The proverbial, “it just popped into my head” kinda thing. Granting this actual occasion is sufficient reason for Kant to speculate this, as the second theoretical tenet:
“....Our knowledge springs from two main sources, the first (receptivity for impressions); the second is the (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is thought....”
And because of that tenet, these consequences are justified as following from it:
“....we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, understanding.....”
“.....Conceptions, then, are based on the spontaneity of thought...”
Thus is given that concepts are representations, and as such, arise spontaneously from the faculty of understanding, which makes explicit understanding is the faculty of thought itself. In other words, it is meant to justify that understanding thinks. From that, and with various support found within the theory, thought is cognition by means of conceptions.
———————-
Now, that being what the understanding is, it remains to be said what the understanding does.
“.....But the conjunction of a manifold in intuition never can be given us by the senses, for it is a spontaneous act of the faculty of representation. And as we must, to distinguish it from sensibility, entitle this faculty understanding; so all conjunction (...) is an act of the understanding. To this act we shall give the general appellation of synthesis, thereby to indicate, at the same time, that we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves....”
Thus is given that understanding is the faculty that thinks, and in empirical thought, thinks a synthesis of conjoining representations of its own spontaneous creation to the representations of a manifold in intuition. Or, conceptions to intuitions, hence the adage, “...Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind....”
Sidebar: This......we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves......is the oft-abused, but fundamentally critical “Copernican Revolution”.
———————
The onset of the noumenal problem arises here:
“....understanding which is occupied merely with empirical exercise, and does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may exercise its functions very well and very successfully, but 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....”
The entire foray into noumena is justified by this one thing:
one may see a piece of toast, but one may also see a piece of toast with a face in it.
All this is, is the faculty of understanding turning itself into the faculty of imagination, insofar as there is created a phenomenon from that which no such phenomenon should be contained.
And the problem is caused by the understanding itself:
“......The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects....” (B306)
Without the direct references, it shall be given that the conceptions understanding thinks as belonging to a mere notion of an object in itself already established as a phenomenon from the faculty of sensibility, it calls a noumenon, thus nothing but an intelligible concoction dreamed up by understanding simply because it has voluntarily exceeded its empirical mandate in the employment of its spontaneity.
In effect, understanding represents to itself, on its own accord, the notion of a thing, terms it noumenon, but stops right there, without also thinking schema that would then be synthesized to it in order for such notion to have reality.
Understanding here thinking to or within itself, not with respect to sensibility thus without empirical content, therefore it is the pure understanding. The only conceptions belonging to pure understanding are the categories. The categories can only apply in empirical thought having to do with objects of sensibility, and the notion of an object in itself understanding thinks for itself, is no such thing. The only concepts with which pure understanding has to synthesize......which is its job after all.....are the categories, but synthesis of pure conceptions with mere notions cannot give a cognition. Therefore, noumena are nothing but logically possible, pure thoughts of the understanding, and most certainly not a thing in itself.
It now should be clear that.....
“.....giving the name of noumena to things, not considered as phenomena, but as things in themselves, hence is compelled to cogitate them merely as an unknown something....” (B310, 1985)
“....the concept of noumena, not to be thought as objects of the senses, but as a thing-in-itself, solely through a pure understanding....” (B310, 1929)
.......is simply an elaboration of B306, in which the original thought of the pure understanding as “object in itself”, is thoroughly interchangeable with the thing in itself of B310, and only is meant to advocate noumena have no possibility of ever being a cognized empirically just as the actual, real physical ding an sich outside us has no possibility, and not that they should ever be thought as being the same thing. The difference in consideration as to why they cannot, lays in the consequences of noumena being the off-shoot of a mere notion, but the ding an sich stands as an unknowable, albeit a real, physical object. The former is objectively valid as a thought, the latter is objectively real as an object.
——————
In the case where it is said noumena are the limit on appearance, or sensibility, derives from the following:
Phenomena are the result of the synthesis of appearance to intuition by the imagination. Understanding synthesizes phenomena with conception. Pure understanding attempts to synthesize a notion of an object in itself already given as phenomenon, which already has an appearance as its predicate. The notion of an object in itself deletes phenomenon proper......
(When the face in the toast is the focus of attention, the toast itself fades to background)
.......thus the appearance used in the synthesis of them, is likewise deleted. Keeping in mind understanding unites intuition with conception, it follows the deletion must be appearance, because if understanding thinks to delete intuition, it doesn’t work at all, a contradiction. The limit on sensibility is then, that upon the thought of noumena, the faculty of sensibility ceases to function as the source of empirical knowledge. It is the toast that is real, not the face.
The devil for some, and the nonsense for others, is in the details.
StreetlightJanuary 09, 2020 at 15:32#3700650 likes
In effect, understanding represents to itself, on its own accord, the notion of a thing, terms it noumenon, but stops right there, without also thinking schema that would then be synthesized to it in order for such notion to have reality.
This really ought to be the end of the conversation. The noumenal is of the order of the intelligible and thus belongs to the understanding. Anyone who similarly thinks that the thing-in-itself is also intelligible and is a posit of the understanding simply ought to give up reading Kant forever.
YES!!! I mean....the guy’s tough, sure. Sometimes confusing, absolutely. But it’s all in the book, if a guy wants to dig it out bad enough.
StreetlightJanuary 09, 2020 at 15:38#3700680 likes
The thing is that Kant isn't even that tough. His hardness to read is way overrated. Once you get the general idea of his project, everything he says falls into place really nicely. The vocabulary is a little foreign when you first come across it but that's it.
"The division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and of the world into a world of sense and a world of understanding, can therefore not be permitted at all, although concepts certainly permit of division into sensible and intellectual ones; for one cannot determine any object for the latter, and therefore also cannot pass them off as objectively valid. If one abandons the senses, how will one make comprehensible that our categories (which would be the only remaining concepts for noumena) still signify anything at all, since for their relation to any object something more than merely the unity of thinking must be given, namely a possible intuition, to which they can be applied?" (B311, A256)
Kant is actually referring here negatively to intellectual concepts or "pure understanding" (?). Categories as concepts for noumena would refer only to unity of thinking. - Little later Kant refers to noumenon not as an intelligible object but as a problematic understanding which contains this object.
Or: categories are originally noumena which are phenomenalized through schemes. This is a movement from rationalism to empiricism. However, there remains a strong rational or intellectual moment in Kant's system.
Obviously not an easy subject, so many distinctions to keep in mind. :)
Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things. Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived. That which is merely perceived is unknown to us. Things-in-themselves are unknown to us.
— Mww
Your argument is wrong. To think that an undetermined "something" has caused A is not the same as knowing the cause of A. Moreover, Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
(B45)
Simple substitution, object in itself for thing in itself. It is done by the author repeatedly. Please show how my argument is wrong.
— Mww
In this paragraph Kant is criticizing the "ordinary" representation of things in themselves, purely empirical. His criticism begins from "But if we consider..." The idea is that the in thing itself cannot be reached through the generalization of the senses.
——————
I still don’t see how my argument, that paragraph ending in things-in-themselves are unknown to us, is wrong. Your “But if we consider....” is in B63, which has to do with transcendental objects. B45 isn’t treating objects of perception as transcendental objects.
I understand “objects are quite unknown to us in themselves” (B45), but I don’t think that is meant to imply objects unknown to us in themselves, are not the objects of perception. If such should be the case, we must have two distinct and locally separate objects...the one we perceive, and the exact same singular entity left behind because it is unknown to us. That would be like.....if we don’t know what they are, we can’t see them, which is logically absurd. Or, which is just as silly.....we can’t see them because we don’t know what they are.
I would appreciate a reference for your “...Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR....”. I would agree we cannot perceive any transcendental object, and if the thing-in-itself is considered as one, we wouldn’t be able to perceive it with our representational system. But that does not say spacetime objects are only considered transcendentally.
I like sushiJanuary 09, 2020 at 18:23#3700880 likes
Reply to MwwReply to StreetlightX Not that hard, yet numerous professors have been at loggerheads about the true meaning of his work for decades.
What happens is students go to university and their professors tell them the ‘true meaning’ of Kant. Then they meet other students who’ve been told something different by a different professor OR their professor was astute enough to let them know that COPR has been a contentious text since its inception.
Yes. But in quantum mechanics (not philosophy) the subjective means the problem of measurement, that is to say, the fact that some objects cannot be known -or even exist- independently of the fact to be measured. May be "intersubjective" would be more accurate, but usually they are called "subjective". In any case not "objective".
An interpretation-neutral term that captures that is counterfactual definiteness (i.e., the ability to speak "meaningfully" of the definiteness of the results of measurements that have not been performed). Almost all quantum interpretations reject counterfactual definiteness (the notable exception being the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation).
See also below, which echoes Heisenberg's concern that I quoted earlier:
Because it asserts that a wave function becomes 'real' only when the system is observed, the term 'subjective' is sometimes proposed for the Copenhagen interpretation. This term is rejected by many Copenhagenists[24] because the process of observation is mechanical and does not depend on the individuality of the observer.
What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking.
So the issue is that there doesn't seem to be a use in physics (or philosophy of physics) for notions like "things in themselves" and "a priori conditions of knowledge".
To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?
That is, the-thing-itself is so inaccessable to knowledge that we can't even say of it that it is an object, or that it has the form of an object.
Exactly correct. So you're right, why bicker about whether noumenon means the same thing or something else -- it doesn't negate the above, which is all I'm really concerned with in this thread.
So to move this discussion into a slightly different direction: is anyone very familiar with Heidegger's take on the subject/object distinction? I myself have read a great deal and am not in the camp that he's a deliberately obfuscating charlatan, as many of my friends claim.
Nevertheless, if anyone has bothered I'd like their interpretation.
Thanks again - I wasn't familiar with his podcast, but I like the podcaster as an interviewer. I know Dan, we live in the same town, and although I don't particularly agree with him much he's a very kind man and deserving of his success.
is anyone very familiar with Heidegger's take on the subject/object distinction? I myself have read a great deal and am not in the camp that he's a deliberately obfuscating charlatan, as many of my friends claim.
Nevertheless, if anyone has bothered I'd like their interpretation.
I like Heidegger, especially the lectures that made him famous among students well before Being and Time. Have you read any of the early stuff or perhaps The Young Heidegger by Van Buren? Having looked at the early stuff, it's clear to me that Blattner's Heidegger's Temporal Idealism gets 'death' wrong. It's nothing so complicated. It's just the possibility of our own death, certain but indeterminate. Memento mori!
To answer your question, what I take from Heidegger is that the subject/object paradigm is artificial, which is to say founded on something primary that just 'worlds' or 'events.' I am the there itself, caught up in time or even as time that runs out, having started without my permission in the middle of situations and habits I did not choose. Theory's subject-object device is part of an epistemological project that neglects our primary, non-theoretical kind of existence --the same experience of sharing a world of tools and words that makes such a theory possible in the first place.
At the same time, the subject-object device is used well by the empiricists (including Kant).
[quote=Kant]
Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.
Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay,
All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.
The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
[/quote]
Kant just radicalizes Locke, and yet, as others have noted, he goes so far that we no longer have a plurality of things, for this imposes too much structure on whatever [s]causes[/s] sensation. Small wonder that Kant is so controversial; he's on the edge of absurdity.
There are basketballs out there, there are no basketballs in my head. Therefore it is absolutely impossible that the basketball I know, in whatever way, shape or form I know it, can be the basketball out there.
I think you know Kant better than me, so perhaps you can clear this up. Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there? Isn't our division of experience into a system of 'law'-obeying objects the work of our minds? As I understand it, what is 'really' out there (according to Kant) is utterly unknowable, and not even in space or time or the causal nexus. So we can't even say that our intuitions/sensations are 'caused' by it. My rough understanding of Kant (I'm willing to be schooled) is that ordinary reality is a kind of intersubjective representation of a represented that only exist theoretically as a '?.' Kant is fascinating for taking such an extreme position. Even space and time are just modes of representation. (!?)
[quote=Kant]
In the same way, if I consider all the representations of the senses, together with their form, space and time, to be nothing but appearances, and space and time to be a mere form of the sensibility, which is not to be met with in objects out of it, and if I make use of these representations in reference to possible experience only, there is nothing in my regarding them as appearances that can lead astray or cause illusion. For all that they can correctly cohere according to rules of truth in experience. Thus all the propositions of geometry hold good of space as well as of all the objects of the senses, consequently of all possible experience, whether I consider space as a mere form of the sensibility, or as something cleaving to the things themselves. In the former case however I comprehend how I can know a priori these propositions concerning all the objects of external intuition. Otherwise, everything else as regards all possible experience remains just as if I had not departed from the vulgar view.
...
My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from reducing the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of securing the application of one of the most important cognitions (that which mathematics propounds a priori) to actual objects, and of preventing its being regarded as mere illusion. For without this observation it would be quite impossible to make out whether the intuitions of space and time, which we borrow from no experience, and which yet lie in our representation a priori, are not mere phantasms of our brain, to which objects do not correspond, at least not adequately, and consequently, whether we have been able to show its unquestionable validity with regard to all the objects of the sensible world just because they are mere appearances.
[/quote]
A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? Does Kant not need to assume that we all intuit space the same way? And how can he see anyone's beetle in their box? The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? I still think Kant is great.
I like sushiJanuary 10, 2020 at 02:55#3701980 likes
Reply to Xtrix I’m mostly in that camp with your friends. He does well to make clear some of Husserl’s ideas, but overall he narrows the phenomenological interest to language alone.
He’s quite popular on this forum I believe so you’re going to get something more in line with your thinking from others.
In phenomenological terms the whole subject/object issue isn’t much of an issue at all.
I like Heidegger, especially the lectures that made him famous among students well before Being and Time. Have you read any of the early stuff or perhaps The Young Heidegger by Van Buren? Having looked at the early stuff, it's clear to me that Blattner's Heidegger's Temporal Idealism gets 'death' wrong. It's nothing so complicated. It's just the possibility of our own death, certain but indeterminate. Memento mori!
Yes I've read his lectures on Aristotle and Hegel. I didn't find Blattner's book all that convincing. I haven't heard of "The Young Heidegger."
Theory's subject-object device is part of an epistemological project that neglects our primary, non-theoretical kind of existence --the same experience of sharing a world of tools and words that makes such a theory possible in the first place.
Interesting. It does seem he's getting at that when speaking of "de-worlding." But yes, that the subject-object dichotomy is just a "founded" mode of seeing the world I get out of him as well. And I have to say that prior to reading Heidegger, I never had quite considered things in this way, despite reading Freud and Schopenhauer and all our contemporary talk of automaticity.
I’m mostly in that camp with your friends. He does well to make clear some of Husserl’s ideas, but overall he narrows the phenomenological interest to language alone.
Regarding the last part: you could argue, maybe, that later Heidegger narrows himself to language (and poetry), but earlier Heidegger certainly not. HIs interest then, and I'd argue even later, was ulitmiately being, not language. Hardly too narrow.
Yes I've read his lectures on Aristotle and Hegel. I didn't find Blattner's book all that convincing. I haven't heard of "The Young Heidegger."
Nice. I like The Concept of Time, first draft of B&T, if I had to pick just one. The big picture is squeezed into < 100 pages. I have the red & white little paperback translated by Farin and Skinner. Thankfully they don't capitalize 'being,' which used to put me off of Heidegger. It's more clearly an extension of Dilthey and Von Wartenberg (and about the historicity of human existence as opposed to more general questions about being --while including the classic analytic in abbreviated form.)
The problem with Blattner is maybe that he intentionally ignored the early stuff, as he says in the intro. You mentioned Dreyfus, whose Being-in-the-world is great. Maybe Dreyfus and others downplay the early stuff because it's inspired by Christian thinkers and also morbid-angsty. Anyway, what Dermot Moran writes in the essay linked to agrees with the much more detailed treatment in Van Buren.
https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Choosing%20a%20Hero%20Heidegger%20on%20Authentic%20Life%202010.pdf
[quote = link]
Although Heidegger is aware of Rudolf Otto’s analysis of religion as centred on the idea of the “holy” or the “numinous”, in fact, for Heidegger, the key to an understanding of religion in general and the Christian religion in particular is not so much the numinous as what he calls “the historical” (das Historsiche) (GA60: 323). The “core phenomeon” (Kernphänomen) (GA60: 31) or “founding sense-element” (GA60: 323) of religion is “the historical” (GA60: 31) : “Factical life 13 emerges out of a genesis and becomes in an entirely special way historical (enacted)” (GA60: 141). The religious way of being in the world is as a kind of historical consciousness. Unfortunately, in his 1920-21 Phenomenology of Religious Life course, Heidegger is not particularly forthcoming about what precisely he means by “the historical”. For Heidegger, history is not something that can simply be made an object of study. Rather, we are cast in history, we live it: “History hits us, and we are history itself” (Die Geschichte trifft uns, und wir sind sie selbst) (GA60: 173). Factical life and the experience of the historical add up to being the same thing; the manner human beings are concerned, worried or preoccupied by time and by the temporal aspects of their lives. In later lecture courses Heidegger will be more explicit about the manner that Dasein occupies history and is highly critical of inauthentic ways of understanding the process of history.
[/quote]
For context, I'm an atheist, but I like what Heidegger cooked up.
Interesting. It does seem he's getting at that when speaking of "de-worlding." But yes, that the subject-object dichotomy is just a "founded" mode of seeing the world I get out of him as well. And I have to say that prior to reading Heidegger, I never had quite considered things in this way, despite reading Freud and Schopenhauer and all our contemporary talk of automaticity.
I also never encountered the notion of 'deworlding' in the same way as in Heidegger. Maybe what really brings it home is the analytic of everyday dasein, the usually ignored network of equipment, Dreydegger's 'one', 'interpretedness,' etc. Inherited frameworks of interpretation, a past that leaps ahead!
And then there's the gap between 'science space' (geometric space) and 'lived' space --the familiar path down the stairs or around the block. And in The Concept of Time he imaginatively reconstructs the public time of the clock that we all take for granted. For me, grasping being-in-the-world and being-with-others and (what I call ) being-in-language as 'phenomena' just obliterated certain epistemological issues that I could once take more seriously.
So even if a person jettisons the death and authenticity stuff, the unveiling description of all the structure of the mundane that we usually ignore as too close to us is a game changer. Being-with-others is primary. Can't start with the beetle in the box.
StreetlightJanuary 10, 2020 at 05:31#3702250 likes
Yeah, one of the most enduring legacies of phenomenology is - or should be - it's usurpation of the subject/object dichotomy as a primary point of investigation. Heidegger was entirely right to inject time into any analysis of things, even though he tethered that injection to (a certain conception of) death in a way I find problematic.
In a way, the introduction of the distinction (b/t subject and object) into philosophy ought to be seen as a kind of abberation, a wrong turn taken that we've had to devote entire generations of philosophy in order to get over. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
StreetlightJanuary 10, 2020 at 05:34#3702260 likes
Exactly correct. So you're right, why bicker about whether noumenon means the same thing or something else -- it doesn't negate the above, which is all I'm really concerned with in this thread.
Because it makes a difference as to what kind of thing the transcendental subject is. Collapsing the noumenon into the thing-in-itself idealizes the thing-in-itself in a way that makes Kant... Fichte. It makes all the difference in the world.
When the face in the toast is the focus of attention, the toast itself fades to background)
I'm afraid I don't understand the example of the toast. This raises a question about your conception of the thing in itself (noumenon). The face on the toast is just a phenomenal illusion. Things in themselves refer to objects such as substance, God, cause, soul, etc. that have no appearance. This is what defines noumenon by opposition to phenomenon.
Obviously not an easy subject, so many distinctions to keep in mind.
It should be noted that Kant wrote in Old German. This leads to different translations. The one from Cambridge University Press (available online) seems particularly clear to me, but English is obviously not my mother tongue.
In a way, the introduction of the distinction (b/t subject and object) into philosophy ought to be seen as a kind of abberation, a wrong turn taken that we've had to devote entire generations of philosophy in order to get over. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
There is perhaps a reasonable version of it. Already in Democritus, we have a theory of the substratum of atoms and void and a (crude) theory of sensation/appearance. Feynman said that he would choose “atomic hypothesis” among all others if all scientific knowledge were to be lost in a cataclysm and he could only save one idea. Democritus had to consider that his sense organs weren't sensitive enough to see the atoms that were plausibly there due to more abstract considerations.
For me the problem with the subject-object distinction is about private language. Certain philosophers forget the social-historical nature of talking-thinking, that self-consciousness depends on the other, etc.
Heidegger was entirely right to inject time into any analysis of things, even though he tethered that injection to (a certain conception of) death in a way I find problematic.
I agree that the death theme is a distraction. It's as if Heidegger was trying to work his home-grown religion into an otherwise neutral analysis. A better approach to authenticity is perhaps in contrast to chatter or idle talk in the sense of pre-interpretedness that blocks access to a genuine grasp of a text, for instance. Gadamer's Truth and Method strikes me as sober and impressive application of Heidegger's insights on time.
Your mistake was here. Things in themselves are not perceived, only thought.Let us see the whole paragraph:
"The aim of this remark is only to prevent one from thinking of illus-
trating the asserted ideality of space with completely inadequate exam-
ples, since things like colors, taste, etc., are correctly considered not as
qualities of things but as mere alterations of our subject, which can even
be different in different people. For in this case that which is originally
itself only appearance, e.g., a rose, counts in an empirical sense as a
thing in itself, which yet can appear different to every eye in regard to
color. The transcendental concept of appearances in space, on the con-
trary, is a critical reminder that absolutely nothing that is intuited in
space is a thing in itself, and that space is not a form that is proper to
anything in itself, but rather that objects in themselves are not known
to us at all, and that what we call outer objects are nothing other than
mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose
true correlate, i.e., the thing in itself, is not and cannot be cognized
through them, but is also never asked after in experience". (B45)
Underlined is mine.
What calls you to confusion is probably the expression of what is in itself "in empirical" sense. Kant is not defending here his own doctrine, but he is exposing English empiricism that he will criticize in the following lines: Sens data are always subjective ("different" for each of us) and cannot give account of the very thing in itself. "What we call objects" (a pencil, a wolf) are only representations of sensibility (that is to say, phenomena). But thing in itself cannot be "cognized" so.
Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there?
In my opinion what makes Kant attractive is that he stands between subjective idealism and dogmatic realism. The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind.
The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it?
There is a part of Kant's theory of mathematics that is fully valid: mathematics are constructions that are imposed a priori and then justified by experience. There is another part that is outdated: mathematics is universal. Since the emergence of non-Euclidean mathematics and its use in modern science, this is unsustainable.
I would like the debate to shift to Heidegger. I tried to read Being and Time and found it too cumbersome, so I stopped. I only know about him through third parties too involved in controversies against or in favour of him.
In my opinion what makes Kant attractive is that he stands between subjective idealism and dogmatic realism. The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind.
I also like indirect realism, which is what I think you are getting at. But why not Locke? Locke should get more play. And then Hobbes is one of the great writers in English. The fact that he doesn't dwell very long on this or that detail is perhaps to his credit. He steams ahead to the social nature of the human being. He also anticipates Heidegger by emphasizing that human beings are future oriented, in terms of fear and hope, and that they want to understand in order to predict and control.
There is a part of Kant's theory of mathematics that is fully valid: mathematics are constructions that are imposed a priori and then justified by experience.
Have you considered that Kant (seems to) implicitly assume that all human subjects have some kind of core structure of cognition in common? Let's say that I am convinced by a mathematical proof, but that no one else finds the proof convincing. Where is mathematics then? It seems to me that as a matter of experience mathematics is relatively uncontroversial. We all agree that there are an infinity of primes. It seems we infer a shared hard-wired mathematical faculty from this consensus.
I would like the debate to shift to Heidegger. I tried to read Being and Time and found it too cumbersome, so I stopped. I only know about him through third parties too involved in controversies against or in favour of him.
Being and Time is cumbersome indeed. I recommend the first draft, which is less than 100 pages and written in a much friendlier style:
https://www.amazon.com/Concept-Time-Contemporary-European-Thinkers-dp-144110562X/dp/144110562X/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
That one will cost you.
Or you can read for free an even shorter lecture here that has (confusingly) the same name: https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pages-from-21501-the_concept_of_time.pdf
That shorter lecture is nice, but it is so short that it's more of an appetizer than the thing itself. As someone who hesitated about Heidegger for a long time and ended up thinking he was great, I insist that you just gotta read some more Heidegger. He was famous among those in the know for 10 years before B&T came out. B&T is to Heidegger like Nevermind is to Nirvana (made him famous for outsiders). And also over-produced.
Here's a free anthology of his earlier stuff. The style is plain Jane accessible. About half way through I start to recognize the exciting Heidegger.
The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind.
...something which I think is exactly correct. The whole point is, the advent of Galilean science combined with Cartesian dualism posited a complete separation of mind and matter (as is common knowledge). But along with this, there was also the posit that the observing mind was identified with the secondary qualities - in effect, subjectivized, understood to be something that only existed in an individual sense as your mind or mine. So the mind was in effect 'bracketed out' of consideration, and then with the advent of Darwinian biology, reduced to basically an evolutionary adaptation - according to the likes of Dennett, a by-product of the selfish gene.
But really Kant is the antidote to that, although I don't think many scientists understand that, because it takes a kind of critical self-awareness which is among the things that have been bracketed out. This ‘bracketing out’ actually culminates, not in a philosophy, so much, as a stance or a way of being or state of mind. (See Bas van Fraasen Science, Materialism and False Consciousness..)
link:Although Heidegger is aware of Rudolf Otto’s analysis of religion as centred on the idea of the “holy” or the “numinous”, in fact, for Heidegger, the key to an understanding of religion in general and the Christian religion in particular is not so much the numinous as what he calls “the historical” (das Historsiche) (GA60: 323).
'Historically, theater has been understood in terms of character and narrative, but really it's about the sets'.
To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?
transcendental realism...regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
CPR, A369
What you're not seeing is the way the mind - not just your mind, or my mind - constructs the entire stage within which perspective and judgements of the age of the Universe exist.
The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271)
No wonder that Heidegger is interested in Kant and regards him highly important if one reads the following (in the chapter on noumena and phenomena there is a passage where Kant "demonstrates" categories i.e their temporal-empirical and not metaphysical-noumenal usage) (this could be also an example of the kantian subject/object mediation):
"No one can define the concept of magnitude in general except by something like this: That it is the determination of a thing through which it can be thought how many units are posited in it. Only this how-many-times is grounded on successive repetition, thus on time and the synthesis (of the homogeneous) in it. Reality, in contrast to negation, can be defined only if one thinks of a time (as the sum total of all being) that is either filled by it or empty. If I leave out persistence (which is existence at all times), then nothing is left in my concept of substance except the logical representation of the subject, which I try to realize by representing to myself something that can occur solely as subject (without being a predicate of anything). But then it is not only the case that I do not even know of any conditions under which this logical preeminence can be attributed to any sort of thing; it is also the case that absolutely nothing further is to be made of it, and not even the least consequence is to be drawn from it, because by its means no object whatever of the use of this concept is determined, and one therefore does not even know whether the latter means anything at all ..." (A243, B301)
For Kant being is basically temporality. Being is mediated through the schematism of temporality. Being is real or actual in so far as it is something mediated through the schemes of temporality.
Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there?
Linguistic convention says there are basketballs out there; transcendental idealism says there are objects out there only called basketballs because the human represents the object to himself as such.
———————
.....ordinary reality is a kind of intersubjective representation....
Correct. Given that all humans incorporate the same rational system, all reality in general should be consistent among them. A basketball is such for me as it is such for you. Even if I have no experience of them, if you tell me about one, I should understand what you’re talking about and form a representation of it a priori for myself. This is for the most part because of the categories, which permits conception of an object in general without all the the necessary intuitions given from perception.
———————
A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way?
Kant:My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time.....
I can’t find this passage. To tell the truth, I don’t even recognize it, my keyword searches don’t lead me to it, and because I’m too lazy to peruse all my literature even after thumbing through some of it, would you please refer me to its source? I’m not sure what geometry is having to be saved from, unless you meant illusory appearance. That has an affirmative answer, but I’m going to withhold it because I don’t want to confuse the contexts.
—————-
The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy.
Synthetic propositions of geometry indeed require practice to prove their truth, consistent with their specific objects. Analytic propositions of logic, on the other hand, do as well, but require only objects in general be given to them.
The science of relativity is grounded in Galileo’s mind alone, isn’t it? Einstein may or may not have thought SR and GR on his own, even if there never was a Galileo, but he didn’t.
I like sushiJanuary 10, 2020 at 15:12#3703120 likes
A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? Does Kant not need to assume that we all intuit space the same way? And how can he see anyone's beetle in their box? The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? I still think Kant is great.
This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.
The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction. AND we only able to know deductive reasoning because of inductive reasoning.
From therein Kant proceeds to cut and slice away at these ideas arrives at the categories and the terminological application of ‘noumenon’ and ‘phenomenon’ to better represent these initial points (a priori and a posteriori).
Perhaps the most baffling step is getting past ‘a priori knowledge’ not being known - see introduction to deal with that point. He’s more than worth a read.
When the face in the toast is the focus of attention, the toast itself fades to background)
— Mww
I'm afraid I don't understand the example of the toast. This raises a question about your conception of the thing in itself (noumenon). The face on the toast is just a phenomenal illusion.
Agreed. The point being, the manner it which it became an illusion.
I categorical reject the symbolism implicating the thing-in-itself should equate to noumenon.
I find it telling that it is so difficult to fathom, that the discursive faculty of understanding is the sole originator of any kind of likeness between them, and then only because they are misunderstood. They are utterly and completely different in form and matter, they are differently logically and they are different conceptually. The only commonality shared between them is knowledge and the lack thereof.
—————
Things in themselves refer to objects such as substance, God, cause, soul, etc. that have no appearance.
Yes, things in themselves and all those “such as” are the same as far as the faculty of sensibility is concerned, because none of them appear to us, but they all can still be thought by us. That does not mean the thing in itself refers to them, or, that those “such as” are even objects, in the manner in which a thing in itself is an object.
Because it makes a difference as to what kind of thing the transcendental subject is. Collapsing the noumenon into the thing-in-itself idealizes the thing-in-itself in a way that makes Kant... Fichte. It makes all the difference in the world.
No, it doesn't. As I said above -- does it negate the conception you mentioned? No. And that's all I care about.
Try as I did I still don't see your interpretation as being coherent, or supported textually. But really whatever else one wants to say about noumena is irrelevant to me at this point.
So even if a person jettisons the death and authenticity stuff, the unveiling description of all the structure of the mundane that we usually ignore as too close to us is a game changer.
I've never placed too much importance on Heidegger's views on death. Authenticity is interesting. But you're right -- his phenomenological analysis of "average everydayness" has always beens striking to me. His Introduction to Metaphysics should be read by anyone serious about Heidegger, and would be my recommendation to you if you haven't already.
his phenomenological analysis of "average everydayness" has always beens striking to me. His Introduction to Metaphysics should be read by anyone serious about Heidegger, and would be my recommendation to you if you haven't already.
Great recommendation! I have read it, but I agree that it's great. And we seem to agree that the analysis of average everydayness has value independently of what one makes of the death theme & authenticity theme. I think we can also phrase this as the phenomenon of the world. So forgetfullness of being is forgetfulness of the worldliness of world, of the network of significance that we mostly glide on and through without noticing it. This would be forgetfulness or ignorance of 'tool being' or equipment as ready to hand but not 'present.'
can’t find this passage. To tell the truth, I don’t even recognize it, my keyword searches don’t lead me to it, and because I’m too lazy to peruse all my literature even after thumbing through some of it, would you please refer me to its source?
Correct. Given that all humans incorporate the same rational system, all reality in general should be consistent among them. A basketball is such for me as it is such for you. Even if I have no experience of them, if you tell me about one, I should understand what you’re talking about and form a representation of it a priori for myself. This is for the most part because of the categories, which permits conception of an object in general without all the the necessary intuitions given from perception.
Thank you. This matches what I grasped from my own reading. This idea of the same rational system is what Solomon called the 'transcendental pretense.' I think we do have the same rational system, more or less, but believing this seems to depend on experience, on being socialized. To me the deep subject looks plural rather than singular, even though consciousness is founded in the individual brain.
Solomon also talks of methodological solipsism, which is basically starting from Descartes' individual doubting mind. To me this is like trying to understand the internet by studying only laptops. Our brains have evolved to be networked and are only understood in the highest functioning as such a network. (That's my rough position at the moment.)
The science of relativity is grounded in Galileo’s mind alone, isn’t it? Einstein may or may not have thought SR and GR on his own, even if there never was a Galileo, but he didn’t.
Deep question. If the 'I' is a modification of the 'we' --if intersubjectivity is primary and not secondary-- what then? The hardware is individual, but the software is networked.
[quote=Wittgenstein]
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
[/quote]
If the language that the individual thinks in and with is forged socially, then Heidegger has a point with his being-in-the-world and being-with-others as a deeper layer than the epistemological theory of the individual mind processing sensation with an innate set of concepts.
This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.
The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction.
Read (more) Kant is of course good advice. I love his introductions, but I haven't studied all of the details. Kant is not always a pleasure to read. And then debates about Kant are like lots of classical metaphysical debates, which are haunted by a kind of futility perhaps.
Recently I found a philosopher who articulated my vague misgivings about Kant.
[quote=Tomida]
Whereas Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are objects of scienti?c investigations (especially by the corpuscular hypothesis), Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are thoroughly unknowable. But despite their unknowability, Kant af?rms the existence of things in themselves, and this has been viewed for a long time as one of the serious problems in Kant’s philosophy. According to Kant, things in space (and their properties) are nothing but representations ‘in us’, and appearances qua representations necessarily demand the existence of things in themselves (though these are unknowable). From an historical point of view, however, if Descartes’ and Locke’s theories of ideas do not precede it, such a view must be unintelligible. If I may limit my consideration to Locke and Kant, perhaps we can say that Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are the product of a degeneration of Lockean ‘things themselves’. In other words, Kant’s concept of ‘things in themselves’ would not make sense without the model of Locke’s naturalistic theory of ideas,[4] and as a result of its degeneration, the framework of his transcendental idealism seems to have a distorted logic.
...
As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense. But though he has such a view, Kant repeatedly emphasizes that sensible representations are given to us by ‘things in themselves’ affecting our minds or senses.
Why does Kant assert the existence of the unknown ‘things in themselves’?
[/quote]
https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lk
One answer is that we 'obviously' share a single world. Humans are born, humans die. The world remains. This vaguely suggests a substratum that is independent of any particular-mortal human mind.
Another problem I have with my imperfect understanding of Kant is:
[quote=Tomida]
Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character. However, the concept of cause that Kant regards as one of the pure concepts of understanding is applicable only to appearances qua representations.
...
Hegelians and Kantians often say that Kant synthesizes empiricism and rationalism. Indeed, on the one hand, he acknowledges the affection by things in themselves and regards the objects of our experience as mental; on the other hand, he acknowledges various a priori items in the mind and regards their rational consequences as important. However, his synthesis is performed by tacitly accepting the naturalistic logic of ideas that Locke shares with Descartes, and at the same time distorting it. In this sense, Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis.
[/quote]
Things in themselves are not perceived, only thought.
That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary. If its existence is not necessary, it can have no necessary use. Isn’t its regulation of our knowledge a necessary use, insofar as at least instance of an unknownable, is informed by it?
But I take your intent with the proposition. The solution is to allow the determinations of the nature of the “-in-itself” to be different than the determination of the nature of the “thing” connected necessarily with it. See SS9-1.
—————
I won’t say I haven’t made one, except that if I did, it would have nothing to do with the ideality of space or transcendental appearances. I haven’t thought of things or things in themselves in that way. Nor have I involved subjective conditions as properties.
I do grant anything to which my empirical intuitions cannot apply a transcendental existence, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me in considering things met in perception alone. The transcendentalism only disappears iff something progresses into the faculty that represents it as an appearance, which perception is never tasked to do.
I understand what you’re trying to say, by saying the thing-in-itself is not perceived. Things perceived do not vacate their space simply because they are impressed upon us, the thing remains even while we are thinking about it. Nevertheless, the thing thought about merely represents the thing that remains in its space, and THAT is the thing-in-itself.
Cool. Thanks. I admit to not thumbing far enough, or thumbing right over it. I lost my place in answering your question. Are you ok with the responses you got, or is there anything you’re still unsatisfied with?
Tomida:Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character.
YEA!!! (Does the Happy Dance, a-la Snoopy.....feet just a-blur)
Cool. Thanks. I admit to not thumbing far enough, or thumbing right over it. I lost my place in answering your question. Are you ok with the responses you got, or is there anything you’re still unsatisfied with?
I thought they were good responses. I guess I'd like to hear what you have to say about the transcendental pretense (the assumption that we all have the same rational system.) Or in general what you think Kant had to take for granted in order to write CPR. Given that Kant is obviously a great philosopher, what did he not see? Do you have any criticisms of Kant?
I think we do have the same rational system, more or less, but believing this seems to depend on experience
The system is complete in itself; the content of the system is predicated on experience, yes. And it really doesn’t matter what name a theory subsumes the system under, as long as they all agree we as humans all have the same faculties.
If the language that the individual thinks in is forged socially, then Heidegger has a point with his being-in-the-world and being-with-others as a deeper layer than the epistemological theory of the individual mind processing sensation with an innate set of concepts.
That may all well be, but it bears keeping in mind that peope don’t think qua think, in language; people think, meaning the private subjective rational activity, in images. Language only arises in discussions of thought, which is to say, the meaning of those images.
The system is complete in itself; the content of the system is predicated on experience, yes. And it really doesn’t matter what name a theory subsumes the system under, as long as they all agree we as humans all have the same faculties.
There's a line in Bennington's Derrida:
[quote=Bennington page 278]
[T]he empirical is the transcendental of the transcendental (of the empirical).
[/quote]
For context, I'm with Kant 100% that we get reality 'filtered.' I'm just not sure that his particular system is stable or eternally correct. What Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida have to say about language makes the situation more complicated, IMV.
That may all well be, but it bears keeping in mind that peope don’t think qua think, in language; people think, meaning the private subjective rational activity, in images.
I find it plausible that people think with words and images but not that thinking is essentially imagistic. How does Kant exist for us? And even if you thought what you posted in pure image somehow, it's only a beetle-in-the-box that I can never see. I can't compare my internal images to yours to grasp whether or not I comprehend you. I can only trade words with you. This 'sociality of reason' seems crucial to me, and I aim it against Descartes too. 'I' don't doubt. The 'we' doubts in me as me, with this 'we' serving as a metaphor for our possession of language as the condition of the possibility for doubting the external world.
What I think Heidegger gets right independent of all the death stuff is a grasp of world as fundamental.
[quote=link]
According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us “with its skin off” (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls ‘value-predicates’ (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a ‘pure’ experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance.
[/quote]
The world is not a set of objects but the 'stage' or 'background' on which or against which all things exist. IMV we learn the distinction of self and non-self. The individual mindspace is a product of social language use, though obviously it's not simply a fiction.
There is another part that is outdated: mathematics is universal.
I submit Kant means by universal, anywhere there is a human employing those principles in the same conditions under which they were imposed a priori. No matter where we go in the Universe, they must apply, and now that Voyager 2 has exited the solar system, the universality of mathematics seems to be confirmed. It still exists just as we built it.
A sheet of paper will be a plane anywhere a human is in the same plane. Mathematics as human know them will not hold in a black hole, but then.....neither will a human. 1 +1 = 2 no matter what planet we occupy. There may be different mathematics in the Universe, dependent on the rationality that forges them, but those rationalities wouldn’t be the same as ours.
but those rationalities wouldn’t be the same as ours.
Here's the crux: our rationality. Being-with-others, a universal-transcendental subject. Not just me. At the base of the I as its most truthful-accurate version is an ideal we. I must manage my bias (my unreason) in order to see from and with the ideal we (our reason).
A worth endeavor perhaps, but the nature of human subjectivity seems to prohibit, or at least seriously impair, its possibility.
I agree. And yet to say so is to have established some kind of universal trans-subjective truth about the nature of human subjectivity. Somehow I reason privately and come to conclusions about the limitations of the private reasoning of others. The CPR presents itself as the true metaphysics, the only kind now possible. A grandiose assertion! Which isn't to say he isn't right in some important sense...
What he adds to this:
[quote=Hobbes]
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense
[/quote]
is perhaps lots of detail about how our concepts manage and organize this pressing of our sense organs.
This version of Leviathan has a great introduction:
What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking.
Here is the way I make sense of this. The key for me is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive-nomological_model
Because we come equipped with mathematical intuitions and the notion of causality, we can hypothesize that maybe nature is subject to a law of gravity, for instance, mathematically expressed. We dream up patterns that may or may not fit the data. From this perspective, the mind is clearly active, even if it is passive with respect to sensation.
To me Democritus had to work like this, though without the math that become dominant with Galileo. 'Perhaps nature is really made of microscopic pieces.' Guided by this work of creativity, he could interpret uncontroversial facts in the light of their possible conformity to this hidden structure. As others have noted, observation is theory-laden. How much of Kant is compressed in that idea? If we take the theory-laden-ness of observation to be something that evolves historically, then we get various post-Kantian thinkers. Yes, reality is mediated by the social lens of an impersonal conceptual scheme, but also this scheme changes --or most of it is subject to change.
StreetlightJanuary 10, 2020 at 23:41#3704400 likes
What you care or do not care about is irrelevant and beneath discussion. Far more relevant is the fact that Kant not get turned into a full blown idealist where the limit to thought is nothing but a posit of thought itself - as the noumenon is, and the thing-in-itself is not.
Repeat: your interpretation is wrong, but I don't care. It's not beneath discussion -- I started this discussion. Feel free to start another one. Or respond to someone else. It's irrelevant to me.
Linguistic convention says there are basketballs out there; transcendental idealism says there are objects out there only called basketballs because the human represents the object to himself as such.
Just to inject a few words about linguistic convention... ;-)
Linguistic convention allows us to talk about basketballs and humans (grammatically interchangeable as subjects or objects depending on what one wants to say). But linguistic convention doesn't say that basketballs are "out there" - that kind of "in here/out there" distinction is itself made using language and depends on one's philosophical commitments.
As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction. Locke, Hume and Kant then subsequently carried that line of thinking to its logical conclusions. The issue with subject/object dualism is that it affects (or infects, depending on one's perspective) the way people look at everything such that it is difficult to conceive of any alternative.
That's not an argument for or against it (here at least). But just to point out how it can subtly frame the way we look at the world.
To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?
— Andrew M
transcendental realism...regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
CPR, A369
Thanks for replying. I'm reading your comments below as an application of Kant's system.
What you're not seeing is the way the mind - not just your mind, or my mind - constructs the entire stage within which perspective and judgements of the age of the Universe exist.
"The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'."
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271)
As we've discussed before, observer in its physics sense does not imply mind or consciousness, it instead refers to a measurement apparatus or reference frame. As Heisenberg put it, "Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature."
So what the above passage says is that, taken as a whole, the universe is predicted to be static and unchanging (per the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). In order to predict a dynamic and changing universe, one must split it into subsystems where time and change emerge as a relational or relative measure between those subsystems. That's the case even if the subsystems are simply a lifeless planet + the rest of the universe.
Alternatively, let's see what your reading commits you to here. Before sentient life emerged on Earth there were no conscious observers. Therefore the universe must have been static prior to sentient emergence. Therefore it only appears as if the Earth were orbiting the Sun at an earlier time. But that consequence is one reason why virtually no-one holds the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation in quantum mechanics. As John Bell put it:
John S. Bell - Quantum mechanics for cosmologists :It would seem that the theory is exclusively concerned with ‘results of measurements’ and has nothing to say about anything else. When the ‘system’ in question is the whole world where is the ‘measurer’ to be found? Inside, rather than outside, presumably. What exactly qualifies some subsystems to play this role? Was the world wave function waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some more highly qualified measurer — with a Ph.D.? If the theory is to apply to anything but idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less ‘measurement-like’ processes are going on more or less all the time more or less everywhere? Is there ever then a moment when there is no jumping and the Schrödinger equation applies?
Alternatively, let's see what your reading commits you to here. Before sentient life emerged on Earth there were no conscious observers.
fdrake and I have discussed this also. It's obviously the case that there were no rational observers before h. sapiens (leaving aside gods and aliens). But here, you're assuming the stance of imagining a domain without observers in it - the vast empty universe with the early earth and primitive life-forms. Your conscious mind is still providing the stage, as it were, or the canvas on which all of these are seen in the mind's eye. I mean, 'before' is a human judgement, or at least a judgement made from a particular point in history, according to a particular scale.
Absent any scale, perspective or observer, then how can there be any duration, on the one hand, or distance between objects, on the other? What is 'the universe' from the viewpoint of a mineral? Absurd question, of course, because a mineral has no viewpoint. Nothing exists 'for it' (which incidentally is why 'objects' are not 'beings'). You and I as conscious observers know all manner of things about such an object - where it is, what it's made of. But again, that is because the mind furnishes the conceptual framework within which judgements of the nature of things are made.
Modern science wants to imagines a world without 'the subject' in it, as if from no viewpoint at all. It started with the rejection of scholasticism and Aristotelianism (and with good reason.) 'Let's start with what is really there, without the encumbrances of metaphysical speculation and other such nonsense'. Kant was part of that, wasn't he? He wrote one of the seminal documents of the Enlightenment, 'What is Enlightenment?' But Kant also realised that 'what is really there' is not so straightforward after all, as he was part of the philosophical tradition of asking 'how do we know?' So Kant respected naturalism, but he also sought something beyond its purview (i.e. 'declaring a limit to science so as to make room for faith'.)
There's a passage in Magee's book on Schopenhauer which I often quote in this context, which deals with exactly the question you've raised:
'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 Kant ... that is impossible.'
Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was ... 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 [i.e. we have to learn to look at our naturalistic spectacles rather than just through them, which takes a kind of cognitive shift.]
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.
Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107
Now this explains how Kant can be both an empirical realist AND at the same time, a transcendental idealist. Many people - I suspect you also! - will think that Kant (and I) are saying that 'the world exists only in the mind of the observer'. He's not saying that - but he's also questioning the (generally implicit) view that most of us have, that the world exists completely independently of our perception of it (as per scientific realism). However, he's pointing out that there is an implicitly subjective element in every statement, every perception, even objective statements (which are to all intents, true to all observers, but only because of the kinds of observers that we are).
But we don't see that subjective element, not because it doesn't exist, but because it is the condition of anything we know (which is the particular meaning of 'transcendental' in Kant and also Husserl - necessary for experience, but not given in it). But because naturalism has 'bracketed out' the subjective, then it has overlooked this fact. I think the 'observer problem' is one consequence of this - kind of a wake-up call, if you like. That, to me, is the point of Andrei Linde's statement (and incidentally he has a Closer to Truth interview which explains it at much greater length, in his charming Russian accent and with a rather quirky sense of humour.)
Incidentally both 'measurement apparatus' and 'reference frame' also imply an observer, but don't try and think of that 'from the outside', as it were; the 'observer' is not part of the picture, but the picture is always in the mind of an observer.
As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction.
I don't agree. In stripping away everything we can doubt, he was denying the Church a place at the foundations of our thinking, and understood in the way I think he intended, his conclusion is correct. Though you can question the existence of the junk you see around you, you can't question the existence of experience, which implies one who experiences.
If you subsequently realize that the experiencer and the object of experience (subject and object) are inextricably bound together logically, IOW, subject and object fall out of an analysis of experience or they're the product of reflection on experience, that doesn't undermine the value of the concepts.
I don't know much about Locke, except his (relative) liberalism. I get the impression that he's much simpler than Kant. If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it.
Where is mathematics then? It seems to me that as a matter of experience mathematics is relatively uncontroversial. We all agree that there are an infinity of primes. It seems we infer a shared hard-wired mathematical faculty from this consensus.
The idea of the universality of mathematics had to be abandoned with non-Euclidean alternative mathematics. At first they were considered as mathematical "eccentricities", but they had to be taken seriously when the theory of relativity took them up. The situation today is as follows: pure mathematics works on diverse paths and theoretical physics takes the way it is interested in. Sometimes it is the demands of physicists that open up new mathematical paths. The idea of a single, infallible mathematical path is popular but not correct.
Otherwise, Kant was right about knowledge a priori. Just it is not so much a priori than he thought.
Tomida:Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves,
Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis.
Of course, Kant is a man of his time, and the debate of his time was between empiricists and rationalists. But to equate his starting point with Locke seems risky to me. In empiricism the concept of object is formed empirically (whether it is mathematical or not). In Kant it predates sensations. Without a previous concept of cause the game with the data of the senses would be chaotic.
If I remember correctly, Locke introduces some rationalism in his empiricism when he considers the mathematical world of things universally factual by giving them a material body: atoms. This is another matter, but it is also contrary to the Kantian starting point.
Well, I'd rather not take too many chances with Locke who I know only from textbooks.
If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it.
I'll drop a few quotes.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0004
[quote=Locke]
I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking.
[/quote]
Later in the work he tackles language.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10616/10616.txt
[quote=Locke]
Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words
are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from
our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly,
and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their
significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they
would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some,
not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots
do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to
those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far
is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a
designation that the one stands for the other; without which application
of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.
Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men
certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose
a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's
peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident,
in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same
language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has
so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases,
that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their
minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And
therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power
which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word:
which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what
idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of
his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates
certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits
the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the
same idea, he does not speak properly
[/quote]
I like his awareness that language is a social convention. To me one of the big 20th century insights was just how 'exterior' and social meaning and thinking are. Sometimes you'll see troubled solipsists appearing on forums either arguing their position or asking to be argued out of it. What in the tradition made such absurdity possible? Descartes and/or watching The Matrix too many times. But my point is that the language of solipsism is directed outward from the get-go and was learned through interaction in the first place. What I like about The Concept of Time and Philosophical Investigations is (among other things) the quashing of an entrenched assumption of private language in the single soul.
But more Locke:
[quote=Locke]
The next thing to be considered is,--How general words come to be made.
For, since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms; or where find we those general natures they are supposed
to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of
general ideas: and ideas become general, by separating from them the
circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine
them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction
they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of
which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call
it) of that sort.
[/quote]
We get abstract ideas from experience, by erasing unimportant differences.
[quote=Locke]
To return to general words: it is plain, by what has been said, that
GENERAL and UNIVERSAL belong not to the real existence of things; but
are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for
its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are
general, as has been said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so
are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are
general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular
things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all
of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which
in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars,
the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making; their
general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into, by the
understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. For the
signification they have is nothing but a relation that, by the mind of
man, is added to them.
[/quote]
General ideas are 'creatures of our own making,' which is a strong anti-metaphysical point.
[quote=Locke]
I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature,
in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is
nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things
propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF THEM
UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION,
FROM THE SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE ABSTRACT GENERAL
IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as
patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word FORM has a very proper
signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to
agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or
are put into that CLASSIS. For when we say this is a man, that a horse;
this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else
but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those
abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what
are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those
abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between
particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?
And when general names have any connexion with particular beings, these
abstract ideas are the medium that unites them: so that the essences of
species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor can
be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds. And
therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different from
our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species WE rank
things into.
[/quote]
It's we who sort the world into this kind of thing and that kind of thing. This is against the notion of those 'supposed real essences.'
Those are just some samples. I just mentioned Locke because I overlooked him for a long time. When I finally read him in an anthology of empiricists, I was impressed.
The idea of the universality of mathematics had to be abandoned with non-Euclidean alternative mathematics.
I know that it was a revolution. These days math is all symbols, so it's no longer a problem (roughly speaking.)Quoting David Mo
Otherwise, Kant was right about knowledge a priori. Just it is not so much a priori than he thought.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. Kant took certain distinctions as absolute that have since been brought down a notch. But he could hardly do everything at once, I guess. Maybe another reason I like Locke is because he writes in English and has a less grandiose personality.
Of course, Kant is a man of his time, and the debate of his time was between empiricists and rationalists. But to equate his starting point with Locke seems risky to me. In empiricism the concept of object is formed empirically (whether it is mathematical or not). In Kant it predates sensations. Without a previous concept of cause the game with the data of the senses would be chaotic.
I think I know what you mean. As I understand him, Kant went into serious detail about our cognitive hardware. Locke does think about the operations of the mind, but he didn't cook up such a rigid system.
If I remember correctly, Locke introduces some rationalism in his empiricism when he considers the mathematical world of things universally factual by giving them a material body: atoms. This is another matter, but it is also contrary to the Kantian starting point.
I understand what you mean here too. Locke had a plausible theory of the the stuff that caused sensation, as did Hobbes. Kant did a wilder thing and made it an X. But how can the X cause sensation? If causation is just a structure within experience?
That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary.
Kant: The senses provide subjective and contingent knowledge. We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way. Necessity and universality come from reasoning. Reasoning tells us that what we see is a unity, the thing. Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity.
In a certain sense, child psychology has proved Kant right: children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations, but by giving them an order. This concept of order comes from maturation, not from the accumulation of sensations.
Reply to David Mo
One last comment. Already Democritus and later Epicurus thought that atoms affected the human body so as to generate consciousness. True, they didn't doubt the existence of space and time. But the rest of experience was a kind of dream thrown up by the human sense organs and body in general in response to its interactions with atoms. When the body dies, that person's dream of the world ceases.
If one has this view, then obviously the objects of experience have to conform to the sense organs. What I non-expertly take as new in Kant is the focus on all of the linguistic-conceptual processing that goes into experience. After Kant, one can question whether the shared dream corresponds in any way to what is really going on. Yet Kant doesn't go into the 'sharedness' of this dream much, AFIK. How does one person trapped in his mindbox create the true metaphysics of all human mindboxes? Kant knew the structure and possibilities of my experience long before I was born. What assumptions go into that? Human reason is one and universal, a veritable Enlightenment brand 'Holy Ghost.'
[quote=Solomon]
The leading theme of [the story of Continental philosophy after 1750] is the rise and fall of an extraordinary concept of the self. The self in question is no ordinary self, no individual personality, nor even one of the many heroic or mock-heroic personalities of the early nineteenth century. The self that becomes the star performer in modern European philosophy is the transcendental self, or transcendental ego, whose nature and ambitions were unprecedentedly arrogant, presumptuously cosmic, and consequently mysterious. The transcendental self was the self ---timeless, universal, and in each one of us around the globe and throughout history. Distinguished from our individual idiosyncracies, this was the self we shared. In modest and ordinary terms it was called 'human nature.' In must less modest, extraordinary terminology, the transcendental self was nothing less than God, the Absolute Self, the World Soul.
[/quote]
This next quote is from a dead link. Not sure who the author is, maybe also Solomon.
[quote=unknown]
The exalted sense of the importance of the self arose from the subtle shift Kant introduced into Descartes's proposal. In the Kantian system, the Cartesian self became not just the focus of philosophical attention but the entire subject matter of philosophy. Rather than viewing the self as one of several entities in the world, Kant envisioned the thinking self in a sense "creating" the world - that is, the world of its own knowledge. The focus of philosophical reflection ever since has been this world-creating self.
The universalizing of the self readily followed. Underlying Kant's philosophy was the presumption that in all essential matters every person everywhere is the same. When Kant's self reflected on itself, it came to know not only itself, but all selves, as well as the structure of any and every possible self.
The transcendental pretense evident in Kant's philosophy helped produce "the white philosopher's burden." Kant's presumption that all selves resemble each other led some philosophers to conclude that they should be able to construct a universal human nature. Even thinkers (like Kant) who never left their hometowns should be able to make authoritative pronouncements on human nature and morality.
[/quote]
I'm not even against this 'transcendental pretense.' But it's worth point out, I think. And of course Locke and just about every philosopher needs it.
I guess I'd like to hear what you have to say about the transcendental pretense (the assumption that we all have the same rational system.)
My understanding of the alleged transcendental pretense is that fundamental subjectivity is a license for arrogance, or, that because there is a common rational system amongst humans, a common great and wonderful behavior should be constructed from it. And because Kant is the prime champion for the power of the person as subject, he is accused as the culprit for the rise of such pretense.
What a load!!!! Kant’s time was the Enlightenment, the cultural, political and religious upheaval of which contributed much more to Everydayman’s new-found dominance than the Kantian (1784) sapere aude ever did.
——————-
Or in general what you think Kant had to take for granted in order to write CPR.
Superficially: reality of the external world combined with the power of natural science to explain it; the inevitability of metaphysics combined with the failure of natural science to explain it.
Fundamentally: it is possible to discover, and rein reason to within, a proper boundary.
——————
The intrinsic circularity of human reason itself, re: the evolution of a theory on reason, using reason to evolve it. It is hard to say he didn’t see it, but rather merely ignored it, seeing as how there is no choice in the matter.
——————
Nahhhhh. After 250 years, there’s not much left to be critical of, that hasn’t been beat to death by others. Besides, any criticisms a non-academic would have really is quite toothless.
The issue with subject/object dualism is that it affects (or infects, depending on one's perspective) the way people look at everything such that it is difficult to conceive of any alternative.
Yes, I suppose. We talk usually in the form, “We think....”, “You know...”, “I am....”, and so on, which makes explicit a subject/object dualism in general intersubjective communications. But I wouldn’t call that an issue as much as I’d call it linguistic convention. Nature of the beast, so to speak, and definitely makes it difficult to conceive an alternative.
Ooooo but my oh my how they try: universal consciousness, utilitarianism, being one with my fellow man.....(sigh)
If there is a real issue, I would attribute it to science, which is trying its damnedest to eliminate the subjective nature of the intellect.
In a certain sense, child psychology has proved Kant right: children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations
Yes, and raises a very subtle point of Kantian metaphysics: it isn’t what we know, but how we know it. OK, so as the theory goes, there exist a priori principles in the mind, and an example is a geometric figure, Well, after a certain age, it is highly unlikely a person doesn’t already have a great experience with geometric figures, which makes it very hard to claim a priori principles. Ok, fine. Divide a priori into pure and impure, in order to save the one because of an apparent contradiction with the other, and reflect back to a time of very first experience. Problem is, no one can remember what was going on in their heads at some very first experience, that isn’t conditioned by something they already know. Which makes the Hume-ian argument against a priori knowledge so powerful.
But if we consider a child, who has absolutely minimal experience with everything to begin with, hence isn’t affected by memory, it becomes easier to see the necessary rational groundwork for reason in general and a priori reason in particular. Because a child does learn, and learns without conditioning experience, some kind of a priori principles or pure conditions must exist in the human system. But if a child, and therefore anyone, has some form of pure a priori conditions, they couldn’t be constructed, for there would be nothing to construct them from, that aren’t themselves the same kind of thing, or from experience, which he doesn’t yet have.
This is why Kant specifically, and many others somewhat less but still inclusively, claim for the faculty of understanding the ability to think, for it would appear, however magically it must seem, that these necessary conditions, like, as you say, cause, substance, existence, possibility, necessity, etc., must arise from the intellect itself.
Of course, no one has been able to explain how understanding can think pure a priori and thereby necessary conditions....the categories.....but if it does, then all else falls into place neat as the proverbial pin. The second major objection: metaphysical theories cannot be falsified.
We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way.
Dunno why not, we own that unique perspective, so we know why it has to be that way. Couldn’t be any other way.
If you mean we don’t know why the something we perceive, given our unique perspective, has to be the way we perceive it, then that is exactly right. Our unique perspective is not an authority on the way of something, but only how we think of it.
Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity.
Yes, but only from our unique perspective. We cannot project our sense of necessity if it arises from our own reason. If that were the case, we’d be effectively telling the Universe how it must be, rather than us merely trying to understand how it is. Besides, whatever necessities the Universe holds in itself, can only be given to us depending on how we ask about them. Except for sheer accident, of course.
“...Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose...”
The Universe says, “I’ll tell you puny, know-nothing humans whatever you want to know. All you gotta do is figure out how to ask me the proper questions”
That was a great introduction. Although I couldn’t find when it was written; apparently, Pogson-Smith wasn’t famous enough for a wiki page of his own.
I am always fascinated by historical contexts, the influences of the time of the writing, as opposed to looking back from its future. I mean....who cares about the Papal Bull of 1570, but its effect on Hobbes was quite apparent. Descartes was talked about a lot differently then than now, as well.
Funny how even behaviourism doesn't resist the "idea" idea.
That is, if it ever did (as so often charged) espouse an initial blankness of slate.
A slate or screen or stage in the head, and pictures or words in the head. And then, or already, intermediate images, impressions, echoes, traces, affections, representations, at all points in a continuous channel of re-processing, imagined as stretching from "object" all the way in to... er, yes, how does it end? Where and what is the "subject"? Plenty of controversy there. But virtually none for the image-or-text-processing analogy that implies video and text symbols arising within the organism.
And we can't blame modern technology. The analogy probably (I speculate) always pervaded cultures that produced physical symbols.
But of course animals (and neural networks) don't commit events to memory by processing and storing physical traces (like an electronic camera), but rather by training themselves to respond to stimulation (internal and external) with appropriate activity. Most of which, in humans uniquely, involves manipulation of, or preparation to manipulate, actual, external, symbols.
...What we mistakenly theorise as the presence of actual, internal ones.
So, cheers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscellinus, the only clear (and probably spurious) example of bucking image-ism that I can find, before Goodman and Quine.
Heidegger was entirely right to inject time into any analysis of things, even though he tethered that injection to (a certain conception of) death in a way I find problematic.
Being-towards-death plays a role in human life and temporality, yes, but I don't see how it's very problematic. In fact the above is rather vague.
This would be forgetfulness or ignorance of 'tool being' or equipment as ready to hand but not 'present.'
Particularly the not-noticing of equipment use, yes. Our "ready-to-hand" activities simply don't involve a subject and an object at all, and yet this is how we spend the majority of our time. From Plato on, then, the history of philosophy has been a history of "presence." This is what's especially fascinating in Heidegger, in my view. His analysis of the Greek language and the presocratics is superb. It's funny that a lot of his work is untranslated still.
Rather than viewing the self as one of several entities in the world, Kant envisioned the thinking self in a sense "creating" the world - that is, the world of its own knowledge
Rather, Kant asserts a compromise between the world and the self. The self provides the order of our knowledge and the world the substance. He was right about that. Man is more than just a thing among things. He is the thing that gives meaning to the world. A thing for himself, too.
As you rightly point out, Kant still thinks in terms of human nature. An absolute equality. By the way, the foundation of democracy. But in doing so, he neglects the individual-social, innate-cultural dialectics. A priori knowledge imposes itself on individuals, but is transformed by an a cultural a priori. It is not the same in the Sumerian cities as in the Second French Empire.
Besides, any criticisms a non-academic would have really is quite toothless.
Jorge-Luis Borges, the most ignored-by-Swedish Academy -this is a price in itself- of Argentinean writers, said that he had read the best verses of his life in mediocre poets. I'm in. Why not you?
Yes, but only from our unique perspective. We cannot project our sense of necessity if it arises from our own reason. If that were the case, we’d be effectively telling the Universe how it must be, rather than us merely trying to understand how it is.
Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world. We only know what fits our template. That is, the order that constitutes the phenomena . And we ignore what falls out of it. But without the empirical stuff no design could appear under our template.
An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world. This has been asserted to some Kantian empiricists and brings Kantism closer to a kind of weak realism. In this case, we would trap some structures of the thing itself, and only lose those that escape our template a priori.
Modern science wants to imagines a world without 'the subject' in it, as if from no viewpoint at all.
Not so. The viewpoint of modern science today is that the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago. But there was no viewpoint a billion years ago.
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.
Which is just to say that we view the world in a particular way (in our capacity as human beings). Not that we literally create the world that existed prior to our existence.
[i.e. we have to learn to look at our naturalistic spectacles rather than just through them, which takes a kind of cognitive shift.]
Yes it does. But the point at issue is what we see through our natural spectacles. The natural world (from a human viewpoint), or a Platonic shadow world?
Now this explains how Kant can be both an empirical realist AND at the same time, a transcendental idealist. Many people - I suspect you also! - will think that Kant (and I) are saying that 'the world exists only in the mind of the observer'. He's not saying that - but he's also questioning the (generally implicit) view that most of us have, that the world exists completely independently of our perception of it (as per scientific realism). However, he's pointing out that there is an implicitly subjective element in every statement, every perception, even objective statements (which are to all intents, true to all observers, but only because of the kinds of observers that we are).
Here's my stab at it. Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable. What we can investigate is the empirical world that is the product of various stages of conditioning by the mind.
As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction.
— Andrew M
I don't agree. In stripping away everything we can doubt, he was denying the Church a place at the foundations of our thinking, and understood in the way I think he intended, his conclusion is correct.
Actually I was referring to Descartes' substance dualism there, not cogito ergo sum. As Gilbert Ryle has argued, Cartesian dualism is a category mistake.
If you subsequently realize that the experiencer and the object of experience (subject and object) are inextricably bound together logically, IOW, subject and object fall out of an analysis of experience or they're the product of reflection on experience, that doesn't undermine the value of the concepts.
That's fine when talking about human experience. The trouble arises when universalizing the distinction beyond human experience.
Which is to say, the Earth's orbiting of the Sun in the early universe doesn't presuppose an experiencer and an object of experience.
The issue with subject/object dualism is that it affects (or infects, depending on one's perspective) the way people look at everything such that it is difficult to conceive of any alternative.
— Andrew M
Yes, I suppose. We talk usually in the form, “We think....”, “You know...”, “I am....”, and so on, which makes explicit a subject/object dualism in general intersubjective communications. But I wouldn’t call that an issue as much as I’d call it linguistic convention. Nature of the beast, so to speak, and definitely makes it difficult to conceive an alternative.
Yes, I agree those are linguistic conventions. But they don't assume dualism. On the ordinary use, it is the human being that thinks (and is the referent of "I"), not their mind.
Whereas it is phrases like "the external world" or "out there" that assume subject/object dualism. They are philosophical usages, not ordinary conventions. Which is fine, that's what we're discussing, but I think it's important to be mindful of that. (That was a conventional use of "mindful", by the way...)
The viewpoint of modern science today is that the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago. But there was no viewpoint a billion years ago.
I did acknowledge this fact in my response, if you read it carefully. I since thought of another way of putting it - there is no measurement without perspective, and there is no perspective without mind. And when you say 'a billion years', you're talking of measurement.
The scientific realism that you assume and take for granted is still dependent on measure and so on mind. As the passage I quoted acknowledged, the reality of the early universe is no more being rejected than that of the 'pen with which these words are written'; but that it remains the reality of appearances.
Empirically speaking, I agree with you. But philosophically, it remains possible that we're all denizens of the Matrix, or projections of a grand simulation. So the purported 'facts of natural science' do not constitute the slam-dunk argument that you seem to believe they do. They're certain, given that .... .
the point at issue is what we see through our natural spectacles.
That is the point at issue for naturalism, but not for philosophy. Philosophy questions the very things which we all assume and take for granted. That's why it's called 'critical'.
Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable. What we can investigate is the empirical world that is the product of various stages of conditioning by the mind.
Kant never said that 'the world is completely unknowable'. Kant said that we know the world as appearance; it's not simply non-existent or unreal or a phantasm. I don't know if he would have used the expression that the world is a 'product of the mind' (and in this respect, that passage from Magee that I quoted might be misleading); it's that we know the world as it appears to beings with minds of the kind we have. On that basis, we project what we understand as 'the real world'. This is the activity of the most complex organ known to science, namely, the human brain.
Actually I was referring to Descartes' substance dualism there, not cogito ergo sum. As Gilbert Ryle has argued, Cartesian dualism is a category mistake.
I dont really see what work substance dualism does beyond saying that mind is irreducible.
Irreducibility is compatible with science. It's been argued that it's more compatible than the alternative.
I'll drop a few quotes.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0004
I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. — Locke
This quotation serves as a good opportunity to try to contrast Kant against Locke (which implies how differently they view the subject/object relation)
Locke is here just describing how all actually happens in mind. This is just self reflective empirical psychology. There is no principal philosophical problems involved here. What is lacking here is for example Kant's idea of synthesis. For Kant there is philosophical consciousness (or pure ego, selfhood) "behind" all these psychological operations. Kant is much more rational and theoretical in a philosophical sense. For Locke rationality* and theory are constructions on the basis of the empirical material without any philosophical mediation. This leads to a situation where rationality becomes (formal)logical and mathematical rationality. Thinking becomes pure logical and mathematical thinking (thinking as technique that one learns and masters). And this kind of thinking is seen as the natural functioning of the psyche. Scientific explanations and theories are the ultimate ground for Locke. Philosophy seems to be for him (neuro)psychological reflection on mental operations and general reflection on the genesis and usage of the human language. Kant tries to think logical and mathematical thought operations themselves and not just apply them to the world as a natural and true way to access things. * For Locke everything remains contingent, there is no (synthetic a priori) necessity. Or that there are only "natural necessities" forming mental operations.
For context, I'm with Kant 100% that we get reality 'filtered.' I'm just not sure that his particular system is stable or eternally correct. What Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida have to say about language makes the situation more complicated, IMV.
See, here I disagree. Derrida is on par with Zizek in my view -- a completely incoherent waste of time. Please point me to what you're referring to regarding Derrida's contribution to language.
_____
being (n.)
c. 1300, "existence," in its most comprehensive sense, "condition, state, circumstances; presence, fact of existing," early 14c., existence," from be + -ing. Sense of "that which physically exists, a person or thing" (as in human being) is from late 14c.
_____
"Being" applies to anything that exists, not just to conscious things.
Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world.
Common interpretation, that. A template impressed on the world to which it must conform. I would rather think a priori reason is the mold into which the world is poured. The only difference, which is more semantic than necessary perhaps, is that template implies projection of the mind onto the world, and mold implies receptivity of the world into the mind. Just depends on one’s choice in understanding of the relationship between mind and world.
——————
An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world.
What would the world look like if we didn’t? I’m not sure what you mean by a structure. Is it that we assume, e.g., atomic structure, because experiments support it?
Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable.
If taken from the principle of induction, this would be correct, but might should read....unknowable completely.
The world-in-itself is completely unknowable, taken as the totality of all possible thing-in-themselves, is the logically consistent proposition, wherein completely unknowable means not knowable at all. In that sense, the knowability depends solely on the human cognitive system, without any regard to empirical principles.
Kant tries to think logical and mathematical thought operations themselves and not just apply them to the world as a natural and true way to access things.
Well done!!! Pure reason writ large, yes?
Just as logic is predicated on the synthesis of major/minor/conclusion, so too is the theory of human knowledge, in this case transcendental idealism, predicated the synthesis of intuition/conception/judgement.
And, just as mathematics is predicated on law, which invokes the principles of universality and necessity, so too is reason, “....in obedience to the laws of its own nature...” speculated in such manner as to produce those laws.
Makes sense he would construct a logically, lawfully consistent theory based on the two domains in human experience that operate exclusively on those principles.
What was meant was that Kant exemplifies the philosopher who tries to think the scientificity. That doesn't mean that science is transformed into an excessive speculation.
As the passage I quoted acknowledged, the reality of the early universe is no more being rejected than that of the 'pen with which these words are written'; but that it remains the reality of appearances.
On naturalism, there is no "reality of appearances". We're not trapped in Plato's cave.
Empirically speaking, I agree with you. But philosophically, it remains possible that we're all denizens of the Matrix, or projections of a grand simulation. So the purported 'facts of natural science' do not constitute the slam-dunk argument that you seem to believe they do. They're certain, given that .... .
Yes, they remain possible. Naturalism doesn't confer certainty.
Kant never said that 'the world is completely unknowable'. Kant said that we know the world as appearance; it's not simply non-existent or unreal or a phantasm. I don't know if he would have used the expression that the world is a 'product of the mind' (and in this respect, that passage from Magee that I quoted might be misleading); it's that we know the world as it appears to beings with minds of the kind we have. On that basis, we project what we understand as 'the real world'. This is the activity of the most complex organ known to science, namely, the human brain.
So at issue is the dualism between "the unknown thing in itself" and "knowledge of appearances".
The natural claim is that we can know things as they are (from our perspective as human beings).
That captures what you're saying above without the dualism.
Which is to say, the Earth's orbiting of the Sun in the early universe doesn't presuppose an experiencer and an object of experience.
— Andrew M
I dont think Descartes suggested that it does, did he?
Probably not. But Descartes set the stage for thinkers that came after him. See, for example, the passage from Magee's book on Schopenhauer that includes, "the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding". That is, the empirical world depends on its dual subject.
(Though note Wayfarer suggests that that passage might be misleading.)
I dont really see what work substance dualism does beyond saying that mind is irreducible.
Irreducibility is compatible with science. It's been argued that it's more compatible than the alternative.
Ryle's argument is that mind refers to (or reduces to) a human being's intelligent activity. That Bob has a keen mind means that he's a smart guy; that he's lost his mind means that he's done something stupid, or that he's insane. It's not a substantial thing like a body. That's the Cartesian error.
Put differently, mind is an abstraction over a concrete particular, in this case a human being.
That way of thinking about the world goes back to Aristotle (e.g., the soul is the form of the body). Aristotle's form/matter distinction was abstract, unlike Descartes' substance dualism.
Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world.
— David Mo
Common interpretation, that. A template impressed on the world to which it must conform. I would rather think a priori reason is the mold into which the world is poured. The only difference, which is more semantic than necessary perhaps, is that template implies projection of the mind onto the world, and mold implies receptivity of the world into the mind. Just depends on one’s choice in understanding of the relationship between mind and world.
I like the template and mold ways of thinking of it. However I'd like to suggest that the a priori - the template or mold - is itself fluid.
Consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun moved across the sky. The heliocentrists replaced that with their own a priori view that it was the Earth that moved around the Sun. Same phenomenology, different template.
Apply that idea to space and time. Kant's a priori view was Euclidean. But Einstein replaced that with spacetime relativity. Same phenomenology, different template.
What would the world look like if we didn’t? I’m not sure what you mean by a structure. Is it that we assume, e.g., atomic structure, because experiments support it?
According to the image of a template it can be assumed either that the world is chaotic in itself and only the template provides shapes or that the template matches some shapes that are independent of it.
Suppose you apply a Daredevil template to a sheet with many superhero images and other informed stains. You only see the Daredevil image and think that only he is on the sheet.
Or there are only informed spots on the sheet and the template selects the ones that fall under the Daredevil template.
It's hard to decide. I'm inclined to the first idea on the basis that actual facts are not as simple as Daredevil and it would be something of a miracle if a complex reality could coincide with a priori without constant irruptions of chaos. I recognize that it is not a definitive reason.
On the ordinary use, it is the human being that thinks (and is the referent of "I"), not their mind.
Correct.
Minds cannot think because they do not exist per se.
Use of the word "mind" is a convenient façon de parler (Bennett & Hacker, 2003). What it refers to is an integrated set of organism events which produce automatic and controlled acts (corporeal actions).
I like sushiJanuary 13, 2020 at 09:51#3710450 likes
It is starting to look very much like people are trying their hardest not to make sense, yet appear to make sense by spitting out streams of words and pretending they have full control of them.
Too many holes to poke at, too much ambiguity, and what is likely to follow is going to be either bordering on the mystical or hidden neatly away in postmodernist jargon.
The ‘mind’ exists just as solidly as a ‘cat’ exists. The point is they are both referential - convenient and frugal - communications of shared experience. We know they are shared because we wouldn’t be able to ‘refer’ to them otherwise. The hard physicalistic position of ‘mind’ isn’t there but brain is, is a pointless stance.
Nor is the approach of Derrida much use here as he’d only mock the situation and ask ‘does existence exist?’ or some other flatulence.
There is a mind, a chair, a table, a book and a cat, and the ‘isness’ of Heideggerian wordplay is only slightly less useful than Derrida’s. The ‘is’ and the ‘being’ are references of references of a referential referent ... round and round we go in a non-explanatory circle *YAWN*
Any attempt to narrow the phenomenological disposition of ‘being human’ necessarily cuts away the ‘essence’ by referring to some ‘it’ as ‘essence’. They’re there to make it known we known know as we DO NOT know what we don’t know if we can refer to it.
The mock rage I am expressing right now does make some ‘intention’ felt.
We don’t know what time is, what gravity is, nor what a bloody chair is.
Practically the thing I am currently aware of is my huge disappointment with what I‘ve read here. People tell me I expect too much, but really I only hope for something ... I’m still waiting to discover something. I just read fat upon fat upon fat, where’s the meat?
In room full of hedonists and egos what is there to learn? The most insightful moment of my life came without worded thought - the foolish part of me has been pretending since that time that I can express such an experience.
I resign. Funnily enough that is the answer of answers, the rest is just makeup on what was never viewed as an already perfect face of existing. Your hollow fruits have starved me!
Be at it dogs! May you all burn in silent screams with rictus grins defiant at your own pains and suffering. Scum floats to the top so don’t fear rising - better that than skulk in the depths with shadow puppets as a corrosive comfort of ‘meaning’.
Probably not. But Descartes set the stage for thinkers that came after him. See, for example, the passage from Magee's book on Schopenhauer that includes, "the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding". That is, the empirical world depends on its dual subject.
(Though note Wayfarer suggests that that passage might be misleading.)
He was riffing on Kant, not Descartes. Somebody suggested that though there appears to be a multitude of electrons, there's really only one. Schopenhauer's kind of like that regarding the self, a self-wave the appears as particles here and there.
Put differently, mind is an abstraction over a concrete particular, in this case a human being.
An electromagnetic dynamo is an abstraction. It's still a powerful thing. We smart humans can navigate these kinds of situations without straying into category errors.
Consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun moved across the sky. The heliocentrists replaced that with their own a priori view that it was the Earth that moved around the Sun.
What is it about those views that make them a priori?
——————
Man, that’s a lot of templates. If there are an immeasurably large number of possible experiences, each one with its own template......where’d they all come from?
Now if there were a certain number of templates to which every single possible experience must abide, that might be something to consider. Sorta like a mind saying......hey, screw this. If that which is presented to me doesn’t meet certain necessary conditions, I ain’t even going to bother trying to make something of it.
‘Course, still have to explain where a few necessary conditions come from, just as much as a veritable infinite number of templates. Down in the metaphysical weeds are things like innate ideas, forms, pure conceptions....all kinds weird stuff.
Nor is the approach of Derrida much use here as he’d only mock the situation and ask ‘does existence exist?’ or some other flatulence.
What's strange is an attack (?) on Derrida in a post that uses one of his key ideas --that authorial intention does not control meaning. I don't ever know 'absolutely' WTF I am talking about. I drive nails somehow with the hammer of language. Somehow I bark the right-enough sounds and scratch the right-enough symbols and survive decade after decade in a high-tech society.
[quote=Derrida]
For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory, trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
[/quote]
but rather by training themselves to respond to stimulation (internal and external) with appropriate activity. Most of which, in humans uniquely, involves manipulation of, or preparation to manipulate, actual, external, symbols.
...What we mistakenly theorise as the presence of actual, internal ones.
That sounds right. We are trained to employ the language as a whole. Afterwards we can argue about what 'subject' or 'justice' or 'being' mean. But this is us trying to make our training explicit by coughing up yet more words that aren't rigorously defined. Have we reason to think that it's a finite task? In the meantime we have to live, which means that we just rely on our training and muddle through, occasionally clarifying this or that blockage in the flow of our conversations or readings. Perhaps our training is the only foundation we can hope for.
Derrida is on par with Zizek in my view -- a completely incoherent waste of time.
Hi. For you and anyone who hates Derrida's style, here's an interpreter they might find more palatable. The interpreted essay is linked in a comment above.
http://www.colby.edu/music/nuss/mu254/articles/Culler.pdf
I can understand the frustration with Zizek as writer, though he's great in interviews.
According to the image of a template it can be assumed either that the world is chaotic in itself and only the template provides shapes or that the template matches some shapes that are independent of it.
I do sometimes wonder if the very idea of templates originated with the Platonic forms.The separation of form and substance seems likewise indispensable to the very idea of mass production.
Use of the word "mind" is a convenient façon de parler (Bennett & Hacker, 2003). What it refers to is an integrated set of organism events which produce automatic and controlled acts (corporeal actions).
The natural claim is that we can know things as they are (from our perspective as human beings).
If we have to qualify it in this way, then does it really constitute 'knowing things as they are'? By conceding the perspectival nature of knowledge, you're more or less conceding Kant's point.
[a quote about ]Schopenhauer that includes, "the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding". That is, the empirical world depends on its dual subject.
(Though note Wayfarer suggests that that passage might be misleading.)
I'm wary of the use of the word 'creation' in this context. But thinking about it some more, it's close in meaning to what Andrei Linde says in the Closer to Truth interview that I linked to. Of course it seems obviously absurd when we think of it in terms of 'the world being in the mind' - but the problem is that when we're saying this, we're trying to envisage 'the world' and 'the mind' from the outside. There's the vast universe, the whole Earth is just a minute speck in relation to that. But we can't see it 'from the outside', we can't make an object of 'me knowing that'. It's a false perspective.
The ‘mind’ exists just as solidly as a ‘cat’ exists. The point is they are both referential - convenient and frugal - communications of shared experience. We know they are shared because we wouldn’t be able to ‘refer’ to them otherwise. The hard physicalistic position of ‘mind’ isn’t there but brain is, is a pointless stance.
It doesn't seem obvious. We get the direct perception of a cat. The "mind" is an abstraction that comes partly from introspection and partly from similarity. I mainly call my own production of ideas "mind". Then I infer the mind of others by comparing my own behaviour with the behaviour of others. This comparison may not be the result of conscientious reflection, but it works this way.
"Mind" and "cats" are very different objects. For-itself and in-itself, you know.
Man, that’s a lot of templates. If there are an immeasurably large number of possible experiences, each one with its own template......where’d they all come from?
I was thinking about Kant's theory of knowledge: space, time and categories. We build objects with them. Other "templates" are more particular and a posteriori.
I do sometimes wonder if the very idea of templates originated with the Platonic forms.
They had something in common insofar as Plato was also anti-empiricist. But Plato thought of ideal molds for every single thing. A logical problem of infinite multiplication of forms. Kant is thinking of universal molds (if you like) limited to the main categories of thought. The rest are sensations. A heresy for Plato.
. But Plato thought of ideal molds for every single thing. A logical problem of infinite multiplication of forms.
The notion that every shape corresponds to a different form is not necessarily what platonism entails. Form doesn't mean shape. For example, the 'form' of a wing (or 'flight') might be realised as a bat wing, aeroplane wing, and bird wing.
Numeracy: ability to understand number arrangements, and perform numerical operations.
Minds aren't numerate, brains aren't numerate, human beings are numerate.
And so it goes with every other human "mental" condition, function, and process.
With regard to current Neurological and Psychological evidence:
1) Body and mind are open sub-systems of (at least certain) organisms (e.g., those having a central nervous system).
2) Body is open to mind and environment.
3) Mind is open to body.
So:
1) Mind-body dualism is a non sequitur.
2) Human substance (being) is a unity having two properties (i.e., body and mind).
1) Mind-body dualism is a non sequitur.
2) Human substance (being) is a unity having two properties (i.e., body and mind).
I would agree with this, to an extent. The extent that a human entity can be regarded as a substance, however both body and mind are foundational to the conscious being therein. So perhaps one can describe the conscious being to be found in a human, fundamentally dualistic, due to the case that consciousness of the body and the consciousness of the mind, are foundational and both are necessary for that consciousness to occur.
Well, in essence mysticism includes an approach to knowledge which offers two other means of enquiry (there may be more). Other than the intellectual route to knowledge. An enquiry into the self and an enquiry into communion, or intuition with or aided by a real, or notional deity, of some kind.
During this inquiry insights may occur into other areas, or ideas, different, or even orthogonal to the intellectual route to knowledge.
For example I have realised that there is a form of knowledge, which is gathered, or achieved via acquaintance, or communion with aspects of the self, or other entities. A route in which the intellect is used only as a tool of interpretation of the experience which has become known, before the intellect became involved.
Use of the word "mind" is a convenient façon de parler (Bennett & Hacker, 2003).
Thanks for that apt reference. It's well worth quoting the original passage in full.
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker:Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible.
Put differently, mind is an abstraction over a concrete particular, in this case a human being.
— Andrew M
An electromagnetic dynamo is an abstraction. It's still a powerful thing. We smart humans can navigate these kinds of situations without straying into category errors.
What I mean by abstraction in this context is "A particular way in which a thing exists or appears." (Lexico, form) [*]
An electromagnetic dynamo is a thing that exists, not a particular way in which a thing exists (i.e., it's concrete, not abstract or formal).
--
[*] Per the surrounding discussion on Kant, it's interesting to note the Latin origin of form and its similarity to 'template' and 'mold':
"Middle English from Old French forme (noun), fo(u)rmer (verb, from Latin formare ‘to form’), both based on Latin forma ‘a mould or form’."
Consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun moved across the sky. The heliocentrists replaced that with their own a priori view that it was the Earth that moved around the Sun.
— Andrew M
What is it about those views that make them a priori?
They comprise the (contingently) prior background against which observations are interpreted and judgments are made. That prior background can be represented in scientific or mathematical terms.
To change one's view from geocentrism to heliocentrism is to change that background - a Kuhnian paradigm shift, or gestalt shift.
Even in Einstein, the observer in his own reference frame is in the Kantian view of Euclidean space and time.
I'm not sure what you mean. An implication of the Kantian view is that two events that are simultaneous for one observer are simultaneous for all observers. But that's not the case under Einstein's relativity (see relativity of simultaneity).
On naturalism, there is no "reality of appearances". We're not trapped in Plato's cave.
— Andrew M
with the caveat that:
Naturalism doesn't confer certainty.
— Andrew M
The natural claim is that we can know things as they are (from our perspective as human beings).
— Andrew M
If we have to qualify it in this way, then does it really constitute 'knowing things as they are'? By conceding the perspectival nature of knowledge, you're more or less conceding Kant's point.
No, because there's a key difference in how Kant construes the perspectival nature of knowledge and that is in his understanding of appearance.
Here's an illustrative example. If we see a straight stick partly submerged in water, we notice that it appears bent. This gives rise to the natural distinction between what something is (e.g., a straight stick) and how it appears under different conditions (e.g., the stick appears bent when partly submerged in water and it's possible to mistakenly think that the stick is bent).
On Kant's view, both scenarios constitute mere appearances (which we can know). But we can't know the thing-in-itself. Thus he has collapsed the natural distinction and created a new and artificial distinction. As Kant put it:
And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.
I'm wary of the use of the word 'creation' in this context. But thinking about it some more, it's close in meaning to what Andrei Linde says in the Closer to Truth interview that I linked to. Of course it seems obviously absurd when we think of it in terms of 'the world being in the mind' - but the problem is that when we're saying this, we're trying to envisage 'the world' and 'the mind' from the outside. There's the vast universe, the whole Earth is just a minute speck in relation to that. But we can't see it 'from the outside', we can't make an object of 'me knowing that'. It's a false perspective.
There is only a problem if an object is defined in terms of outside/inside (thing-in-itself/appearance). If an object is instead defined in terms of what we observe (i.e., what we can ostensively point at) then we can know it as it is. Such as the stick from the above example.
That is why I reject the idea of a "view from nowhere" which tacitly assumes a thing-in-itself/appearance dualism. Instead, knowledge claims are made by human beings and so presuppose a human perspective.
...is categorically opposed to the Kantian a priori meaning, for any contingently prior background is merely another way to say “experience”.
“....By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience...”
Thus,.......consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe, might better be said.....whose prior view.
——————
An implication of the Kantian view is that two events that are simultaneous for one observer are simultaneous for all observers.
Two events for a guy and guy standing right beside him, will be simultaneous to both, yes. The difference between the observations will be immeasurable.
I’m thoroughly familiar with Einstein, 1920 (English)
—————
On sticks in water....
“.....It is not at present our business to treat of empirical illusory appearance (for example, optical illusion), which occurs in the empirical application of otherwise correct rules of the understanding, and in which the judgement is misled by the influence of imagination...”
He's not saying that - but he's also questioning the (generally implicit) view that most of us have, that the world exists completely independently of our perception of it (as per scientific realism).
Kant posits the "in itself" which just is the world existing "completely independently of our perception of it". Your own words "perception of it" should give you the clue; perception of the world (and the human understanding of it) is not the world, obviously, but merely a part of it.
You've been peddling this tendentious distortion and attributing it to Kant ever since I've known you on this and the other old forums. Time to read Kant's actual works yourself; educate yourself, wake up and stop with the phoney nonsense!
If we see a straight stick partly submerged in water, we notice that it appears bent. This gives rise to the natural distinction between what something is (e.g., a straight stick) and how it appears under different conditions (e.g., the stick appears bent when partly submerged in water and it's possible to mistakenly think that the stick is bent).
There is only a problem if an object is defined in terms of outside/inside (thing-in-itself/appearance). If an object is instead defined in terms of what we observe (i.e., what we can ostensively point at) then we can know it as it is. Such as the stick from the above example.
It really isn't so simple. Again, in physics, the question has been suggested by the conundrums sorrounding 'wave-particle' duality, for example.
I think the key point is that if you accept naturalism simply as a methodological assumption, then there's no problem to solve (which is I think what you are suggesting.) I think Kant's argument comes into play when metaphysical conclusions are drawn on the basis of methodological axioms - in other words, when arguments are made about first philosophy on the basis of scientific naturalism.
creativesoulJanuary 15, 2020 at 01:32#3716590 likes
I knew this topic would eventually result in talking about minds... horribly so.
:brow:
The subject/object dichotomy cannot be used as a means to take proper account of thought and belief. All minds consist entirely thereof. Therefore, the subject/object dichotomy cannot be used as a means to take proper account of minds.
:smirk:
creativesoulJanuary 15, 2020 at 02:27#3716700 likes
Underwriting all of this discourse are categories. Different folk employ different ones. It leads to all sorts of confusion as well... misunderstanding notwithstanding.
This thread seems to have a plurality of different categories being employed by different participants. There's even been charges of category mistakes(categorical error in judgment, per Kant).
The subject/object dichotomy breaks up what exactly into two, one or the other? Everything? I think not. Everything we talk about? Again, I think not. All our talk? Again... no. It fails miserably at all of these tasks...
It's a false dichotomy. What on earth is it still being used for, and why?
The only perfectly consistent expression of 'is' is found in mathematics and logic. Otherwise it's just a useful approximation.
As I read your 'approximation,' it implies something like an essence that is being approximated. 'Even though we don't know exactly what we are talking about, that something is determinate nevertheless.' But why should the sound/mark 'is' have some fixed, exact meaning? In general we use words together and not alone, and in non-theoretical situation.
Dewey's approach seems solid -- and reminds me of Heidegger, who was mentioned earlier.
[quote=IEP]
Opposing narrow-minded positions that would accord full ontological status only to certain, typically the most stable or reliable, aspects of experience, Dewey argues for a position that recognizes the real significance of the multifarious richness of human experience.
Dewey offered a fuller statement of his metaphysics in 1925, with the publication of one of his most significant philosophical works, Experience and Nature. In the introductory chapter, Dewey stresses a familiar theme from his earlier writings: that previous metaphysicians, guided by unavowed biases for those aspects of experience that are relatively stable and secure, have illicitly reified these biases into narrow ontological presumptions, such as the temporal identity of substance, or the ultimate reality of forms or essences. Dewey finds this procedure so pervasive in the history of thought that he calls it simply the philosophic fallacy, and signals his intention to eschew the disastrous consequences of this approach by offering a descriptive account of all of the various generic features of human experience, whatever their character.
Dewey begins with the observation that the world as we experience it both individually and collectively is an admixture of the precarious, the transitory and contingent aspect of things, and the stable, the patterned regularity of natural processes that allows for prediction and human intervention. Honest metaphysical description must take into account both of these elements of experience. Dewey endeavors to do this by an event ontology. The world, rather than being comprised of things or, in more traditional terms, substances, is comprised of happenings or occurrences that admit of both episodic uniqueness and general, structured order. Intrinsically events have an ineffable qualitative character by which they are immediately enjoyed or suffered, thus providing the basis for experienced value and aesthetic appreciation. Extrinsically events are connected to one another by patterns of change and development; any given event arises out of determinant prior conditions and leads to probable consequences. The patterns of these temporal processes is the proper subject matter of human knowledge--we know the world in terms of causal laws and mathematical relationships--but the instrumental value of understanding and controlling them should not blind us to the immediate, qualitative aspect of events; indeed, the value of scientific understanding is most significantly realized in the facility it affords for controlling the circumstances under which immediate enjoyments may be realized.
[/quote]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/dewey/
Since Dewey wrote in English, he should have his own say.
[quote=Dewey]
The office of physical science is to discover those properties and relations of things in virtue of which they are capable of being used as instrumentalities; physical science makes claim to disclose not the inner nature of things but only those connections of things with one another that determine outcomes and hence can be used as means. The intrinsic nature of events is revealed in experience as the immediately felt qualities of things. The intimate coordination and even fusion of these qualities with the regularities that form the objects of knowledge, in the proper sense of the word "knowledge," characterizes intelligently directed experience, as distinct from mere casual and uncritical experience.
This conception of the instrumental nature of the objects of scientific knowing forms the pivot upon which further discussion turns. That character of everyday experience which has been most systematically ignored by philosophy is the extent to which it is saturated with the results of social intercourse and communication. Because this factor has been denied, meanings have either been denied all objective validity, or have been treated as miraculous extra-natural intrusions. If, however, language, for example, is recognized as the instrument of social cooperation and mutual participation, continuity is established between natural events (animal sound, cries, etc.) and the origin and development of meanings. Mind is seen to be a function of social interactions, and to be a genuine character of natural events when these attain the stage of widest and most complex interaction with one another. Ability to respond to meanings and to employ them, instead of reacting merely to physical contacts, makes the difference between man and other animals; it is the agency for elevating man into the realm of what is usually called the ideal and spiritual. In other words, the social participation affected by communication, through language and other tools, is the naturalistic link which does away with the often alleged necessity of dividing the objects of experience into two worlds, one physical and one ideal.
[/quote]
Later in Experience and Nature, we get:
[quote=Dewey]
The distinctively intellectual attitude which marks scientific inquiry was generated in efforts at controlling persons and things so that consequences, issues, outcomes would be more stable and assured. The first step away from oppression by immediate things and events was taken when man employed tools and appliances, for manipulating things so as to render them contributory to desired objects. In responding to things not in their immediate qualities but for the sake of ulterior results, immediate qualities are dimmed, while those features which are signs, indices of something else, are distinguished. A thing is more significantly what it makes possible than what it immediately is. The very conception of cognitive meaning, intellectual significance, is that things in their immediacy are subordinated to what they portend and give evidence of. An intellectual sign denotes that a thing is not taken immediately but is referred to some thing that may come in consequence of it. Intellectual meanings may themselves be appropriated, enjoyed and appreciated; but the character of intellectual meaning is instrumental.
...
In principle the step is taken whenever objects are so reduced from their status of complete objects as to be treated as signs or indications of other objects. Enter upon this road and the time is sure to come when the appropriate object-of-knowledge is stripped of all that is immediate and qualitative, of all that is final, self-sufficient. Then it becomes an anatomized epitome of just and only those traits which are of indicative or instrumental import.
[/quote]
https://archive.org/stream/experienceandnat029343mbp/experienceandnat029343mbp_djvu.txt
As I read him, we (or certain philosophers) have tended to take these constantly present 'handles' or 'signs' as the 'real' being of the object.
Instrumentalism is one alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism
[quote=Dewey]
The empirical basis of the distinction between the apparent and the non-apparent thus lies in the need for inference. When we take the outstandingly evident as evidence, its status is subordinate to that of unperceived things. For the nonce, it is a way of establishing some- thing more fundamental than it is itself with respect to the object of inquiry. If we conceive of the world of immediately apparent things as an emergence of peaks of mountains which are submerged except as to their peaks or endings, and as a world of initial climbings whose subsequent career emerges above the surface only here and there and by fits and starts; and if we give attention to the fact that any ability of control whatever depends upon ability to unite these disparate appearances into a serial history, and then give due attention to the fact that connection into a consecutive history can be effected only by means of a scheme of constant relationships (a condition met by the mathematical-logical-mechanical objects of physics), we shall have no difficulty in seeing why it is that the immediate things from which we start lend themselves to interpretation as signs or appearances of the objects of physics; while we also recognize that it is only with respect to the function of instituting connection that the objects of physics can be said to be more "real." In the total situation in which they function, they are means to weaving together otherwise disconnected beginnings and endings into a consecutive history. Underlying "reality" and surface "appearance" in this connection have a meaning fixed by the function of inquiry, not an intrinsic metaphysical meaning.
[/quote]
The notion that every shape corresponds to a different form is not necessarily what platonism entails. Form doesn't mean shape. For example, the 'form' of a wing (or 'flight') might be realised as a bat wing, aeroplane wing, and bird wing.
Aristotle criticizes Plato because his concept or idea/form implies an infinite regression. If the idea is what the various individuals have in common there is a bat form and a flight form, and a black form, and an animal form, and a big ear form, etc.. And, what is worse, a form of what the idea of animal and the idea of life have in common, and a form of what they have in common the idea of what they have in common... The infinite chain can only be broken if an empirical resource is introduced: abstraction -as you did. But this is Aristotelian, not platonic.
In Kantian terminology I'm using now, intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.
You are probably using "intuition" in other sense.
Dewey's criticism of Kant is based on the fact that he does not take into account the pragmatic aspect of knowledge. I think it's relevant. It seems that he considered his theory as a new Copernican turn. He forgot about someone who had already claimed the priority of praxis over theoretical knowledge: Marx. Of course, Dewey was not going to quote Marx even if he knew him. You don't do that in the United States.
If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? It seems that praxis has to take into account reality's potential of adversity. I think pragmatism lacks some dialectics. It conceives of science as an ongoing success, rather than a contradiction between success and failure. That is the objective reality that escapes pragmatic optimism. And this is the subject's emergence.
Agree. I don’t have much to go on but a hunch right now but am intending to devote some serious reading to Plato’s theory of forms.
My basic intuition has always been that there are real ideas - real, not because there in someone’s mind, as we are naturally inclined to believe nowadays, but real in the domain of pure intelligibility. I think Plato intuited that but it’s a very difficult thing to grasp. Read these three points on Augustine on intelligible objects. (I have quoted this passage ad nauseam on this forum, but I’m still bewitched by it. )
But why should the sound/mark 'is' have some fixed, exact meaning? In general we use words together and not alone, and in non-theoretical situation.
Hey Dewey was a pragmatist, wasn’t he? So the least he can do is be adaptable.
I get the standard criticism of Platonic dualism - that it eschews the real world of color and movement for lifeless, bloodless abstraction, and I think there is some merit in that criticism, But I can’t help but feel there’s some hidden wellspring of vitality which is missed by those criticisms. (Just exploring ideas here.)
If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood?
intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition.
Philosophy advances by the appropriation of terms, no doubt. Appropriation of terms into subsequent domains still should be legitimatized.
Intuition...content of ideas.
Space and time.....templates of sensible intuitions
Ergo....space and time are the templates of sensible content of ideas.
Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. An object certainly has sensible content, but should such object then be merely an idea?
——————-
The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.
Certainly an empirical error, I’ll give you that. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a metaphysical error to use time without sensible material, though, even while space would suit the case. All human thought is successive, a condition of time without material content. In fact, any first principle of relation necessarily implies time as an a priori template, re: cause and effect. Or, A cannot simultaneously be not-A.
Actually, it might be a metaphysical error to use the templates of space and time WITH sensible material, because metaphysically, space and time don’t have any sensible material conceived as belonging to them.
My basic intuition has always been that there are real ideas - real, not because there in someone’s mind, as we are naturally inclined to believe nowadays, but real in the domain of pure intelligibility. I think Plato intuited that but it’s a very difficult thing to grasp.
But I can’t help but feel there’s some hidden wellspring of vitality which is missed by those criticisms.
Perhaps the timelessness or eternity of such a realm is what seduces. How are knowledge and time connected? In general, philosophers especially have sought imperishable knowledge. They have gazed at and described structures which are constantly present for those with eyes to see. Their descriptions are poetic acts that have given others these eyes to see. Even this way of looking at philosophical knowledge is itself caught up in that mission --in the articulation of the timeless essence of philosophy as the articulation of timeless essences.
In that sense philosophy is something like theory as religion.
[quote=Dewey]
The view which isolates knowledge, contemplation, liking, interest, value, or whatever from action is itself a survival of the notion that there are beings which can exist and be known apart from active connection with other things.
When man finds he is not a little god in his active powers and accomplishments, he retains his former conceit by hugging to his bosom the notion that nevertheless in some realm, be it knowledge or esthetic contemplation, he is still outside of and detached from the ongoing sweep of interacting and changing events; and being there alone and irresponsible save to himself, is as a god.
[/quote]
Philosophy offers us the pleasure of stepping out of time with all its risks and rottenness.
He forgot about someone who had already claimed the priority of praxis over theoretical knowledge: Marx.
Marx is a good mention. Dewey even briefly touches on priority of theoretical knowledge and its relationship to class. The elite man is (or was) a man of theoretical leisure, a leisure made possible by slaves, inherited wealth, etc.
If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? It seems that praxis has to take into account reality's potential of adversity. I think pragmatism lacks some dialectics. It conceives of science as an ongoing success, rather than a contradiction between success and failure. That is the objective reality that escapes pragmatic optimism. And this is the subject's emergence.
I like your themes. I do think pragmatism is (at its best) more sophisticated than your description of it, though---which is not to say that it's a last word or doesn't have problems.
...is categorically opposed to the Kantian a priori meaning, for any contingently prior background is merely another way to say “experience”.
“....By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience...”
Thus,.......consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe, might better be said.....whose prior view.
Cool. So my suggestion is that this should similarly apply to absolute space/time and relativistic spacetime.
That is, through experience, Einstein's Relativity has replaced Newtonian Physics (which approximates the predictions of Relativity in special cases).
An implication of the Kantian view is that two events that are simultaneous for one observer are simultaneous for all observers.
— Andrew M
Two events for a guy and guy standing right beside him, will be simultaneous to both, yes. The difference between the observations will be immeasurable.
OK, but for a third guy walking past, those two events won't be simultaneous.
“.....It is not at present our business to treat of empirical illusory appearance (for example, optical illusion), which occurs in the empirical application of otherwise correct rules of the understanding, and in which the judgement is misled by the influence of imagination...”
Yes. So it seems to me that Kant's notion of appearance is artificial. What problem does it solve that we haven't already solved with the natural distinction above.
If we see a straight stick partly submerged in water, we notice that it appears bent. This gives rise to the natural distinction between what something is (e.g., a straight stick) and how it appears under different conditions (e.g., the stick appears bent when partly submerged in water and it's possible to mistakenly think that the stick is bent).
— Andrew M
Even Bishop Berkeley had an answer for that!
Given the above distinction, what conceptual problem remains?
It really isn't so simple. Again, in physics, the question has been suggested by the conundrums sorrounding 'wave-particle' duality, for example.
I think the key point is that if you accept naturalism simply as a methodological assumption, then there's no problem to solve (which is I think what you are suggesting.)
There are still plenty of problems to solve even with that assumption (including philosophical) but at least they are then, in principle, solvable.
I think Kant's argument comes into play when metaphysical conclusions are drawn on the basis of methodological axioms - in other words, when arguments are made about first philosophy on the basis of scientific naturalism.
On naturalism, the methodological assumption of naturalism is reflected back on itself (i.e., as the study of the study of nature). So why would that be a problem and how would Kant's argument be relevant here?
He's not saying that - but he's also questioning the (generally implicit) view that most of us have, that the world exists completely independently of our perception of it (as per scientific realism).
You are saying that Kant questions the idea that the world exists independently of our perception of it. Now, of course we all acknowledge that the world as experienced does not exist independently of us, but we are able to draw conceptual distinctions between the world as it is perceived and as it is "in itself", and the latter, by definition, exists independently of human (or any other form of) perception.
Kant says we cannot prove the world exists in itself independently of our perceptions of it, but we are certainly able to think that it does (although obviously not how it does); so Kant is not questioning the independent existence of the world in itself at all, but the independence of the world as experienced. In other words he is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears).
If you think anything else you wrote in the post I responded to by allegedly "cherrypicking" has any bearing on the correctness of my criticism of the part I selected, then feel free to clarify.
I think Kant's argument comes into play when metaphysical conclusions are drawn on the basis of methodological axioms - in other words, when arguments are made about first philosophy on the basis of scientific naturalism.
— Wayfarer
On naturalism, the methodological assumption of naturalism is reflected back on itself (i.e., as the study of the study of nature). So why would that be a problem and how would Kant's argument be relevant here?
'First philosophy' or metaphysics is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. In a theistic metaphysics, then God is understood as being the source or ground of being. A naturalistic philosophy doesn't countenance such an idea as God is (by definition) super-natural, 'above' or transcendent to nature. So the attitude generally is, whatever hypothesis you want to consider, it can't include something which is by definition above and beyond the naturalist framework- which is what I'm calling 'metaphysical naturalism'. You see in many atheist arguments (including many posted here) that science proves or at least suggests that the world has a naturalistic explanation or can be thoroughly understood in naturalistic terms and that there is nothing outside or above or transcendent to nature in terms of which understanding ought to be sought.
This is where Kant is relevant - recall that he said that a central goal of his critical philosophy is to 'discover the limit to knowledge so as to make room for faith'.
I'm arguing that is that it is possible to pursue a naturalist account while still understanding that it has limits in principle - that the naturalist account is not all there is (which is what I understand Kant to be saying.) That is what I mean by distinguishing methodological from metaphysical naturalism - the former sets aside or brackets out metaphysics in pursuit of the naturalist account. But it doesn't necessarily say anything about what if anything might be beyond that. It's close in meaning to Huxley's agnosticism.
In other words [Kant] is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears).
I think many scientific realists would either not be sympathetic to Kant, or wouldn't understand his critical philosophy. Some would but it would not be uniform by any means. (What was the wisecrack Richard Feynman made? That philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds?)
Consider the point in this thread where I brought this up - it was the quotation by Andrei Linde about the 'role of the observer' in understanding the nature of time. Linde is a physicist and cosmologist, responsible for a lot of the current theory around big bang cosmology:
[quote= Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma] The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. [/quote]
So, I'm arguing that this point is basically Kantian - that it acknowledges that time doesn't exist independently of the observing mind; where there is measurement, there is mind, and that also goes for the naturalist understanding of the early Universe. And this conforms with what I understand Kant to be saying:
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are called external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us.
(A370)
which he contrasts with 'transcendental realism':
The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
(CPR, A369)
I know I'm not a Kant scholar but this particular point is central to what he described as his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that 'things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things'. I'm not making any point beyond that.
I know I'm not a Kant scholar but this particular point is central to what he described as his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that 'things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things'. I'm not making any point beyond that.
Of course things as experienced must "conform to thoughts", but Kant would not say that things in themselves must conform to thoughts; in facts he is saying quite the obverse.
And note in the passage quoted:
The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
(CPR, A369)
He is just saying that transcendental realists are naive realists insofar as they conflate things in themselves with appearances, which is entirely in accordance with what I have been saying.
Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content.
So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? Or is it the result of applying a logical (non-x) category to things in general? I would say that "nothingness" is a metaphysical idea when you turn a logical relationship (negation) into a substance: "the" nothingness. Perhaps the same can be done with "the" Invisibility. Parmenides started with that - it is said.
Actually, it might be a metaphysical error to use the templates of space and time WITH sensible material, because metaphysically, space and time don’t have any sensible material conceived as belonging to them.
We speak of things that happen IN time but it would be more exact to say that we measured things with time. Time without events and observers would vanished.
Relativity prevents us to consider that time is absolute? Is it not so?
Kant says we cannot prove the world exists in itself independently of our perceptions of it, but we are certainly able to think that it does (although obviously not how it does); so Kant is not questioning the independent existence of the world in itself at all, but the independence of the world as experienced. In other words he is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears).
Scientific realism is not a single doctrine. There are several scientific realisms ranging from dogmatic realism to cautious realism. I would say that the most widespread version today is: Scientific theories are an approximate description of reality. What "approximate" means is not easy to say.
In my opinion - after Kuhn - approximate can be interpreted as a refinement in predictions and measurements within a given paradigm. This implies that we must identify objectivity with prediction and intersubjectivity, which is not evident in itself in all cases.
Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. — Mww
So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? Or is it the result of applying a logical (non-x) category to things in general? I would say that "nothingness" is a metaphysical idea when you turn a logical relationship (negation) into a substance: "the" nothingness. Perhaps the same can be done with "the" Invisibility. Parmenides started with that - it is said.
Would Kant think that invisibility is the concept of visibility with zero intensity? The succession of the sensations of visibility is (has attained, or is still) zero i.e. without fulfillment or empty. Or something like that. Then this concept would be used "correctly" i.e. in the context of empirical experience. The category of quality would be in that way operative, category, that helps to "determine" the degree of reality. (Actually the category of quantity is involved here too.)
In Kantian terminology I'm using now, intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.
You are probably using "intuition" in other sense.
Few remarks (I am not a native speaker of English or German, however, I read Kant in German):
The translation of intuition (Anschauung) can be very deceptive. It seems that Kant uses intuition (as a German word) only referring to intellectual intuition. This kind of intuition doesn't refer to any (pure or sensible) Anschauung (intuition) at all . On the other hand, there is Anschauung as sensible intuition i.e empirical intuition preceding the perception (Wahrnehmung) of object. Then, there is Anschauung as a "visual" illustrative aid in geometrical-mathematical construction (pure intuition; math. figures or forms are pure or ideal). Finally, there is imaginative or reproductive Anschauung (Einbildung) where empirical appearances are reconstructed in mind when one doesn't have a direct perception of the object.
The translation of intuition (Anschauung) can be very deceptive. It seems that Kant uses intuition (as a German word) only referring to intellectual intuition.
From B34 onwards I have found more than fifty occurrences of the term "sensible intuition" in the English version of Cambridge University Press, 1998. Which German term are they translating?
From B34 onwards I have found more than fifty occurrences of the term "sensible intuition" in the English version of Cambridge University Press, 1998. Which German term are they translating?
They probably translate the verb anschauen (or Anschauung as noun), that is, "intuiting" in the context of "real" sensual-empirical cognition here and now. Sensible intuition is receptivity, something "passive" where material is given. Possibly the "deduction" section in Critique should be consulted where Kant deals with the imagination (Einbildung) etc. (I try here to clarify these terms for myself too. My knowledge of Kant is rusty and lacking in many ways.) (Husserl has a lot to say about these phenomena, by the way.)
Metaphysician UndercoverJanuary 16, 2020 at 13:00#3722050 likes
Philosophy offers us the pleasure of stepping out of time with all its risks and rottenness.
This I disagree with. As philosophers we might seek that eternal truth, but when all we find is the deficiencies of human knowledge we are deprived of that pleasure. Philosophy doesn't offer us that pleasure, it dispels the illusion that we might obtain it.
Thus,.......consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe, might better be said.....whose prior view.
— Mww
Cool. So my suggestion is that this should similarly apply to absolute space/time and relativistic spacetime.
Yes, I see what you mean. Newtonian absolute space/time was the view prior to relativistic spacetime.
That is, through experience, Einstein's Relativity has replaced Newtonian Physics. Doesn't that contradict the Kantian view?
I’m not understanding what in Einstein would contradict Kant. Where did Einstein prove Kant wrong, in as much as they each operated from two distinct technological and scientific domains? Kant had no significant velocities other than a horse, and there were no trains, which together negate even the very notion of time differential reference frames, so there wouldn’t appear to be any reason for Kant to notice measurable discrepancies in rest/motion velocities.
—————-
So it seems to me that Kant's notion of appearance is artificial. What problem does it solve that we haven't already solved with the natural distinction above.
What problem is there, that the natural distinction above solves? Appearance in Kantian terminology can’t be artificial in any sense, because it is a representation of sensation. If there is a sensation, there will be an appearance, period. And it is necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between sensation and appearance, otherwise there is no ground for the subsequent cognitive procedures, which falsifies the entire system. Appearance in Kant is like making the scene, as in “...that which appears...”, not what a thing looks like, because the advent of appearance in the system is long before cognition, which means there is nothing known whatsoever about the appearance except that one has occurred, been presented, to the system. Thus, it shouldn’t be said that that which is unknown at a certain time is thereby artificial.
I’m open to clarification on either of these, if you wish to provide it.
We speak of things that happen IN time but it would be more exact to say that we measured things with time. Time without events and observers would vanished.
Yes, things happen in time is a general statement, or a general condition of all measurable things. Still, when we say we are measuring things with time, we are merely denoting the amount of time IN which a thing happens.
—————-
Depends on the metaphysical theory in play. According to Kant it is, because invisibility has no object of its own, so would be a concept of reason, hence, transcendental, which is itself in the metaphysical paradigm. Things may indeed be invisible and still present a sensation to the process of cognition, hence are subject to the categories, but the concept of invisibility, in and of itself, is not so subject. It is the thing by which we are affected, not the invisibility of it.
As philosophers we might seek that eternal truth, but when all we find is the deficiencies of human knowledge we are deprived of that pleasure. Philosophy doesn't offer us that pleasure, it dispels the illusion that we might obtain it.
Perhaps, but does it not offer us nevertheless the pleasure of being wised up about our situation? If it didn't put us in a superior position, why would we spread it, cultivate it, pride ourselves on its study?
And how can we trust that our knowledge is deficient if knowledge of such deficiency is a part of that knowledge? It's hard to avoid positive claims and still do philosophy. Even 'skeptics' find themselves asserting timeless truths about human cognition.
Scientific realism is not a single doctrine. There are several scientific realisms ranging from dogmatic realism to cautious realism. I would say that the most widespread version today is: Scientific theories are an approximate description of reality. What "approximate" means is not easy to say.
In my opinion - after Kuhn - approximate can be interpreted as a refinement in predictions and measurements within a given paradigm. This implies that we must identify objectivity with prediction and intersubjectivity, which is not evident in itself in all cases.
It's true there are several versions of scientific realism, but I doubt that many scientists would deny that they are dealing with the world as perceived by humans.
The idea that scientific theories are approximate descriptions of reality is completely in accordance with the Kantian idea that we know things in themselves not as things in themselves but only as appearances. Kant does not claim that we entirely "construct" our reality, only that the form of our reality as appearance is mediated by the human perceptual system and brain.
Here's a nice quote regarding the relationship between something like Kantianism and science. It's a long, illuminating footnote from the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism#cite_note-Torretti-Duhem-3
[quote=link]
Roberto Torretti, The Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 242–43: "Like Whewell and Mach, Duhem was a practicing scientist who devoted an important part of his adult life to the history and philosophy of physics. ... His philosophy is contained in La théorie physique: son objet, sa structure [The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory] (1906), which may well be, to this day, the best overall book on the subject. Its main theses, although quite novel when first put forward, have in the meantime become commonplace, so I shall review them summarily without detailed argument, just to associate them with his name. But first I ought to say that neither in the first nor in the second (1914) edition of his book did Duhem take into account—or even so much as mention—the deep changes that were then taking place in physics. Still, the subsequent success and current entrenchment of Duhem's ideas are due above all to their remarkable agreement with—and the light they throw on—the practice of mathematical physics in the twentieth century. In the first part of La théorie physique, Duhem contrasts two opinions concerning the aim of physical theory. For some authors, it ought to furnish 'the explanation of a set of experimentally established laws', while for others it is 'an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and logically classify a set of experimental laws, without pretending to explain these laws' (Duhem 1914, p. 3). Duhem resolutely sides with the latter. His rejection of the former rests on his understanding of 'explanation' ('explication' in French), which he expresses as follows: 'To explain, explicare, is to divest reality from the appearances which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4). Authors in the first group expect from physics the true vision of things-in-themselves that religious myth and philosophical speculation have hitherto been unable to supply. Their explanation makes no sense unless (i) there is, 'beneath the sense appearances revealed to us by our perceptions, [...] a reality different from these appearances' and (ii) we know 'the nature of the elements which constitute' that reality (p 7). Thus, physical theory cannot explain—in the stated sense—the laws established by experiment unless it depends on metaphysics and thus remains subject to the interminable disputes of metaphysicians. Worse still, the teachings of no metaphysical school are sufficiently detailed and precise to account for all of the elements of physical theory (p 18). Duhem instead assigns to physical theories a more modest but autonomous and readily attainable aim: 'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)".
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link:'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)"
:up:
Duhem was a pretty major intellectual. I never encountered him at University but have since read about him.
I'm glad someone else liked that quote. 'As simply, completely, and exactly as possible' means also perhaps as economically or efficiently as possible.
I found another quote that may add to this thread, with the theme of holism.
[quote= Quine]
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections - the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.
If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement - especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?
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https://coursys.sfu.ca/2015fa-phil-880-g1/pages/quine1/view
To me this is one of those things that's obvious when pointed out. We meet the world not piecemeal but with the entirely of our culture.
link:Duhem resolutely sides with the latter. His rejection of the former rests on his understanding of 'explanation' ('explication' in French), which he expresses as follows: 'To explain, explicare, is to divest reality from the appearances which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4).
What's interesting here is the metaphor of stripping reality naked, of unveiling or unmasking it.
link:Duhem instead assigns to physical theories a more modest but autonomous and readily attainable aim: 'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)".
Perhaps those with more physics training can correct me if I am wrong. But it's my impression that laws of nature (patterns expected in measurements) tend to be 'timeless' or invariant. So finding patterns persistent patterns in observations is like seeing 'behind' or 'through' change to the the structure that persists in it. In this sense, Duhem's metaphor of divestment remains active, which helps explain why we tend to talk in terms of scientific explanation, despite the plausibility of certain objections.
If science doesn't explain, what does explain? Do religious myths explain? Are they to some degree a kind of science of human nature, expressed in metaphors? I'm tempted to contrast equations with metaphors, though I don't see how equations evade being organized in a largely metaphorical body of thought when connected to the world and their application.
If Hadot is right, then philosophy has at times been more about a way of life that included knowledge rather than a quasi-scientific endeavor. Pragmatic instrumentalism actually returns to this centrality of life, but usually with a worldly, irreligious spirit. An individual, eclectic reader --who is not terribly interested in adopting and defending this or that -ism -- can get 'spiritual insight' from one author and worldly metacognition from another. To me it seems plausible that philosophy is a gallery of metaphors, linked logically, with a range of applications. In another thread someone asks if philosophy is dead. Strange question! Is reading Pascal really comparable to reading a physics textbook?
link:Authors in the first group expect from physics the true vision of things-in-themselves that religious myth and philosophical speculation have hitherto been unable to supply. Their explanation makes no sense unless (i) there is, 'beneath the sense appearances revealed to us by our perceptions, [...] a reality different from these appearances' and (ii) we know 'the nature of the elements which constitute' that reality (p 7). Thus, physical theory cannot explain
It occurs to me that this argument itself seems metaphysical, or at least meta-metaphysical is some quasi-Kantian sense..which supports the quote from Quine. It is hard indeed to get that desired-by-some clean separation of metaphysics from what it threatens to 'contaminate.'
https://youtu.be/UneS2Uwc6xw?t=58
Even 'skeptics' find themselves asserting timeless truths about human cognition.
I found this on the instrumentalism Wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism
[quote=link]
Kant apparently presumed that the human mind, rather than a phenomenon itself that had evolved, had been predetermined and set forth upon the formation of humankind. In any event, the mind also was the veil of appearance that scientific methods could never lift.
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What did Kant make of the brain? Was his philosophy only as stable as the human brain? Did it have a kind of timeless spiritual substance as its foundation? To which the brain is only empirically and uncertainly related? Is pure reason brain independent? Can pure reason prove its own stability to itself? Or if time is just its own creation or mode of revelation, what then?
They probably translate the verb anschauen (or Anschauung as noun), that is, "intuiting" in the context of "real" sensual-empirical cognition here and now. Sensible intuition is receptivity, something "passive" where material is given.
It seems that "Anschauung" doesn't have an easy translation:
Space and time being Anschauungen, Kant argues that they are of the same kind as the sense-data of knowl edge, that they are inherent in our nature. Thus Kant maintains :"Sensations are the products of our sensibility, and space and time are the forms of our sensibility. " The word Anschauung has been a crux interpretum since translations have been made from Kant, and it is quite true that no adequate word to express it, exists in English. (WHAT DOES ANSCHAUUNG MEAN?,The Monist, Vol. 2, No. 4 (July, 1892), pp. 527-532. Editorial note)
In any case, the notions of sensible intuition and intellectual intuition share in Kant the quality of being immediate, that is, non-deductive. This is why the translators' option of unifying them under the same generic root (intuition) seems convenient. And in fact it has become the norm in translations from the languages I know.
It's true there are several versions of scientific realism, but I doubt that many scientists would deny that they are dealing with the world as perceived by humans.
From what I know of some scientists who write books the idea that they are describing the world of sensations is not universal. Some of them (many?) think that they are dealing with the real world that it is not the world of appearances. For example, the doctrine of two worlds (micro and macro) is a commonplace in the Copenhagen version of quantum mechanics.
jjAmEs:'To explain, explicare, is to divest reality from the appearances which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4).
If such a maximalist concept of explanation is adopted, nothing is an explanation.
In a less maximalist way, to explain is to include the unknown within the known. Thus, science explains by including the particular within the universal, the perceived within (as a case of) the law. And particular laws under more general laws.
If science doesn't explain, what does explain? Do religious myths explain? Are they to some degree a kind of science of human nature, expressed in metaphors?
Metaphors don't explain. They suggest. Obviously, religion is the opposite to explanation because reduces the known to unknown. It is a pseudo-explanantion because uses the form of an explanation, not its clearing power.
Some of them (many [scientists]?) think that they are dealing with the real world that it is not the world of appearances. For example, the doctrine of two worlds (micro and macro) is a commonplace in the Copenhagen version of quantum mechanics.
Agree. I don’t think science on the whole is nearly as philosophically aware as Janus suggests. There are individual scientists who are, of course, but I don’t think they’re the rule. But the difference between philosophy and science is a philosophical difference, which means it will not be understood by a lot of science-y types. ‘Show me the data! Where’s the data! All you have is words!’ ;-)
Metaphysician UndercoverJanuary 17, 2020 at 13:36#3725210 likes
Perhaps, but does it not offer us nevertheless the pleasure of being wised up about our situation? If it didn't put us in a superior position, why would we spread it, cultivate it, pride ourselves on its study?
It's questionable whether this is a pleasure. We tend to get pleasure from fulfillment of desire. If we seek knowledge, and all we get (what you call "being wised up") is a recognition that we have none of what we want, like Socrates, how can this be pleasurable? We must avoid contradiction, if it's what we want, then it's impossible that we already have it.
I think this is why Plato sought to put "good" in a category other than pleasure and pain. If pleasure and pain are diametrically opposed, and 'good" is associated with pleasure, then we can only get to the good through a release from pain, therefore pain is necessary for good. So he put "good" into a category with knowledge, which is distinct from the opposing pleasure and pain. Now, what is sought as knowledge, is sought as being good, but acquiring knowledge is not "pleasure", and having a lack of knowledge is not "pain".
Contradiction is avoided because knowing, knowledge, and good, are taken from Parmenides' category of being and eternal truth, and placed into Heraclitus' category of becoming. When we steadfastly avoid contradiction, we are forced to reconsider the law of excluded middle, and Aristotle puts considerable effort into this. What follows is that we take knowledge from the realm of what is and is not, and place it into the realm of what may or may not be.
And how can we trust that our knowledge is deficient if knowledge of such deficiency is a part of that knowledge? It's hard to avoid positive claims and still do philosophy. Even 'skeptics' find themselves asserting timeless truths about human cognition.
I don't agree with this, because there is an issue of what is intended by the person making the assertions. When a skeptic asserts a principle of skepticism, it is meant as a principle of guidance for that particular set of circumstances, which the skeptic is in. It is not asserted as a timeless truth. For a person who thinks of such principles as timeless truths, it would appear like the skeptic is asserting timeless truths. But this is a misinterpretation, because it is not what was meant.
It's simply a different way of looking at things. Recognizing that one's own knowledge, and human knowledge in general, is deficient, is not to see knowledge in terms of timeless truths, but to see knowledge and principles as changing and evolving. Once we dismiss timeless truths we have a completely different perspective which cannot be described in terms of timeless truths.
Recognizing that one's own knowledge, and human knowledge in general, is deficient, is not to see knowledge in terms of timeless truths, but to see knowledge and principles as changing and evolving.
Indeed. But I'm suggesting that seeing knowledge as evolving is seeing its timeless essence as evolution and change. So a skeptic in this sense ultimately believes that knowledge won't achieve some kind of perfection, stop changing, etc.
Or to make this more concrete: we have some Kantians in this thread and also some mystics. The Kantians 'know' that the mystics can't really have access to metaphysical truths but only to the meta-metaphysical truth that such access is impossible. The mystics simply ignore this. I'm more a Kantian personally, but one could argue that the metametaphysical belief is still just a metaphysical belief that puffs itself up.
In the same way, I think it's fair to say that the atheist has a certain bias toward atheism just as the theist has a bias toward theism. People find arguments (largely) after the fact. As I read your position, you'd probably reject those who make claims of direct access to Truth, since your basic position seems to be that we are stuck at a certain distance from this object of our longing. The Monet effect. But I'd guess that you don't like truth-scorning pragmatism (because you include metaphysics in your handle.)
In my experience, there's a spectrum that runs from mysticism/religion all the way to intense pragmatism and even irrationalism. In between we get critical metaphysics, scientism, etc. And people don't much move from these positions but only get better at defending and presenting them. (Maybe I'm joining the skeptic here, saying that the essence of the mind is to stay put when it a certain existential problem is mostly solved.)
From what I know of some scientists who write books the idea that they are describing the world of sensations is not universal.
I didn't say they think they are describing the "world of sensations", whatever that might even mean, but the world of things (which are revealed by sensation, obviously).
Do you mean that we hardly share a single culture these days? If so, I agree.
Yes that, but also I mean that culture itself is not any kind of unity in the sense of being organically complete like an organism is thought to be. It is more like a shifting river.
'First philosophy' or metaphysics is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. In a theistic metaphysics, then God is understood as being the source or ground of being. A naturalistic philosophy doesn't countenance such an idea as God is (by definition) super-natural, 'above' or transcendent to nature. So the attitude generally is, whatever hypothesis you want to consider, it can't include something which is by definition above and beyond the naturalist framework- which is what I'm calling 'metaphysical naturalism'. You see in many atheist arguments (including many posted here) that science proves or at least suggests that the world has a naturalistic explanation or can be thoroughly understood in naturalistic terms and that there is nothing outside or above or transcendent to nature in terms of which understanding ought to be sought.
That particular definition notwithstanding (which is a modern one, btw), I don't think naturalism presupposes an answer about God one way or the other. Aristotle was a natural philosopher and, on the basis of his observations of the world, argued for an Unmoved Mover.
Now whether or not his argument is correct, its seems to me that he didn't consider his argument to be going beyond nature or transcending nature. Instead he was just continuing to apply the same natural methodology to ultimate things. For Aristotle, knowledge of the universal always proceeds from the particular.
As you know, the Scholastics (as with Aristotle) considered themselves to be making natural arguments for the existence of God, which was termed natural theology as opposed to revealed theology.
René Descartes' metaphysical system of mind–body dualism describes two kinds of substance: matter and mind. According to this system, everything that is "matter" is deterministic and natural—and so belongs to natural philosophy—and everything that is "mind" is volitional and non-natural, and falls outside the domain of philosophy of nature.
Here we see Descartes placing limits on what can, in principle, be known in the context of natural philosophy.
This is where Kant is relevant - recall that he said that a central goal of his critical philosophy is to 'discover the limit to knowledge so as to make room for faith'.
I'm arguing that is that it is possible to pursue a naturalist account while still understanding that it has limits in principle - that the naturalist account is not all there is (which is what I understand Kant to be saying.) That is what I mean by distinguishing methodological from metaphysical naturalism - the former sets aside or brackets out metaphysics in pursuit of the naturalist account. But it doesn't necessarily say anything about what if anything might be beyond that. It's close in meaning to Huxley's agnosticism.
So I would note that the premise of in-principle limits on knowledge is contrary to the premise that ultimate themes can be investigated in the context of natural philosophy.
In my view, naturalism doesn't presuppose either theism or atheism any more than it presupposes either Newtonian physics or Einsteinein relativity. Instead, whatever one's hypothesis, an argument from nature should be made. The relevant distinction isn't between naturalism and theism, but between naturalism and dualism.
That is, through experience, Einstein's Relativity has replaced Newtonian Physics. Doesn't that contradict the Kantian view?
— Andrew M
I’m not understanding what in Einstein would contradict Kant. Where did Einstein prove Kant wrong, in as much as they each operated from two distinct technological and scientific domains? Kant had no significant velocities other than a horse, and there were no trains, which together negate even the very notion of time differential reference frames, so there wouldn’t appear to be any reason for Kant to notice measurable discrepancies in rest/motion velocities.
He had no reason to notice, perhaps. But the discrepancies are there and we've subsequently discovered, per Relativity, that the geometry of space and time is non-Euclidean. Which means that Kant's (synthetic a priori) judgments about space and time have been falsified by experience.
What problem is there, that the natural distinction above solves?
The stick example shows that one can be mistaken about what they think they've perceived. So the language term "appear" is introduced to represent that situation (e.g., the straight stick appeared to be bent). The problem it solves is to give us language for describing a naturally-occurring situation. Things aren't always as they appear to be.
Appearance in Kantian terminology can’t be artificial in any sense, because it is a representation of sensation. If there is a sensation, there will be an appearance, period. And it is necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between sensation and appearance, otherwise there is no ground for the subsequent cognitive procedures, which falsifies the entire system. Appearance in Kant is like making the scene, as in “...that which appears...”, not what a thing looks like, because the advent of appearance in the system is long before cognition, which means there is nothing known whatsoever about the appearance except that one has occurred, been presented, to the system. Thus, it shouldn’t be said that that which is unknown at a certain time is thereby artificial.
You're showing the role the term plays in Kant's system. Fair enough. But that shifts the question to be about his system as a whole. What problem is it solving?
Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?
Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?
I'd say it fails us insofar as it unreflectively leads to naive realism, which is an unwarranted standpoint, or at least a distorted, because incomplete, picture of our situation.
If such a maximalist concept of explanation is adopted, nothing is an explanation.
I agree with that criticism. My most considered view is that the meaning of 'explanation' depends on context. Even then that meaning is strictly determinate (for reasons that Derrida is famous for presenting.)
Metaphors don't explain. They suggest. Obviously, religion is the opposite to explanation because reduces the known to unknown. It is a pseudo-explanantion because uses the form of an explanation, not its clearing power.
I find the situation more complicated. Although I'm an atheist (which I mentioned to be excused from the expected bias), I think that religious myth has a metaphysical function among other functions. I do like your notion that explanation connects the unknown to the known, or the unfamiliar to the familiar. But I think we find that in analogy, metaphor, and myth.
The creation myth is one example. If one believes that a human-like creator is responsible for all that is, then an unknown cause or the (psycho-)logical impossibility of a cause is replaced with a human-like intention. A total darkness is made user-friendly and familiar. For believers, God is not unknown, or not primarily unknown. God is what makes sense and what makes the world makes sense.
What is the 'clearing power' of explanation? For me there are roughly two kinds of power to be had, practical and emotional, which can be emphasized respectively in the directions of technology and religion. (This is an oversimplification, of course, but perhaps it clarifies.)
Yes that, but also I mean that culture itself is not any kind of unity in the sense of being organically complete like an organism is thought to be. It is more like a shifting river.
Ah, well I agree that organism is not a perfect metaphor then. For me the main idea is that our beliefs are entangled in a kind of system. We meet each new claim with years of sedimented experience.
Can you provide any quotes to substantiate this claim?
I can, but it would take too much time for an obvious issue.
For the moment, consider this:
Galileo: the world is a book written in mathematical language.
Descartes: the essence of things is mathematical.
Heisenberg: the world of quantum mechanics is Platonic.
Einstein: he begins with Machism and positivism but finally rejects his concept of empirical meaning.
It seems that the idea that scientific explanation is contrary to intuition is the same as saying that it is opposite to the world of appearances... for many scientists. They adhere to the classic distinction between primary and secondary qualities. What is seen is subjective (qualia) and unobservable scientific objects are objective.
If it helps you in any way:
The belief in a external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world of 'physical reality' indirectIy, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means" (Albert Einstein: "Clerk Maxwell's Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality" (1931), The World as I see lt ).
For believers, God is not unknown, or not primarily unknown.
This is my point. Believers may affirm that they know God, but when obliged to clarify what they understand by God they stray into a world of contradictions, negations and darkness. When sincere they fall in God's silence, existential anguish or negative theologies. Therefore, if God is the Nothingness of rational thinking it can't explain nothing. From nothing nothing proceeds -parodying Parmenides.
Explanation subsumes the contingent (individual) in the necessary (universal). Take these words in a relative sense if you like.
Of course, explanation has practical and emotional consequences as you say. The former are evident: science is the most resilient example. The latter are less evident: contingency is anguishing. We have two options: we mitigate contingency with satisfying explanations or we face it. The former leads to positivism. The latter to existentialism. Take these words in a wide sense again, please.
when obliged to clarify what they understand by God they stray into a world of contradictions, negations and darkness.
Reply to David Mo
As another hyper-critical atheist, I agree that intellectualized theism tends to stray into contradictions, differences that make no difference, gestures toward ineffability, etc. At the same, I don't feel adoration for Maxwell's laws but only admiration for the ingenuity that made them possible. To me (non-human) 'Nature' is a 'stupid' machine. Why am I attached to being rational? Much of it is pragmatic. I don't want to eat bad food, waste my money, be taken in by the wishful thinking of others in ways that will harm me in the usual, animal ways. But it's also 'irrationally' a matter of style. You say you don't like gloom. But isn't a certain gloom natural enough now and then in a godless world? Along with a certain ecstasy? The species with all its new toys is on a wild ride, and yet its eyes still gleam with dreams of something beyond it all. Except for us critical types, and yet that too is a dream. I at least confess that I am biased toward my atheism and mitigated skepticism. It was not the result of some clean calculation. We don't choose our faces or the thinkers we respond to. I am the product of my environment, or so my environment has forced me to believe.
And on myths as bad science...myths and rituals are richer than that. And I suggest that the non-philosophically religious get something from it, something anti-gloom and optimistic. If all is made fair in the afterlife, then horror becomes a kind of illusion. For me, an atheist, it's no illusion. And death is the utter annihilation of the individual. At the same time, we can tune in while still alive to what is universally great in the human experience, which is basically all the highest forms of relating to others, both directly and through culture. Death loses its sting when we lose ourselves in love (including in the love of theory.) And, along these lines, reincarnation is metaphorically correct. So is 'he who seeks to save his life shall lose it.' What I'm getting at is that religious myths are suggestive and flexible enough to be read more or less literally. This interpretative continuum makes it hard to reduce all religious thought to bad philosophy or bad science. Much of it is wisdom writing, psychology and sociology in narrative form, etc. And then myths are just pre-rationally potent as incitements.
Explanation subsumes the contingent (individual) in the necessary (universal).
For scientific explanation, this makes sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive-nomological_model
At the same time, reality is messier than that. We can't explain all the ways in which we use or all the meanings of 'explain.' If meaning is determined by context, then context is boundless. Though obviously we can use our marks and noises well enough to survive this long as a species and as individuals.
Of course, explanation has practical and emotional consequences. The former are evident: science is the most resilient example. The latter are less evident: contingency is anguishing. We have two options: we mitigate contingency with satisfying explanations or we face it. The former leads to positivism. The latter to existentialism. Take these words in a wide sense again, please.
Why is contingency anguishing? I think it's fear of the future. So what we really want is protection against the future. Maybe it's a forecast. Maybe it's an afterlife. Desire, fear, time, knowledge. And time is especially futurity for desire and fear.
One way to escape time is to gaze on the forms, on the eternal structure of human cognition, on the essence of science or rationality, on the temporal structure of existence, etc.
Is the positivist just the existentialist who is too cool to talk about feelings ? Maybe not quite that, because the more famous existentialists tended to have their causes. So perhaps the positivist (not Comte but later types) is grimmer or meaner or more detached than that. Hobbes was mentioned earlier. He's a kind of positivist. 'If you monkeys don't want to die young and poor, then try this.' He names his book after a monster. (I relate to that monstrosity, to the degree that rational philosophy has the eyes of a dragon. Trying to see human nature and notions of good and evil from the outside is 'wicked,' in that it climbs if possible above every loyalty but one.)
the Scholastics (as with Aristotle) considered themselves to be making natural arguments for the existence of God, which was termed natural theology as opposed to revealed theology.
However, no scholastic would have said you could have reached an understanding of God without revelation in the first place. Given faith, then reason could be deployed in support of faith, but for those without faith, reason would not suffice.
Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?
— Andrew M
I'd say it fails us insofar as it unreflectively leads to naive realism, which is an unwarranted standpoint, or at least a distorted, because incomplete, picture of our situation.
Though that would seem to be a failure of a person to understand how the language terms function rather than a problem with the language itself.
However, no scholastic would have said you could have reached an understanding of God without revelation in the first place. Given faith, then reason could be deployed in support of faith, but for those without faith, reason would not suffice.
Not a full understanding, sure. But certainly the Scholastics believed (and the Catholic church still teaches) that faith presupposes natural knowledge of God's existence.
The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected. Nevertheless, there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated.
Metaphysician UndercoverJanuary 18, 2020 at 13:13#3728760 likes
Or to make this more concrete: we have some Kantians in this thread and also some mystics. The Kantians 'know' that the mystics can't really have access to metaphysical truths but only to the meta-metaphysical truth that such access is impossible. The mystics simply ignore this. I'm more a Kantian personally, but one could argue that the metametaphysical belief is still just a metaphysical belief that puffs itself up.
Do you not see the problem with your representation? If someone states "truth is impossible", then it's very clear that they are not presenting this as a truth. To represent this as if the person were stating what is believed to be a "truth", is an obvious a misinterpretation. It's a classic straw man. The person has stated "truth is impossible". Clearly they are not stating that they believe that this is a truth. If you cannot apprehend this, you could ask the person how they think that statements and beliefs represent something other than truths, and try to learn and understand the person's perspective, but to simply assert that they must be stating this as a truth, because that's how it appears from my perspective, is to completely misunderstand, and not even attempt to understand the other person.
As I read your position, you'd probably reject those who make claims of direct access to Truth, since your basic position seems to be that we are stuck at a certain distance from this object of our longing.
There's a difference between claiming that there is no such thing as truth, and claiming that we do not have direct access to truth. If Truth requires God, then claiming that we have no direct access to Truth still admits to a belief in God, because it is implied that there is a Truth (therefore God) which we do not have access to. Atheism implies that there is no such thing as Truth, when Truth requires God.
Aristotle was a natural philosopher and, on the basis of his observations of the world, argued for an Unmoved Mover.
The Unmoved Mover is actually quite distinct from God. Aristotle demonstrated that anything eternal must be actual. In this way he separated the concept of "eternal" from "infinite". "Infinite" was demonstrated as necessarily potential. He then posited the Unmoved Mover to account for the eternal actuality, that actuality which is necessarily prior to the potential for material existence. However, he described the eternal actuality as a circular motion, which is a description of a material thing, with infinite time duration. So his Unmoved Mover is a faulty concept which falls back into the category of an infinite material existence, which he had demonstrated was impossible. The Unmoved Mover is inconsistent with his logical demonstrations.
So the Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians understand "eternal" in a different way, meaning outside of time. And this is how God is understood, as outside of time, not as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. This is very important, because "eternal" in this context does not mean an infinite duration of time (what Aristotle demonstrated as impossible, then turned around and proposed as Unmoved Mover), it means outside time.
And on myths as bad science...myths and rituals are richer than that. And I suggest that the non-philosophically religious get something from it, something anti-gloom and optimistic.
What I'm getting at is that religious myths are suggestive and flexible enough to be read more or less literally. This interpretative continuum makes it hard to reduce all religious thought to bad philosophy or bad science. Much of it is wisdom writing, psychology and sociology in narrative form, etc. And then myths are just pre-rationally potent as incitements.
There are optimistic and pessimistic myths. Cruel, submissive, rebellious or stupid. Some express the best human wishes and others the worst. They are usually the product of power societies and prescribe relationships of domination. What kind of wisdom can claim one thing and its opposite?
Myths are not bad science. Myths are ideology. They can suggest at best. They can never explain.
Why is contingency anguishing? I think it's fear of the future.
You don't need to go to the far future. Contingency causes the anguish of the present and the next immediate moment. If everyone - including myself - is so unstable that they can be what they are now and a thousand other things without any control, where is the sense of the world? What is my reason for trying to act in one way or another?
This is the impetus for any kind of necesity inside or outside this world. Laws of nature or immortal gods. May they bless us or may they crush us, but may they exist.
Though that would seem to be a failure of a person to understand how the language terms function rather than a problem with the language itself.
The very idea of failure of language per se seems incoherent to me. The point for me is that certain ideas may lead "naturally" to unreflective reification.
The idea of revelation leading to "natural knowledge of God" you touch on above is one example.
One example of faith consists in believing that there is any natural knowledge of God's existence.
My choice is to seek clarity among the darkness, not to add more darkness to the darkness.
Fair enough, but note the metaphor of light/darkness. I don't object to this making of clarity or light as hero. To the contrary. I'm just shining a light on our metaphorical/mythical framing of the project as the shining of a light.
If everyone - including myself - is so unstable that they can be what they are now and a thousand other things without any control, where is the sense of the world? What is my reason for trying to act in one way or another?
To me this concern feeds in to identity as something that endures. An essence weathers many moments. You also mention control. I'm suggesting that we need orientation and control, with control guided by predictions. 'If I do X, then this happens. If I do Y, then this happens.' It seems to me that the imagination is largely for running simulations.
This is the impetus for any kind of necesity inside or outside this world. Laws of nature or immortal gods. May they bless us or may they crush us, but may they exist.
Yes, we need some structure to exist. Even an unfriendly structure is a comfort if contrasted with chaos. Bad laws with the rule of law can be better than good laws that aren't enforced or respected.
Maybe. Maybe not. The whole game of subject-versus-object is situated in human existence with its fears and hopes. What problem is it intended to solve? Who or what is the philosopher trying to be?Quoting David Mo
There are optimistic and pessimistic myths. Cruel, submissive, rebellious or stupid. Some express the best human wishes and others the worst. They are usually the product of power societies and prescribe relationships of domination. What kind of wisdom can claim one thing and its opposite?
Myths are not bad science. Myths are ideology. They can suggest at best. They can never explain.
What does explain? E = mc^2 ? How is the mere presentation of a pattern an explanation? Whatever its faults, pragmatism is shrewd for seeing explanation in the context of the rest of our activity. And instrumentalism as a philosophy of science sees us as tool-users to want to master our environment. Natural science helps us master the physical environment. The human sciences and religion have helped us master the social environment. What I have in mind is a holistic grasp of all the habits of a group of humans, including their verbal habits, as a total response to their precarious situation. The goal is not just an accurate staring at the given but rather successful practice. Phronesis.
Does anyone live without ideology? Without orienting myth? I doubt it. One popular ideology is that of being post-ideological. 'Ideology' is always applied ideologically. Enlightenment's favorite myth is the autonomous human being, who smells just like the God he has to kill and supersede. So our ideology involves the notion of being lifted up above the superstitions that kept us in a gape-mouthed, childlike state. So runs the myth, perhaps. And yet what is missed is that people identity with their gods. The king and the priest and righteous man were not cringing servants but rather sons acting in the name of the Father. Enlightenment just radicalizes the patriarchy of the word. Rationality becomes the Inner Light.
we've subsequently discovered, per Relativity, that the geometry of space and time is non-Euclidean. Which means that Kant's (synthetic a priori) judgments about space and time have been falsified by experience.
First, Kant didn’t attribute any geometry to space, but rather, to objects in space. Kant was a “magister” in math and tutored university-level mathematics, so it is highly unlikely he wasn’t aware of non-Euclidean axioms, such that triangles on the surface of a sphere do not have angle summation of 180 degrees. But that fact does not negate the Euclid’s “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, which remains true even if one cannot get from A to B in a straight line. The truth that one cannot cut through the Earth to get from NYC to Hong Kong does not falsify the fact that cutting through the Earth is the shortest way.
Second, in order for experience to falsify “...Kant’s (synthetic a priori) judgements about space and time...”, one would have to show, 1.) he made any such statements, 2.) that if he did, how experience would falsify them, and most importantly, 3.) what synthetic a priori judgement actually is.
“....Judgements of experience, as such, are always synthetical....”
“....Mathematical judgements are always synthetical....”
“....mathematical propositions are always judgements a priori, and not empirical, because they carry along with them the conception of necessity, which cannot be given by experience....”
It is clear Kantian synthetic a priori judgements require necessity, which experience cannot deliver. Therefore experience cannot falsify them.
Consider, even though time dilation and length contraction have been shown to be the case, as regards relativity, all that began with pure mathematics, which are.......wait for it......all synthetic a priori propositions. Einstein had to think all this stuff before he ever wrote anything down, and had to wait years for technology to catch up enough to demonstrate the the truth in the math.
Also consider, no matter what relativity says, a guy doing geometric functions anywhere in the Universe can still use Euclid’s axioms. He’s still human and so was Euclid, so......
It’s always helpful to keep in mind just what relativity means.
—————-
Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?[/quote]
Could very well be, seeing as how he invented some for himself. Or at least reformed some extant meanings to suit himself. But generally I wouldn’t say he thought language fails us. That we use the same language doesn’t guarantee understanding, but does guarantee understanding is possible. And because the language of mathematics is the same for every human, understanding math is given, depending on experience with its use, of course.
—————-
The stick example shows that one can be mistaken about what they think they've perceived. So the language term "appear" is introduced to represent that situation (e.g., the straight stick appeared to be bent). The problem it solves is to give us language for describing a naturally-occurring situation. Things aren't always as they appear to be.
That things aren’t always as they appear is certainly true, but it isn’t why Kant introduced the term “appearance”. Even if that which appears is not a false representation of the real state of affairs, it is no less an appearance than that which appears that is a false representation. Because the Kantian cognitive system is representational, there must be representations for each step in the procedure, so appearance is simply the first representation in the transition from external real physical to internal speculative theory. This is why I said “appearance” for Kant is like making the scene, being presented, and not meant to tell us what a thing looks like. Appearance serves the Kantian system equally to all five senses, which tends to eliminate what a thing looks like, when the thing being perceived doesn’t even have a look, but has instead a feel or an odor.
The stick appears bent is in the sense of what it looks like but really isn’t; the Kantian appearance of the bent stick is exactly that.....for all representational intents and purposes, the damn stick is bent!!! All the way through the cognitive system the stick retains the appearance of a bent stick, and it will be judged to be bent.....which is exactly what we see. It doesn’t matter to the system that light is being refracted, it doesn’t matter to the cognitive system that air density and water density are not the same, or even have anything to do with the perception of a stick in a peculiar condition.
Experience tells us the stick, appearing bent, really isn’t. The system only tells us what it has the capacity to tell us. If the laws of physics operate such that a stick looks to be bent, then the stick will appear bent. All the bent stick proves is that perception is passive, insofar as it makes no mistakes, but rather all errors in cognition are from judgement alone. We know the truth of this little tidbit, because the stick appears just as bent after we learn it isn’t, then before we learn it isn’t. And a crawly thing between your shoulder blades makes its sensational appearance without having a “looks like” appearance.
——————-
But that shifts the question to be about his system as a whole. What problem is it solving?
Depends on what his system is thought to be. Actually, it is a speculative cognitive system, meant to show a possible method for the human intellect to arrive at an understanding of himself and his environment. Keyword...speculative. The theory was never meant to establish a truth about anything at all, except itself as such. Hence, the theory doesn’t solve any problems, except those the theory explores, and then only if one grants the tenets of it. The bent stick is a pretty lousy example of false knowledge, though, because somebody somewhere figure out real fast the illusion behind it. But no one in the normal living of normal life is ever going to have direct experience of time dilation, and the guy on the platform only makes his judgements based on his watch, not the watch the guy on the train uses.
The stick example shows that one can be mistaken about what they think they've perceived.
As I mentioned, Bishop Berkeley already addresses this question in his Dialogues:
Hylas: What do you say to this? Since, according to you, men judge the reality of things by their senses, how can a man be mistaken in thinking that the moon is a plain shining surface, about a foot in diameter; or that a square tower seen at a distance is round; or that an oar with one end in the water is crooked?
Philonous: He is mistaken not with regard to the ideas he actually perceives, but in what he infers from his present perceptions. Thus in the case of the oar, what he immediately perceives by sight is certainly crooked; and to that extent he is right. But if he infers from this that when he takes the oar out of the water he will see the same crookedness, or that it will affect his sense of touch as crooked things usually do, in that he is mistaken. Likewise, if from what he perceives in one place he infers that if he moves closer to the moon or tower he will still experience similar ideas, he is mistaken. But his mistake lies not in what he perceives immediately and at present (for it is a manifest contradiction to suppose he could err about that), but in the wrong judgment he makes concerning the ideas he thinks to be connected with the ones he immediately perceives; or concerning the ideas that—judging by what he perceives at present—he thinks would be perceived in other circumstances.
Third Dialogue, edition from https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/berkeley1713.pdf
When Critique of Pure Reason, First Edition, was published, many reviewers said that Kant was basically repeating Berkeley, which caused Kant to include in the second edition a 'refutation of material idealism' to distinguish his doctrine from Berkeley's.
I don't *think* you're really getting Kant's 'critique' but I'm hardly able to try and set you straight on it, as I'm not well read in Kant. The single point of Kant's philosophy that I appeal to, is his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that being the constitutive role that the mind plays in our construal of nature. The world is not something that simply exists irrespective of our cognitive capabilities, there for us to discover; all of our knowledge of it is the product of the synthesis of perceptions and judgements which constitutes reality for us.
Now you've gotten into the type of contradiction I warned about. Change requires time, it cannot be timeless.
I don't think you're understanding me. 'Knowledge is unstable' is posited as something stable about knowledge. 'It's the nature or essence of knowledge to adapt.' Or, more generally, 'everything changes except change itself.' So flux itself (in the abstract) is made the static being that can be glimpsed lurking behind a becoming that is itself recast as a succession of pseudo-beings and their associated pseudo-knowledges. As one person suggested, Nietzsche is Plato turned upside down. But inversion is a simple transformation.
Do you not see the problem with your representation? If someone states "truth is impossible", then it's very clear that they are not presenting this as a truth. To represent this as if the person were stating what is believed to be a "truth", is an obvious a misinterpretation. It's a classic straw man.
I agree that a charitable interpretation should take such a statement as a kind of exaggeration. At best they are hinting toward an attitude that I find congenial. 'Nothing is true!' It seems bold at first, but it's a bluff. It's a safe sophomoric slop, while admittedly showing a certain flexible worldly wisdom at the same time.
There's a difference between claiming that there is no such thing as truth, and claiming that we do not have direct access to truth. If Truth requires God, then claiming that we have no direct access to Truth still admits to a belief in God, because it is implied that there is a Truth (therefore God) which we do not have access to. Atheism implies that there is no such thing as Truth, when Truth requires God.
I agree. I had this kind of thing in mind:
[quote=Nietzsche]
HOW THE "TRUE WORLD" ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE
THE HISTORY OF AN ERROR
1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of virtue,—he lives in it, he is it.
(The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition "I, Plato, am the truth.")
2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue ("to the sinner who repents").
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more evasive,—It becomes a woman, it becomes Christian.)
3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a command.
(At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and scepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern, Königsbergian.)[1]
4. The true world—is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained. And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown constrain us to?
(The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)
5. The "true world"—an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to anything,—a useless idea that has become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick up a shindy.)
6. We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!
(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadows; the end of the longest error; mankind's zenith; Incipit Zarathustra.)
[/quote]
While I can't join Nietzsche in his high noon ecstasy, he's good for seeing the roleplay from the outside .
'I, Plato am the Truth' becomes a half-skeptical religion of truth-at-a-distance. Personally I'd think of identifying (1) and (6) to get a circle. Nietzsche surely felt that he was the truth in his ecstatic moments.
Once while resident at Ojai, Krishnamurti went on a picnic with Charlie Chaplin, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Greta Garbo, and Christopher Isherwood. They were evicted from the picnic grounds by a sheriff who refused to believe them when they told them who they were.
This I disagree with. As philosophers we might seek that eternal truth, but when all we find is the deficiencies of human knowledge we are deprived of that pleasure. Philosophy doesn't offer us that pleasure, it dispels the illusion that we might obtain it.
The question ignored here is: why philosophy? If philosophy only breaks our hearts, then why is it preserved ? Why do we spread the heartbreaking virus and scorn an unexamined life as not worth living? Is this not a return of the crucified hero, who also is stapled to a T?
Why dispel illusions? And if no eternal truth can be obtained in the first place, is an illusion still an illusion? If so, with respect to what? When ordinary notions of illusion and reality get inflated to metaphysical entities, the utility of the distinction shrivels.
My position is that philosophy matters. Bacon defends it in these terms. The eyes, the feet, the hands and other organs in direct contact with the world resented having to carry the stomach around, not realizing that they all derived their might from the stomach. Similarly philosophy feeds all the more immediately practical discourses. Or (alternatively) is a general who helps the troops from behind the lines.
if no eternal truth can be obtained in the first place, is an illusion still an illusion? If so, with respect to what?
Philosophy used to be understood as the pursuit of the eternal truth or at least something beyond the transitory affairs of life. Of course the word 'eternal' itself has become a cliche, emblazoned on ancient pillars standing in ruined temples, museum pieces, the kind of thing that post-modernism ridicules. But the eternal can take many forms, even manifesting in the guise of ephemeral and the transient. There was an artist who used to write 'Eternity' on the sidewalks of Sydney in beautiful copperplate script, in chalk.
You asked the question above, what is it about 'contingency'? Put another way, the contingent is the conditioned, the dependent, that which is made, fabricated, compound, transitory, subject to decay. So the question is, is there anything which is not made, not fabricated, nor born, not subject to decay? That is a very Buddhist expression, but a similar sentiment is found in many sources.
Nagel, in his essay Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, says that:
Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly.
The problem is, this way of thinking is now so associated with religious philosophies that we've been innoculated against it. It 'sounds religious' so we shy away from it, often reflexively; whatever we're seeking, it can't be that, must be found in another direction. Hence the notion of 'secular philosophy', which, if applied to anything more than making the trains run on time and managing the Commons, is really an oxymoron.
The Western mind has defined these subjects in certain ways, all the encoded meanings have particular ramifications and connotations. Nietzsche of course blew all of that up, but what does he replace it with? A commentator said of him that 'he was simultaneously the opponent, proponent and victim of the nihilism he foresaw.' That's why it's important to be able to consider perspectives outside the Western. Otherwise you suffer from Westernitis, which is a very nasty condition. ;-)
Fair enough, but note the metaphor of light/darkness.
I'm not against metaphors. They impact and can suggest orientation for practice or knowledge. But they do not explain, define or clarify. They can be a hypothetical starting point for knowledge, never an end in themselves.
So our ideology involves the notion of being lifted up above the superstitions that kept us in a gape-mouthed, childlike state. So runs the myth, perhaps.
What are superstitions if not myths? Myths about Jesus Christ, myths about the Aryan race, myths about the Nation, the Spirits... and so on. Myths are tales. They don't reason, they narrate and proclaim. If you refuse to analyze stories with reason, if you allow a story to be the fundamental source of thought and action, your story becomes a superstition.
I think we're talking empty. Perhaps if you propose a myth that can replace reason we can discuss the issue more specifically.
Philosophy used to be understood as the pursuit of the eternal truth or at least something beyond the transitory affairs of life.
As I've argued within this thread, it still is. As is science and math. This isn't to deny a change in mood and the move toward professionalization. Let's consider phrases like 'make history,' 'leave a mark.' [quote="Wayfarer;373039"]Of course the word 'eternal' itself has become a cliche, emblazoned on ancient pillars standing in ruined temples, museum pieces, the kind of thing that post-modernism ridicules.[/quote]
I don't think 'eternal' has become a bad word. What is science after if not the eternal laws of the physical? Could Pythagoras ask for more than a TOE that would fit on a T-shirt? I'm wary of the term 'post-modernism.' It's too vague.
Put another way, the contingent is the conditioned, the dependent, that which is made, fabricated, compound, transitory, subject to decay. So the question is, is there anything which is not made, not fabricated, nor born, not subject to decay?
Indeed. This is the dream of gods, forms, the transcendental subject, and so on. We can also consider how the stars must have affected early thinkers. A seemingly eternal pattern was hung above them in one sky over every human being. Mathematics also suggested something deathlessly reliable. And then the nature of man himself could be viewed as a being behind the becoming and perishing of generations. I've argued that knowledge is intrinsically the conquest of the transitory. Why do we bother?
This is an efficient sketch of the situation.
[quote=Hobbes]
Anxiety for the future time, disposeth men to enquire into the causes of things: because the knowledge of them, maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage.
[/quote]
Of course these days it's also a career, and one is rewarded in various ways for producing knowledge.
Nagel, in his essay Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, says that:
It's also my impression that Plato is a religious figure. Socrates was obviously compelled by some sense of a spiritual mission. He was even a conspiracy theorist who couldn't resist arguing with experts and 'proving' that they didn't know anything, because they couldn't jump through his verbal hoops to his satisfaction. It be nice to read how some of them would have recorded or re-imagined the conversation.
The problem is, this way of thinking is now so associated with religious philosophies that we've been innoculated against it. It 'sounds religious' so we shy away from it, often reflexively; whatever we're seeking, it can't be that, must be found in another direction.
Who is the target audience for this? The use of 'we' seems disingenuous here. Intellectual types who reject ordinary religion presumably do so because they'd rather go without certain comforts and cling to their epistemological standards. Note that I've already defended reinterpretations of religious myth, and I repeat that reincarnation strikes me as metaphorically true. To me the demand for a personal afterlife (the preservation of face, name, memories) even seems shallow in some sense, since the most important stuff is repeated in the next generation, with new names and faces. All high culture is 'religious,' I suggest, even as cultural-intellectual fashions involve a renaming of the same old human feelings and projects.
Nietzsche of course blew all of that up, but what does he replace it with?
I don't think Nietzsche blew it all up. We can blame Galileo, Newton, etc. Nietzsche is a relatively late figure. In philosophy Bacon was already the beginning of the end. Once technology took off, the old religions no longer fit a no longer static world. Democritus had his revenge. (If I remember correctly, he was Bacon's favorite Greek philosopher.) In practical terms it was better to view nature as a machine without and indifferent to human motives. But then we have the romantic reaction to the disenchantment. We have nature versus spirit. We get Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, and other thinkers who embraced the permanent revolution in various ways. Nietzsche was in his best moments one of the great philosophers. In other moments he was terrible. Personally I identity more with Bacon or Hobbes, both of whom lived very much in the real world.
That's why it's important to be able to consider perspectives outside the Western. Otherwise you suffer from Westernitis, which is a very nasty condition.
I'm not so sure that a Westerner can so easily escape being a Westerner. I've dabbled like many Westerners in wisdom from the East, but I suspect my dabbling has always been through a Western lens. Imported religion was popular with Kerouac & Ginsberg and that gang, to name just one. Were they the real thing? Or some kind of fusion? Why shouldn't Western religious traditions be just as rich and perhaps even more fitting? The cynical part of me thinks the imports have a certain appeal simply as exotic. 'This is not your grandpa's religion.' Yet when I actually met a Buddhist monk once, he reminded me of a Catholic priest.
And is Westernitis a nasty condition? Or are we just as delighted as we are anxious? 'Only a god can save us,' quoth Heidegger. Do we need saving? Of course we'll usually take more of what's good....
I'm not against metaphors. They impact and can suggest orientation for practice or knowledge. But they do not explain, define or clarify. They can be a hypothetical starting point for knowledge, never an end in themselves.
Could you make a case for that assertion? Some thinkers have argued that analogy is the core of cognition.
[quote=Hofstadter]
One should not think of analogy-making as a special variety of reasoning (as in the dull and uninspiring phrase “analogical reasoning and problem-solving,” a long-standing cliché in the cognitive-science world), for that is to do analogy a terrible disservice. After all, reasoning and problem-solving have (at least I dearly hope!) been at long last recognized as lying far indeed from the core of human thought. If analogy were merely a special variety of something that in itself lies way out on the peripheries, then it would be but an itty-bitty blip in the broad blue sky of cognition. To me, however, analogy is anything but a bitty blip — rather, it’s the very blue that fills the whole sky of cognition — analogy is everything, or very nearly so, in my view.
[/quote]
[quote=Rorty]
What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphor. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly’s wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content. Once the freshness wears off the metaphor, you have plain, literal, transparent language—the sort of language which is ascribed not to any particular person but to ‘common sense’ or ‘reason’ or ‘intuition’
[/quote]
Philosophy has been largely based on an unnoticed ocular metaphor.
[quote=link]
Since it is based on the visual metaphor, Kant's epistemology is not the antirepresentationalism proposed by Rorty. For Kant there is a mediation between the object out there and the mental eye, what is rejected by Rorty. He thinks, that we do not need mediation, since we are unmediately in (touch with) the world. As he says, "Pragmatists reply to ... arguments about the veil of appearances by saying that we need not model knowledge on vision. So there is no need to think of the sense organs or the mind as intervening between a mental eye and its object. Instead, pragmatists say, we can think of both as tools for manipulating the object. They reply to arguments about the distorting effect of language by saying that language is not a medium of representation. Rather, it is an exchange of marks and noises, carried out in order to achieve specific purposes. It cannot fail to represent accurately, for it never represented at all."
Sense organs, mind and language are for Rorty not representational instances, but only tools for coping with the reality.
[/quote]
https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/TKno/TKnoBoro.htm
I looked him up. He's not my cup of tea. I have no cure for mankind to sell. As an individual, I became confident enough in my atheism to eventually go back and enjoy religious myth as literature. I still relate more to young fiery atheists than thinkers like Eliade or the later Heidegger. I do like Campbell, Jung, Hesse, Schopenhauer, Nobby Brown, others.
What are superstitions but not myths? Myths about Jesus Christ, myths about the Aryan race, myths about the Nation, the Spirits... and so on. Myths are tales. They don't reason, they narrate and proclaim. If you refuse to analyze stories with reason, if you allow a story to be the fundamental source of thought and action, your story becomes a superstition.
I think we're talking empty. Perhaps if you propose a myth that can replace reason we can discuss the issue more specifically.
Well myths do narrate at least, don't they? I'm hardly suggesting that myths alone will get us through life. This is a high tech society. We need organized, disciplined, technical knowledge...of course. We need longwinded prosy arguments in many situations.
I agree that taking a myth literally is superstition, almost by definition. I do wonder whether some people project a certain reading of myths on others. Was Euler a fool? How about J. S. Bach? Christianity has all kinds of more or less sophisticated interpretations. Wal-Mart fundamentalism is out there, of course, but so is negative theology.
Also myths don't replace reason. They are part of reason. We have lots of stories about heroes and villains, not all of them religious in the traditional sense. Plato's forms are a metaphor that caught on. His famous cave appears again in The Matrix. The appearance-reality distinction is taken for common sense, though in its extreme form it's a particular creation, a piece of oral and written culture.
I did a project on him when I was a student. At first I found it fascinating. Until I realized it was pseudo-science and mysticism in camuflage. Anyway, he continues to be stimulating.
Eliade was actually very fashionable in the postmodern wave. Now he's fallen into oblivion. More or less.
Metaphysician UndercoverJanuary 19, 2020 at 15:29#3731860 likes
I don't think you're understanding me. 'Knowledge is unstable' is posited as something stable about knowledge.
It's you who is not understanding; "knowledge is unstable" is very clearly not posited as something stable, because that would imply contradiction. The person proposing "knowledge is unstable" is very clearly not proposing it as an eternal unchanging truth, because that would be a contradiction of terms. You are simply interpreting it this way, because it is your belief that knowledge consist of such eternal unchanging truths. You have not properly interpreted what the person who says "knowledge is unstable" means. Therefore it is very clear that you have misunderstood.
Or, more generally, 'everything changes except change itself.'
"Change" is just a word, and what that word means, what you call the "abstraction" also changes. So it's false to say that change itself does not change. The "abstraction" changes.
The question ignored here is: why philosophy? If philosophy only breaks our hearts, then why is it preserved ? Why do we spread the heartbreaking virus and scorn an unexamined life as not worth living? Is this not a return of the crucified hero, who also is stapled to a T?
But why would you say philosophy breaks our hearts? If it is removed from the category of pleasure and pain, as I suggested, it's not itself a heartbreak, which is the description of a pain.
Why dispel illusions? And if no eternal truth can be obtained in the first place, is an illusion still an illusion? If so, with respect to what? When ordinary notions of illusion and reality get inflated to metaphysical entities, the utility of the distinction shrivels.
You seem to be mixing temporal perspectives. "What is" refers to the present in time, and that is changing. So to convert "what is" into an eternal truth is a perversion. That actually is the nature of the illusion, that the changing nature of "what is" can be converted into an eternal truth. The illusion ought to be dispelled because it induces pain and suffering through mistaken certitude. The relief or release from pain and suffering is itself a pleasure, but the thing which brings us that pleasure, knowledge, is not itself the pleasure. But when knowledge is categorized like this, it can bring either pleasure or pain, and pain is produced by mistaken knowledge. Philosophy is the means by which we discern between the two. Yes it may still break the heart but it lessens the probability.
The Unmoved Mover is actually quite distinct from God. Aristotle demonstrated that anything eternal must be actual. In this way he separated the concept of "eternal" from "infinite". "Infinite" was demonstrated as necessarily potential. He then posited the Unmoved Mover to account for the eternal actuality, that actuality which is necessarily prior to the potential for material existence. However, he described the eternal actuality as a circular motion, which is a description of a material thing, with infinite time duration. So his Unmoved Mover is a faulty concept which falls back into the category of an infinite material existence, which he had demonstrated was impossible. The Unmoved Mover is inconsistent with his logical demonstrations.
For Aristotle, it's the celestial spheres that move in a circular motion (as moved by the Unmoved Mover). The Unmoved Mover, per its name, doesn't move.
So the Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians understand "eternal" in a different way, meaning outside of time. And this is how God is understood, as outside of time, not as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. This is very important, because "eternal" in this context does not mean an infinite duration of time (what Aristotle demonstrated as impossible, then turned around and proposed as Unmoved Mover), it means outside time.
For Aristotle, time is the measure of change. The Unmoved Mover does not change, so time is not applicable for it.
The very idea of failure of language per se seems incoherent to me. The point for me is that certain ideas may lead "naturally" to unreflective reification.
Yes, in the context of this thread, the idea of mind comes to mind.
[quote=link]
From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure".[88] Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself.
...
From the standpoint of religious thought, the world has an objective purpose established by mythical events, to which man should conform himself: "Myth teaches [religious man] the primordial 'stories' that have constituted him existentially."[166] From the standpoint of secular thought, any purpose must be invented and imposed on the world by man. Because of this new "existential situation", Eliade argues, the Sacred becomes the primary obstacle to nonreligious man's "freedom". In viewing himself as the proper maker of history, nonreligious man resists all notions of an externally (for instance, divinely) imposed order or model he must obey: modern man "makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. [...] He will not truly be free until he has killed the last god".
Eliade says that secular man cannot escape his bondage to religious thought. By its very nature, secularism depends on religion for its sense of identity: by resisting sacred models, by insisting that man make history on his own, secular man identifies himself only through opposition to religious thought: "He [secular man] recognizes himself in proportion as he 'frees' and 'purifies' himself from the 'superstitions' of his ancestors."
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade
I agree with the last point. The secular identity depends on the traditional identity which it negates. This 'secular' identity has freedom or autonomy as its ideal --as that which must be incarnated, repeated, brought to completion in perfected deicide.
It seems hard indeed to avoid some kind of 'spiritual' role-play, which may obviously take the form of anti-superstitious flame-throwing in the name of the fire god.
The belief in a external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world of 'physical reality' indirectIy, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means" (Albert Einstein: "Clerk Maxwell's Influence on the Evolution of the Idea of Physical Reality" (1931), The World as I see lt ).
Note though, that the term "external world" does not (necessarily) refer to a world beyond human experience, but to an inter-subjectively shared world which is external inasmuch as it does not depend on any particular human percipient for its existence.
How could anyone coherently think that science deals with a world beyond human experience? The most that one could plausibly suggest in this connection is that human experience is a part of the natural world as it is "in itself" and so is naturally "isomorphic" with, or "reflective of" it.
First, Kant didn’t attribute any geometry to space, but rather, to objects in space. Kant was a “magister” in math and tutored university-level mathematics, so it is highly unlikely he wasn’t aware of non-Euclidean axioms, such that triangles on the surface of a sphere do not have angle summation of 180 degrees. But that fact does not negate the Euclid’s “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, which remains true even if one cannot get from A to B in a straight line. The truth that one cannot cut through the Earth to get from NYC to Hong Kong does not falsify the fact that cutting through the Earth is the shortest way.
However the Earth itself is curved in spacetime due to its mass. So there is no Euclidean straight line from NYC to Hong-Kong through the Earth. (Unless one projects the line "outside" the universe.)
It is clear Kantian synthetic a priori judgements require necessity, which experience cannot deliver. Therefore experience cannot falsify them.
Consider, even though time dilation and length contraction have been shown to be the case, as regards relativity, all that began with pure mathematics, which are.......wait for it......all synthetic a priori propositions. Einstein had to think all this stuff before he ever wrote anything down, and had to wait years for technology to catch up enough to demonstrate the the truth in the math.
Also consider, no matter what relativity says, a guy doing geometric functions anywhere in the Universe can still use Euclid’s axioms. He’s still human and so was Euclid, so......
It’s always helpful to keep in mind just what relativity means.
OK, so it seems you're saying that both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry would be synthetic a priori for Kant.
Then it is an entirely separate question of how to mathematically represent the universe, which is a question for physics (and involves experience).
Because the Kantian cognitive system is representational, there must be representations for each step in the procedure, so appearance is simply the first representation in the transition from external real physical to internal speculative theory.
...
Depends on what his system is thought to be. Actually, it is a speculative cognitive system, meant to show a possible method for the human intellect to arrive at an understanding of himself and his environment. Keyword...speculative. The theory was never meant to establish a truth about anything at all, except itself as such. Hence, the theory doesn’t solve any problems, except those the theory explores, and then only if one grants the tenets of it.
Thanks, that makes sense. So it's the tenet of representationalism where I part company. In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense. That precludes the Kantian thing-in-itself/appearance distinction.
Subject and object are valid ways of think certain relations of reality. But not all relations in reality can be defined by this two categories. The master and slave categories can not, for example. In the same way the marital relationship.
The categories of subject and object are scientifical categories, but not the only categories of scientific methodology.
When Critique of Pure Reason, First Edition, was published, many reviewers said that Kant was basically repeating Berkeley, which caused Kant to include in the second edition a 'refutation of material idealism' to distinguish his doctrine from Berkeley's.
So I agree with Kant's conclusion here as against Berkeley:
In Berkeley’s position, a subject’s perception of an oar in the water as crooked is not a misperception, for “what he immediately perceives by sight is not in error, and so far he is in the right,” and it is misleading only because it is apt to give rise to mistaken inferences (Berkeley 1713: Third Dialogue); while for Kant this perception is in error.
I don't *think* you're really getting Kant's 'critique' but I'm hardly able to try and set you straight on it, as I'm not well read in Kant. The single point of Kant's philosophy that I appeal to, is his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that being the constitutive role that the mind plays in our construal of nature. The world is not something that simply exists irrespective of our cognitive capabilities, there for us to discover; all of our knowledge of it is the product of the synthesis of perceptions and judgements which constitutes reality for us.
Where I disagree with Kant is his idea that an object that we point to, such as a tree or a person, is a representation (i.e., a sense-data object, or appearance). The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).
So it's the tenet of representationalism where I part company. In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense. That precludes the Kantian thing-in-itself/appearance distinction.
Kant would not claim that 'an object is a representation of something unknown'. That is much more like representative realism which is the idea that our perceptions are caused by the intrinsic qualities of objects, and based on these perceptions we can infer things about them.
The distinction between phenomena and noumena is not a distinction between two kinds of object. He's not saying, here is the phenomenal appearance, and there the object as it really is. We only ever know phenomena, how things appear to us, but that doesn't mean that they're simply ideas (qua Berkeley) but that the act of knowing is a synthesis of ideas, sensations, and judgements.
I think you're still operating from within the 'innate naturalism' that Magee talks about in his book on Schopenhauer - the conviction of the innate reality of the sensory domain. It's a very difficult thing to question.
I agree that taking a myth literally is superstition, almost by definition. I do wonder whether some people project a certain reading of myths on others. Was Euler a fool? How about J. S. Bach?
There are two things that confuse me in your comment:
Analogy and metaphor are not synonym. Metaphor is a special kind of analogy. Therefore what kind of analogy need to be precised. If analogy means a relationship of identity or likeness between two different objects, I agree. It is a mental procedure that is in the basis of many kinds of knowledge: commonsense, philosophy or science. It is induction. But this process must be complemented with other logic and inductive methods if it want to be rigorous. Analogy in itself can be correct or fallacious. You can find if it is one thing or other only by means of a subsequent elaboration.
Rorty is obsessed with updating the language. He reduces the philosophical value to novelty or antiquity. He thinks that what matters is to be fashionable. No wonder he talks about living and stale metaphors. Anyway, he's right about that. Stale metaphors become commonplace. Therefore, living metaphors have a power of provocation while stale metaphors lead to conformity. This does not mean that one is objective and the other is not. It is just that one sets thought in motion and the other is scholastic.
I'm crazy about Bach. If the Holy Trinity exists, Bach is in the upper corner. I'm sure he is. But I don't think music is a good example for myths. It's too abstract compared to narrative myths. And I don't believe in the causal relationship between the form and content of music. If we want to discuss a myth, it would be better to choose a true myth: Prometheus, Mary's virginity or the creation of the world according to the Mayas.
So it's the tenet of representationalism where I part company. In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense. That precludes the Kantian thing-in-itself/appearance distinction.
— Andrew M
Kant would not claim that 'an object is a representation of something unknown'. That is much more like representative realism which is the idea that our perceptions are caused by the intrinsic qualities of objects, and based on these perceptions we can infer things about them.
That's essentially what it is for Kant, except that the "intrinsic qualities of objects" (Lockean primary qualities) are also part of the appearance/representation. Thus nothing can be inferred about the thing-in-itself, which is unknowable.
Whatever is given us as object, must be given us in intuition. All our intuition however takes place by means of the senses only; the understanding intuits nothing, but only reflects. And as we have just shown that the senses never and in no manner enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, which are mere representations of the sensibility, we conclude that "all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be considered nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere but in our thoughts." Now, is not this manifest idealism?
Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i. e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.
Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)---no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay, all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance. The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
I should be glad to know what my assertions must be in order to avoid all idealism. Undoubtedly, I should say, that the representation of space is not only perfectly conformable to the relation which our sensibility has to objects---that I have said--- but that it is quite similar to the object,---an assertion in which I can find as little meaning as if I said that the sensation of red has a similarity to the property of vermilion, which excites this sensation in me.
Metaphysician UndercoverJanuary 20, 2020 at 13:44#3735010 likes
For Aristotle, it's the celestial spheres that move in a circular motion (as moved by the Unmoved Mover). The Unmoved Mover, per its name, doesn't move.
Well, the so-called "Unmoved Mover" is better translated as "Unmovable", or "Immovable", according to what is explained in BK12 of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
It is described like this. It is necessary to assume an eternal unchangeable actuality to account for the fact that no change can be prior to time. So there is necessarily something which is moved by the immovable actuality, and this must be the "first motion", which is the eternal continuity of circular motion. The cause of the eternal circular motion, the "immovable" cause, must be a final cause, as the object of desire, or object of thought, which moves without itself being moved. Therefore the so-called "Unmoved Mover" moves without itself being moved, because it is necessarily "immovable".
The problem, as I said, is that it is a faulty concept. Eternal circular motions of the planets, or of anything else for that matter, are not real. Therefore if there is something which is necessarily "immovable", because it is prior to time, it cannot be described as the cause of eternal circular motion, because eternal circular motion is not real. Where Aristotle goes astray is at Ch.6, Bk12, where he assumes that it is impossible for movement to come into existence. He assumes this because he cannot conceive of anything as prior to time. This is the false premise which leads him to the falsity of the eternal circular motion.
For Aristotle, time is the measure of change. The Unmoved Mover does not change, so time is not applicable for it.
Aristotle clearly distinguishes two senses of "time" in his Physics, one as the thing which measures, and the other as the thing measured. When he speaks of "time" in his Metaphysics he his referring to the latter, the thing being measured. The problem is that he cannot conceive of time as having come into existence, because this would imply an actuality which is prior to time, and "before time" appears to be contradictory. This is why he settles on time having always existed, and explains this with eternal circular motion, which is how that time which always existed, would be measured. But "eternal circular motion" is a faulty concept.
However the Earth itself is curved in spacetime due to its mass. So there is no Euclidean straight line from NYC to Hong-Kong through the Earth.
Hmmm.....curved in spacetime, or curves spacetime? Cured in space, sure....it’s a spheroid. Curves spacetime, sure..... it has mass in a gravitational field. If Earth is curved in spacetime, that’s more information than I have any practical use for, so I’ll take your word for it. Nevertheless, if I have a transparent globe and shine a laser pointer between two points through the globe, it will be a shorter measure than if I pin a string at the same origin on the globe and measure to the same terminus on the surface of the globe. That’s all I’m sayin’.
both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry would be synthetic a priori for Kant.
Synthetic a priori propositions, yes, according to Kant. Synthetic because each and every single unit, and similarly each and every operator, of any kind of mathematical system is absolutely useless in and of itself, but must be combined with some other unit of some relative domain, and a priori because, simply put, there are no numbers in Nature. Drawing or merely thinking a line, or a 2, can do nothing whatsoever by itself. Even if the most basic use for a line is to connect two points still presupposes the thought of two points, and the thought of some reason they should be connected.
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Then it is an entirely separate question of how to mathematically represent the universe, which is a question for physics (and involves experience).
Actually, such has become somewhat of a problem, for both reason and mathematics. It follows that in order to maintain logical consistency and in order to prevent empirical absurdities, if the most basic mathematical functions are synthetic a priori, then so too are the more complex. In fact, the more complex the formulas, the less apt they are for immediate empirical demonstration, which makes them all the more a priori. We have progressed in the astronomically very large and the microscopically very small long past direct experience, so we have become adept at inventing mathematical structures to predict that which we cannot directly observe. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, then we must invent the instruments with the expressed intent of indirectly observing exactly what the math predicts.
It should never be contentious that the Universe in general is mathematically represented, merely because of our own limited observational capacities, and our understanding has never been outside the exclusive preview of physics, but the involvement of experience, in its common sense, is necessarily limited to the math and the experimental results of it. We’ll get to Mars eventually, sure, and with it we’ll have experience. But it might just turn out to be quite impossible for us to get to Andromeda.
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In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense.
That’s fine, no problem. No matter how one goes about labeling his mental machinations, he is still obliged to demonstrate how such machinations become knowledge, and indeed, common knowledge, such that any congruent rationality understands him. If you claim something about some ordinary object, you then have to explain how it gets its very particular name, and also explain it such that it is possible for me to give it the same name.
I think I understand you to mean by “...(the intentional object)...” to indicate something like Brentano’s “immanent objectivity”, which is a kind of presupposition about a thing because there are certain inherences in it which avail themselves to a certain kind of rational system, and post hoc ergo propter hoc as knowledge. I grant there is general reliability between the thesis whereby things possess properties we perceive and know them by, and the thesis whereby we give things the properties that make them the objects they are known as.
On the other hand, if by “the ordinary object we point to” is just some physical reality I can direct my finger toward to indicate a certain existence, then that is not a Kantian representation, so in that you are correct, but it is nonetheless an object of sense, insofar as an affect on the senses is given by it, else I must admit to pointing at nothing. It follows that “an ordinary object we point to”, re: Kant, and “...(intentional object)...”, re: Brentano, are mutually exclusive, for the former is known as something and the latter is not, in the same stages of cognition for each under the auspices of their respective theoretical speculations.
All that being said, it remains indisputable that whatever is external to the brain absolutely cannot be the same as whatever is internal to it, which makes explicit some form of representational system for human knowledge of objective reality is indisputably the case. Such must be the ground of any epistemological/cognitive theory.
Terrible. This whole discussion, just like the opening question, is without any significant point, awfully vague and undirected, it is impossible to say what are you even talking about or why.
The only interesting, pragmatic and meaningful context to talk under the theme of subject/object, is the mind-body problem and basically two questions:
a.) epistemological question whether can objective science ever explain subjective phenomena of perception and understanding
b.) ontological question whether inability of objective science to explain subjective phenomena automatically means we need to postulate either substance or property dualism in order to explain the qualities of the mental realm
The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).
In saying this, you're assuming the reality of the object outside your judgement of it. This is what makes your approach more like Locke's. And that is understandable, as Locke's is very much a kind of common-sense realism.
Rorty is obsessed with updating the language. He reduces the philosophical value to novelty or antiquity. He thinks that what matters is to be fashionable.
For me the way to put this is that groups of humans use marks and noise as part of surviving and prospering in the world. The marks and noises they use to do this change in the long run. Rorty is clear that he is not saying that language is just marks and noises understood at tools. Instead this perspective is presented as one metaphor among others, good for this or that. In this case, the metaphor is language is a tool. An opposed metaphor is language is a lens. If we think of our talk or thinking as a lens through which we see the world, then we can worry about distortion in the lens. You mentioned correctness in your post, which leans on the lens or eye metaphor. From a pragmatic language-as-tool metaphorical grounding, we worry more about success or failure relative to this or that purpose (including the purpose of obtaining consensus about our other purposes.)
I'm crazy about Bach. If the Holy Trinity exists, Bach is in the upper corner. I'm sure he is. But I don't think music is a good example for myths.
I wasn't suggesting that music be understood as myth. My point was that great souls like Bach were Christians in some sense. Individuals can take myths literally or symbolically (to oversimplify).
My broader point is that superstition need not involve the supernatural. I expect that we'll agree on this point. But here's an example:
[quote=Wiki]
The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism assumed the heritability of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism).[1] Lysenko's theory rejected Mendelian inheritance and the concept of the "gene"; it departed from Darwinian evolutionary theory by rejecting natural selection.[2] Proponents falsely claimed to have discovered, among many other things, that rye could transform into wheat and wheat into barley, that weeds could spontaneously transmute into food grains, and that "natural cooperation" was observed in nature as opposed to "natural selection".[2] Lysenkoism promised extraordinary advances in breeding and in agriculture that never came about.
Joseph Stalin supported the campaign. More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were fired or even sent to prison,[3] and numerous scientists were executed as part of a campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents.[4][5][6][7] The president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953.[2] Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines was also negatively affected or banned.[8]
[/quote]
Another example is nazi racist biologism.
'Magical thinking' is not eradicated with the 'supernatural,' though I do understand that desire for cognitive purity. At the same time the quest for cognitive purity (rigor, accuracy, etc.) looks like a repetition of a myth structure. I'm skeptical about the idea of some complete break from our mythological roots. Such a complete break is itself the repetition of creation from nothing.
If we want to discuss a myth, it would be better to choose a true myth: Prometheus, Mary's virginity or the creation of the world according to the Mayas.
[quote=Wiki]
In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/pr??mi??i??s/; Greek: ?????????, pronounced [prom??t?éu?s], possibly meaning "forethought")[1] is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of humanity from clay, and who defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to humanity as civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a champion of humankind[2] and also seen as the author of the human arts and sciences generally.
[/quote]
He sounds like an enlightenment hero, doesn't he?
[quote=Wiki]
For the Romantic era, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomised by Zeus – church, monarch, and patriarch. The Romantics drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, the Satan of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the divinely inspired poet or artist. Prometheus is the lyrical "I" who speaks in Goethe's Sturm und Drang poem "Prometheus" (written c. 1772–74, published 1789), addressing God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. In Prometheus Unbound (1820), a four-act lyrical drama, Percy Bysshe Shelley rewrites the lost play of Aeschylus so that Prometheus does not submit to Zeus (under the Latin name Jupiter), but instead supplants him in a triumph of the human heart and intellect over tyrannical religion.
[/quote]
Is this not enlightenment humanism personified? And is this not our currently dominant hero myth? In a less spiritualized version, we have capitalism's entrepreneur. The enemy is religion, tradition, the mediocre masses, resistance to innovation, etc.
The punishment of this titan is the punishment of the bold individual who wanders from the safety of conformity and the punishment of the community that leaves behind the comforts of its gods and traditions. Today there is plenty of fear about where our technology is taking us. There is also the sense of spiritual loss of some kind.
Therefore, living metaphors have a power of provocation while stale metaphors lead to conformity.
A truly stale metaphor is no longer recognized as a metaphor. The idea of literality (itself a dead metaphor!) is contrasted with metaphoricity. We tend to think of metaphors as mere embellishments, not recognizing that dead metaphors that were once optional now function as a kind of pre-interpretation of the situation that steers us sometimes into dead ends. Deconstruction is to some degree about heating up these old metaphors so that they are fluid and alive again. We can experience the past in its contingency, as choices in foundational metaphors that could have been made otherwise.
This myth isn't so easy to interpret. One of the safer interpretations is that Mary represents the unselfish love of a mother, with the virginity intended to exclude the greed in lust.
There are riskier interpretations that I won't go into here. I will gesture toward works like Love's Body, a book that fuses Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian theology. I understand this book as belonging to the quest for self-knowledge, though of course it's not empirical science. I don't think it has a genre, but I do think it's a first rate book of something like philosophy but more willing than most philosophies to leap into the depths.
[quote=link]
Paul Robinson writes that Love's Body "makes quite clear that psychoanalysis was only a stage in Brown's development toward a rather curious (and radical) brand of religious mysticism. The very concrete body of Freudian psychology has been absorbed into the Mystical Body of traditional Christian theology. To be sure, Freud remains an important authority, and there is a racy (and confusing) display of sexual rhetoric. But the erotic language is largely metaphorical; as Brown himself says, 'Everything is symbolic...including the sexual act.'
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love%27s_Body
I guess I like the 'mysticism' that isn't afraid of but even learns from the masters of suspicion.
[quote=Brown]
The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.
...
We can begin, I think, to make sense of these paradoxes if we think of the Oedipal project as the causa sui (father-of-oneself) project, and therefore in essence a revolt against death generally, and specifically against the biological principle separating mother and child.
[/quote]
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Reply to Zelebg
Your manners could use some work, but nevertheless I'll answer you. I like Dewey's general approach (other names might work as well.)
[quote=link]
Dewey’s pragmatism—or, “cultural naturalism”, which he favored over “pragmatism” and “instrumentalism”—may be understood as a critique and reconstruction of philosophy within the larger ambit of a Darwinian worldview (Lamont 1961; MW4: 3). Following James’ lead, Dewey argued that philosophy had become an overly technical and intellectualistic discipline, divorced from assessing the social conditions and values dominating everyday life (FAE, LW5: 157–58). He sought to reconnect philosophy with the mission of education-for-living (philosophy as “the general theory of education”), a form of social criticism at the most general level, or “criticism of criticisms” (EN, LW1: 298; see also DE, MW9: 338).
Set within the larger picture of Darwinian evolutionary theory, philosophy should be seen as an activity undertaken by interdependent organisms-in-environments. This standpoint, of active adaptation, led Dewey to criticize the tendency of traditional philosophies to abstract and reify concepts derived from living contexts. As did other classical pragmatists, Dewey focused criticism upon traditional dualisms of metaphysics and epistemology (e.g., mind/body, nature/culture, self/society, and reason/emotion) and then reconstructed their elements as parts of larger continuities. For example, human thinking is not a phenomenon which is radically outside of (or external to) the world it seeks to know; knowing is not a purely rational attempt to escape illusion in order to discover what is ultimately “real” or “true”. Rather, human knowing is among the ways organisms with evolved capacities for thought and language cope with problems. Minds, then, are not passively observing the world; rather, they are actively adapting, experimenting, and innovating; ideas and theories are not rational fulcrums to get us beyond culture, but rather function experimentally within culture and are evaluated on situated, pragmatic bases. Knowing is not the mortal’s exercise of a “divine spark”, either; for while knowing (or inquiry, to use Dewey’s term) includes calculative or rational elements, it is ultimately informed by the body and emotions of the animal using it to cope.
[/quote]
Note that your mind/body dualism is included here.
Another questionable philosophical habit is talk about the isolated consciousness, the forlorn ghost in the machine.
[quote=link]
Dewey rejected both traditional accounts of mind-as-substance (or container) and more contemporary schemes reducing mind to brain states (EN, LW1: 224–225). Rather, mind is activity, a range of dynamic processes of interaction between organism and world. Consider the range connoted by mind: as memory (I am reminded of X); attention (I keep her in mind, I mind my manners); purpose (I have an aim in mind); care or solicitude (I mind the child); paying heed (I mind the traffic stop). “Mind”, then, ranges over many activities: intellectual, affectional, volitional, or purposeful. It is
primarily a verb…[that] denotes every mode and variety of interest in, and concern for, things: practical, intellectual, and emotional. It never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. (AE, LW10: 267–68)
As Wittgenstein (entry on Wittgenstein, section on rule-following and private language) pointed out 30 years later, no private language (see entry on private language) is possible given this account of meaning. While meanings might be privately entertained, they are not privately invented; meanings are social and emerge from symbol systems arising through collective communication and action (EN, LW1: 147).
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/
In case it's still not clear how this bears on the thread, subject-object talk is not necessarily fundamental. We don't have to take it that way. Or, if we want to, it's better perhaps to think of social organisms in an environment. Inquiry for such organisms is not usually a pure knowing but rather adjustment and transformation that is as much deed as word. And even the word is used not just for representation but primarily as part of the creation and transformation of physical and social environments.
A big fan of Dewey, Richard Rorty, is also worth mentioned.
[quote=link]
On Rorty's account, modern epistemology is not only an attempt to legitimate our claim to knowledge of what is real, but also an attempt to legitimate philosophical reflection itself—a pressing task, on many accounts, once the advent of the so-called new science of the sixteenth and seventeenth century gradually gave content to a notion of knowledge obtained by the methodological interrogation of nature herself.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/
In other words, philosophy has been trying to save its own reputation against a background of undeniable technical progress. How is it that all the technology works without the permission or endorsement of the epistemologists? Who cares these days what philosophers think? In my view philosophy is still valuable, but perhaps only philosophers still believe that philosophy is some kind of master discourse that polices all the rest.
My broader point is that superstition need not involve the supernatural. I expect that we'll agree on this point. But here's an example:
The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism assumed the heritability of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism).[1] Lysenko's theory
May be it is a matter of language, but I wouldn't say that the Lysenko case was about myths or superstition. It was ideology mixed with pseudoscience and totalitarianism.
At the same time the quest for cognitive purity (rigor, accuracy, etc.) looks like a repetition of a myth structure.
I don't see the connection. Seeking something in the knowledge that it is not fully attainable is the principle of all intent. The problem lies in what you are looking for: reason or myth.
This is the Wiki version. For the Greeks, Prometheus meant punishment for the excessive pride of those who think they are smarter than the gods. Well-deserved.
This is how a myth can represent one thing and its opposite. It depends on what you want. This is not objective knowledge.
May be it is a matter of language, but I wouldn't say that the Lysenko case was about myths or superstition. It was ideology mixed with pseudoscience and totalitarianism.
I like this definition.
[quote=link]
Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology
To me religion fits in with that nicely, including the 'religion' of the enlightenment (which is my 'religion' or ideology.) Where we perhaps differ is that I understand my position to be an invested or founded position. I adopted the ideology of those who want to transcend ideology as much as possible. Why truth? Why objectivity? Why rationality? Why skepticism? What image is pursued here? Prometheus, etc.
Many critics of religion (like Dawkins) understand religion as pseudo-science (which is a correct diagnosis in many cases, though the definition of ideology above is perhaps better.)
[quote=link]
Chapter one, "A deeply religious non-believer", seeks to clarify the difference between what Dawkins terms "Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion". He notes that the former includes quasi-mystical and pantheistic references to God in the work of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and describes such pantheism as "sexed up atheism". Dawkins instead takes issue with the theism present in religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.[13] The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book.[14] He maintains that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific fact about the universe, which is discoverable in principle if not in practice.[15]
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
This is the Wiki version. For the Greeks, Prometheus meant punishment for the excessive pride of those who think they are smarter than the gods. Well-deserved.
This is how a myth can represent one thing and its opposite. It depends on what you want. This is not objective knowledge.
Of course myths are far more flexible than E =mc^2. As for objective knowledge, what is the measure of that? In my view we respect science primarily because of its technical miracles. Not everyone understands or endorses mainstream science, so we can't rely on a unanimous vote. Can we objectively say that J S Bach is a good composer? Many would be tempted to say no. But I'm not so sure about a radical boundary between physics and aesthetics. In both cases we depend on community consensus, even if (of course) we imagined something stronger.
"Ruby lips". It is a classical (hackneyed) metaphor. Metaphors are metaphors. New or old. It is a matter of form.
Do rivers have mouths? Do needles have eyes? Do you see what I mean? (Is meaning literally visible?)
Metaphor itself is a dead metaphor.
[quote=link]
The English metaphor derived from the 16th-century Old French word métaphore, which comes from the Latin metaphora, "carrying over", in turn from the Greek ???????? (metaphorá), "transfer",[8] from ???????? (metapher?), "to carry over", "to transfer"[9] and that from ???? (meta), "after, with, across"[10] + ???? (pher?), "to bear", "to carry".[11]
[/quote]
A metaphor is a carry-over or carry-across of structure. It makes sense to me that we would point out one pattern or structure in terms of familiar patterns or structures.
Then idea is a central metaphor, a visual metaphor.
[quote=link]
The word "Idea" originates from the Greek, and it is the feminine form of, the word ????? (Greek eidos: something seen; form, shape; related to idein "to see," eidenai "to know" [2]). "Idea" meant at first a form, shape, or appearance and implied the "visual aspect" of things in classical Greek.[3]
[/quote]
This concern with metaphor isn't just one internet rando's pet.
[quote=link]
While the basic features of phenomenological consciousness – intentionality, self-awareness, embodiment, and so forth—have been the focus of analysis, Continental philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida go further in adding a linguistically creative dimension. They argue that metaphor and symbol act as the primary interpreters of reality, generating richer layers of perception, expression, and meaning in speculative thought. The interplay of metaphor and phenomenology introduces serious challenges and ambiguities within long-standing assumptions in the history of Western philosophy, largely with respect to the strict divide between the literal and figurative modes of reality based in the correspondence theory of truth.
...
Derrida, from the outset, will call into question the assumption that the formation of concepts (logos) somehow escapes the primordiality of language and the fundamentally metaphorical-mythical nature of philosophical discourse. In a move which goes much further than Ricoeur, Derrida argues for what Guiseseppe Stellardi so aptly calls the “reverse metaphorization of concepts.” The reversal is such that there can be no final separation between the linguistic-metaphorical and the philosophical realms. These domains are co-constitutive of one another, in the sense that either one cannot be fully theorized or made to fully or transparently explain the meaning of the other. The result is that language acquires a certain obscurity, ascendancy, and autonomy. It will permanently elude our attempts to fix its meaning-making activity in foundational terms which necessitate a transcendent or externalized (to language) unified being.
...
For Arduini, figurative activity does not depict the given world, but allows for the ability to construct world images employed in reality. To be figuratively competent is to use the imagination as a tool which puts patterns together in inventive mental processes. Arduini then seems to recall Nieztsche; anthropologically speaking, humans are always engaging in some form of figuration or form of language, which allows for “cognitive competence” in that it chooses among particular forms which serve to define the surrounding contexts or environments. Again, metaphor is foundational to the apprehension of reality; it is part of the pre-reflective or primordial apparatus of experience, perception, and first- through second-order thought, comprising an entire theoretical approach as well as disciplines such as evolutionary anthropology (see Tooby and Cosmides).
...
The Continental theories of metaphor that have extrapolated and developed variations on the theme expressed in Nietzsche’s apocryphal pronouncement that truth is “a mobile army of metaphors.” The notion that metaphorical language is somehow ontologically and epistemologically prior to ordinary propositional language has since been voiced by Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida. For these thinkers metaphor serves as a foundational heuristic structure, one which is primarily designed to subvert ordinary reference and in some way dismantle the truth-bearing claims of first-order propositional language. Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology does away with the assumption that true or meaningful intentional statements reflect epistemic judgments about the world; that is, they do not derive referential efficacy through the assumed correspondence between an internal idea and an external object. While there may be a kind of agreement between our notions of things and the world in which we find those things, it is still a derivative agreement emerging from a deeper ontologically determined set of relations between things-in-the-world, given or presented to us as inherently linked together in particular historical, linguistic, or cultural contexts.
The role of metaphor in perception and cognition also dominates the work of contemporary cognitive scientists, linguists, and those working in the related fields of evolutionary anthropology and computational theory. While the latter may not be directly associated with Continental phenomenology, aspects of their work support an “anti-metaphysical” position and draw upon common phenomenological themes which stress the embodied, linguistic, contextual, and symbolic nature of knowledge.
[/quote]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/met-phen/#SH1b
Of course myths are far more flexible than E =mc^2. As for objective knowledge, what is the measure of that? In my view we respect science primarily because of its technical miracles.
Flexible? The interpretation of a myth is practically subjective. Everyone finds in it what he has put in it. Scientific objectivity is something else. It rests on a series of reasonable assumptions: intersubjectivity and prediction specially. That's why it achieves a consensus that the interpretation of myths cannot achieve. Jung and Freud will never agree. And they come from the same stem.
Scientific objectivity is something else. It rests on a series of reasonable assumptions: intersubjectivity and prediction specially.
I like science. But why do we call those assumptions 'reasonable'? Reasonable for you and me, but not for others. Without its technical results to back it up, it would be one more set of norms for conversation. To be clear, I'm for science and against superstition. So the issue is what grounds science, what lifts it above other ideologies. For me it's an instrument that works, prediction and control. And it works even for people who don't believe in it, which sets it apart from myth. I'm not worried about dark matter. Nor am I the least bit attracted to some God of the gaps.
I think we trust tools that get us what we want. Science through technology is the most reliable wonder-worker that most of us have seen. (Others claim to have been given golden tablets by angels and son on, which is more impressive, but I don't believe them.) For me pseudo-science is what imitates the style of science without actually working. Tech is the test.
I'm sure you can find some writers out there who deserve that kind of lampooning. At the same time, the 'pomo' caricature also serves as wishful thinking for those who just find certain philosophers too difficult (or more likely want to be spared the effort of even trying to read them.) Personally I'd be embarrassed to find the quotes below too difficult.
[quote=Derrida]
In order for my "written communication" to retain it function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability...structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved (whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to cite the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable--iterable -- beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.
...
What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise, trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful [mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate, from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory, trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
[/quote]
[quote=Plato] Soc. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
...
Soc. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
...
Soc. Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power-a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?
Phaedr. Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?
Soc. I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.
Note that in an argument against writing, the metaphor of writing is employed. 'Graven in the soul' implies that the soul is itself a tablet, a text. That's the beginning of a deconstruction. The higher (speech) ends up depending on the lower (writing), ends up being a mere form of the lower. And speech is subject to the same principle of iterability as writing, though a present speaker can always pile on more words in explication of those already spoken, which are themselves subject to the same law of iterablity and (generalized) writing. Wittgenstein's arguments against private language aim at making a related point. This is not to deny but to complicate the presence of meaning in the individual mind as kind of governing metaphor that can lead us into confusion or simply block other aspects of meaning (its sociality, for instance.)
[quote=Foucault]
The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not only with one’s sources and riches, but also with one’s discourses and their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning. As a result we must entirely reverse the traditional idea of the author..the author is not an indefinite source of significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition and recomposition of fiction.
[/quote]
Here is a different spin on the same idea. The author is authority that helps us hide from the ravages of time in the form of the drift and ambiguity of meaning. I prefer Derrida's more neutrally toned presentation, but Foucault is obviously not some unreadable phrase generator.
Here's something from the New Age generator:
[quote=link]
Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a flowering of the high-frequency. We dream, we believe, we are reborn. We exist as supercharged waveforms.
Nothing is impossible. The goal of vibrations is to plant the seeds of life-force rather than suffering. Inseparability is the knowledge of fulfillment, and of us. Today, science tells us that the essence of nature is being.
Have you found your path? If you have never experienced this quantum shift through non-local interactions, it can be difficult to self-actualize. It can be difficult to know where to begin. Humankind has nothing to lose. Throughout history, humans have been interacting with the solar system via vibrations. We are at a crossroads of potential and dogma. Dogma is the antithesis of being.
How should you navigate this magical totality? Indigo Child, look within and enlighten yourself.
Although you may not realize it, you are Vedic.
[/quote]
https://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
It's as crude as the one you linked to, a nice substitute for actually trying to understand a particular 'New Age' text.
Here's another one that generates one-liners.
[quote=link]
Nature is a reflection of an abundance of timelessness.
[/quote]
http://wisdomofchopra.com/
Note that in an argument against writing, the metaphor of writing is employed.
I would interpret this as a statement of Plato's attitude towards written texts generally. He says:
Plato:when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
This is why a great deal of what Plato taught was traditionally understood not to have been written down at all. And you can see why, in such important matters - because they're so prone to misinterpretation, 'they cannot protect or defend themselves'. His Hindu contemporaries philosophical teachings were likewise called 'upanisads' - meaning 'sitting close to', i.e. indicating a spoken or silent teaching between guru and chela.
link:Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a flowering of the high-frequency.
You're right, that's nonsense. I tried to read up on Penrose's theory to this effect but couldn't make head or tail of it. The new age quantum philosophy I relate to is simply Heisenberg's take on physics and philosophy and its successors. Which actually has quite a lot of bearing on the OP.
The only interesting, pragmatic and meaningful context to talk under the theme of subject/object, is the mind-body problem and basically two questions:
An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.
The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).
— Andrew M
In saying this, you're assuming the reality of the object outside your judgement of it.
Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance.
This is what makes your approach more like Locke's. And that is understandable, as Locke's is very much a kind of common-sense realism.
Except that Locke's primary/secondary qualities distinction is, itself, a Cartesian carryover. It's all about figuring out whether qualities belong to the subject or the object which presupposes the dualism in question.
In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense.
— Andrew M
That’s fine, no problem. No matter how one goes about labeling his mental machinations, he is still obliged to demonstrate how such machinations become knowledge, and indeed, common knowledge, such that any congruent rationality understands him. If you claim something about some ordinary object, you then have to explain how it gets its very particular name, and also explain it such that it is possible for me to give it the same name.
OK. By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).
When Alice points at a tree, she is not pointing at an object-of-sense or a representation, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name "tree". Now Alice both senses the tree and represents it conceptually, but note that I'm describing Alice's cognitive activity there, not the tree.
Alice has a specific cognitive system such that the tree has a specific form for Alice (which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree). Even she herself has a specific form for Alice. Thus she can also observe herself pointing at the tree. She is in the scene that she is representing conceptually.
This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here. There is just an object that exhibits a specific form in relation to another object that it interacts with (or, in the case of self-reference, observes to be itself).
This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.
All that being said, it remains indisputable that whatever is external to the brain absolutely cannot be the same as whatever is internal to it, which makes explicit some form of representational system for human knowledge of objective reality is indisputably the case. Such must be the ground of any epistemological/cognitive theory.
So the dualist internal/external distinction is just what I'm disputing here. What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing. The tree has no intrinsic representation, it instead has a form for Alice (which may or may not generalize to other human beings and sentient creatures).
This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here.
So the dualist internal/external distinction is just what I'm disputing here.
Referring to internal/external distinction as "dualism" makes potential point of confusion with substance/property dualism. It’s unclear if you yourself are not confusing the two.
What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing.
Of course, because you forgot to include internal/subjective perspective. For example when Alice is sleep waking and dreaming she is pointing at a tree, while in fact she is pointing at a truck that is about to run her over.
Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance.
But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'!
In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue. You're instinctively presuming a realist position, against which you're then criticizing what you understand as Kant's distinction between appearance and reality. In your view, 'everyone knows' that the world is real, populated by really-existing objects independent of our perception of them. But this is what is being called into question.
?Andrew M
An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.
How do you arrive to that conclusion?
By thinking about how the term mind and other related terms (like thinking) function in everyday communication. The answer is that it's a way of talking about intelligent activity. From earlier in the thread:
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker:Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible.
Referring to internal/external distinction as "dualism" makes potential point of confusion with substance/property dualism. It’s unclear if you yourself are not confusing the two.
Substance and property dualism are specific expressions of dualism. You can find different expressions of dualism in Plato, Locke, Kant and others. Internal/external or subject/object is a more general characterization of dualism:
A subject is a being who has a unique consciousness and/or unique personal experiences, or an entity that has a relationship with another entity that exists outside itself (called an "object").
?Andrew M What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing.
Of course, because you forgot to include internal/subjective perspective. For example when Alice is sleep waking and dreaming she is pointing at a tree, while in fact she is pointing at a truck that is about to run her over.
Yes, there are lots of ways things can go wrong. And so we make ordinary language distinctions between being awake and dreaming.
We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.
In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue. You're instinctively presuming a realist position, against which you're then criticizing what you understand as Kant's distinction between appearance and reality. In your view, 'everyone knows' that the world is real, populated by really-existing objects independent of our perception of them. But this is what is being called into question.
Yes, you're calling it into question. But why? And what's your argument? I describe my model above - what problem does it have?
We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.
We either experience qualia or we don’t. What do you say?
In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue.
Why would anyone raise such idea as a serious issue? Issue for what exactly?
This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.
But it's based on a implicit realism which is itself a mental construction - vorstellung, I believe is the German term for it. And besides - it's a model, and where there's a model, there's a mind!
Why would anyone raise such idea as a serious issue? Issue for what exactly?
For philosophy, of course. I found a pithy aphorism in a book about Kant that was referred to up-thread:
Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason.
(Kant, Refl 3716, ca. 1764 – 68)
Quoted in Pollok, Konstantin (2106-02-07T17:28:15). Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason, Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason.
There are external properties, like location, direction, and shape, that can be investigated objectively. That is empirical science. No problem here.
Then there are internal properties, like sensation, emotion, and cognition, that can, or can not, be investigated objectively, and this question is the problem.
Are you trying to say there is another problem? Do you offer some answer to the problem question I pointed at? Are you making some other point, what is it?
By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).
The very epitome of a dualistic nature: focus towards immediately presupposes focus from. The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it?
———————-
When Alice points at a tree, she is not pointing at an object-of-sense or a representation, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name "tree".
If you had said.....when Alice points to a tree, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name “tree”.....I would have only slightly less inclined to find fault, for even that modified assertion still asks....where did the name “tree” come from, or, what form does convention take, such that “tree” falls out of it as a direct, and apparently necessary, correspondence between pointer and....er...the pointee?
Nevertheless, the minor objection is still the question....what could Alice possibly be pointing at, if not an object that impresses her senses? Perhaps the hyphenation has some meaning, but I don’t see any difference between object-of-sense and object of sense. There is no contention in saying she is pointing to the object itself, which must be something she senses. Otherwise.....why bother with the act of pointing, or indeed the act of speaking, at all? There is just as little contention in saying she is NOT pointing at a representation, because all representations, are internal to the human cognitive system, no matter which system one uses to explain himself.
At any rate, usually Alice pointing to tree is chalked up to experience, insofar as Alice already knows the thing she’s pointing at is conventionally named as “tree”. The major objection then becomes, just because we are told why she points the way she does, because of something she knows, does not tell us anything about how she arrived at the correspondence required between the pointing, or talking, she does physically, and the understanding she does mentally, such that the pointing and the understanding don’t contradict each other. What is being asked here is, and what convention of naming things reduces to, is, what happens to Alice between being told “this is a tree”, and her comprehension of what she’s being told?
——————
Alice has a specific cognitive system such that the tree has a specific form for Alice (which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree).
Ok, so this is the attempt to answer the question of conventional naming.
.......Alice has a specific cognitive system, certainly;
.......such that the tree has a specific form for Alice, maybe;
......which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree, incomplete.
Form as in what objects look like, or form as in general characteristic of a class or group of objects. If a tree has a specific form for Alice, how does Alice tell one kind of tree from another? If Alice can tell one tree from another, it cannot be merely from the form “tree” that facilitates such separation, but would seem to require a form for each and every single aspect of difference. The interconnectedness of the root system of aspens absolutely cannot be derived from the mere form “tree”.
The maybe arises in particular in the fact that things Alice can intentionally point to or talk about may not have a form as does the tree. Alice can certainly point to examples of injustice, and talk about beautiful things, but she is only talking about things under certain conditions. Alice can talk about time, but she’s gonna have a hellava lot of trouble pointing to it.
And the incompleteness arises from the very simple question.....where does the form reside? How is it possible to determine with apodeitic certainty, that forms reside in the objects, or that form resides in the cognitive system from which identity and representation of objects is given?
I wouldn’t be so bold as to make a positive claim in that regard.
————————-
Even she herself has a specific form for Alice. Thus she can also observe herself pointing at the tree. She is in the scene that she is representing conceptually.
I grant Alice has a form for herself, which has been called, among other things, the transcendental object, or transcendental ego, the “I” of subjective activity. But the “I” is never used in pure thought, and only becomes manifest in communication as an explanatory placeholder.
I don’t dispute your rationality, one can think whatever he wants, but I nevertheless categorically reject the notion that Alice observes herself, or that she is in the scene. Way too much Cartesian theater for me.
And Alice isn’t in the scene as much as she IS the scene.
————————
This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here. There is just an object that exhibits a specific form in relation to another object that it interacts with (or, in the case of self-reference, observes to be itself).
This may be the case, for a third party observer. I can see that Alice and the tree she points to are both objects. There is no internal/external distinction because they both are external to me. But they are still objects from the perspective of me as a subject in the form of a third party observer. It is still me (subject) seeing or thinking them (objects). This does nothing whatsoever to prove the non-duality of Alice with respect to her tree.
—————
On Gilbert Ryles:
He is correct in saying Descartes attributed the mind/body problem to the category of substance, when he should have attributed it to the category of relation, such being promulgated long before Ryles. But that does nothing to extinguish the problem, but simply relocates it to a theoretically more sustainable realm. Nowadays, we have the knowledge that justifies “mind” as being just a seeming.....what it seems like to the normal average joe.....rather than what the brain is actually doing, the knowledge to which folks back in the day didn’t in the least have access.
Be that as it may, those same average joes don’t give a crap what their brain is doing, when it comes to wondering why things are the way they seem. As long as that happens, there is going to be a mind/body, subject/object dualism. WHAT it is may be argued, you or anybody from the analytic domain and me or anybody from the continental, from now til doomsday, but THAT it is, is indisputable.
In saying this, you're assuming the reality of the object outside your judgement of it.
— Wayfarer
Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance.
As most are apt to say. But when saying that, all that happens without conscious attention, is neglected. You have no awareness of appearances, intuitions, conceptions, so you base judgements on the object as it is perceived. Nature has done you a favor. Appearances and all those esoteric entities only have meaning in a theoretical sense.
Kant also assumes the reality of objects but does not posit things-in-themselves on that assumption. He admits that things-in-themselves are just as real as the objects of judgement, and that there is no real difference between them. The difference lays in us, not the things.
If you can find no reason whatsoever to claim with certainty that the thing on which we base our judgements and the thing as it is without being judged by us, are not identical, you are justified, by the principle of deduction, in claiming the latter as not having any meaning or purpose. But that is only half the story, in as much you must also have every reason whatsoever to claim the thing of our judgement is without failure to be identical to the thing as it is in itself without our judgements, by the principle of induction.
As long as you see that it is absolutely impossible to know everything there is to know about anything a posteriori, which the principle of induction demands, then you must see it is possible for there to be a reason why the two instances of an object are not identical. And possibility is its own justification; we don’t need to know what the difference is, only that a difference is possible. This is why the thing-in-itself is a knowledge claim, not a reality claim. Reality does not depend on us, but our knowledge of reality sure as hell does.
?Andrew M
We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.
We either experience qualia or we don’t. What do you say?
If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.
This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.
— Andrew M
But it's based on a implicit realism which is itself a mental construction - vorstellung, I believe is the German term for it. And besides - it's a model, and where there's a model, there's a mind!
By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).
— Andrew M
The very epitome of a dualistic nature: focus towards immediately presupposes focus from. The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it?
There's no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here (whereas the tree doesn't have that capability). The issue is over whether this is characterized in a naturally observable way or in a radically private way (as exemplified by the Cartesian mind).
Nevertheless, the minor objection is still the question....what could Alice possibly be pointing at, if not an object that impresses her senses? Perhaps the hyphenation has some meaning, but I don’t see any difference between object-of-sense and object of sense. There is no contention in saying she is pointing to the object itself, which must be something she senses. Otherwise.....why bother with the act of pointing, or indeed the act of speaking, at all?
It's of course true that she wouldn't be pointing at the tree if she hadn't sensed it. What I'm distinguishing here is the object itself (which she has a representation of) and the representation itself (as a kind of reified object).
An analogy would be with a photograph of Alice's son Bob. When Alice shows the photo to a friend and says that this is her son Bob, she doesn't mean that the photograph she is pointing at is her son, she means that the person that the photo represents is her son. That's the case even though the friend only sees the photo.
That's what I'm indicating with (hyphenated) object-of-sense there. It seems that Kant understands the object of sense to be a representation (like a photo or, more dynamically, like a shadow in Plato's cave or a movie), not the thing-in-itself.
Whereas on my model, Alice is referring to the thing itself (which is independent of how Alice represents it, or even that Alice ever senses it at all).
At any rate, usually Alice pointing to tree is chalked up to experience, insofar as Alice already knows the thing she’s pointing at is conventionally named as “tree”. The major objection then becomes, just because we are told why she points the way she does, because of something she knows, does not tell us anything about how she arrived at the correspondence required between the pointing, or talking, she does physically, and the understanding she does mentally, such that the pointing and the understanding don’t contradict each other. What is being asked here is, and what convention of naming things reduces to, is, what happens to Alice between being told “this is a tree”, and her comprehension of what she’s being told?
So on my model, "correspondence" is not the right term here, which implies a matching up between what she is doing physically and what she is doing mentally (i.e., dualism). But she is not performing two activities, she is performing one activity which is simply pointing at the tree. It's an identification (i.e., that this thing that Alice is pointing at is what she means by tree), so isn't subject to dualism's intractable interaction problems.
Now things can go wrong in various ways - misjudgments, illusions, dreams, hallucinations. But these are naturally characterized as different activities to what Alice is doing above when she successfully identifies the tree.
This raises the issue of how she can be certain she has successfully pointed at the tree (perhaps it is an illusion). The short answer is that she can't be certain. Nonetheless, her action can be successful as in the given example.
Think of this as a formal model for how language terms operate. It proceeds from knowledge of the thing, not knowledge of the appearance.
Form as in what objects look like, or form as in general characteristic of a class or group of objects. If a tree has a specific form for Alice, how does Alice tell one kind of tree from another? If Alice can tell one tree from another, it cannot be merely from the form “tree” that facilitates such separation, but would seem to require a form for each and every single aspect of difference. The interconnectedness of the root system of aspens absolutely cannot be derived from the mere form “tree”.
We can suppose a form for every difference, but some characteristics will be deemed important or general, others less so. Aristotle, for example, proposed essential and accidental characteristics. Wittgenstein proposed family resemblances. The bottom line here is that we go with what works. After a while we develop more formal processes around that (as exemplified by the scientific method).
The maybe arises in particular in the fact that things Alice can intentionally point to or talk about may not have a form as does the tree. Alice can certainly point to examples of injustice, and talk about beautiful things, but she is only talking about things under certain conditions. Alice can talk about time, but she’s gonna have a hellava lot of trouble pointing to it.
And people do have trouble. But as you imply, the principle is the same on my model - they just involve more complex abstraction from what we point at than is the case for a tree.
And the incompleteness arises from the very simple question.....where does the form reside? How is it possible to determine with apodeitic certainty, that forms reside in the objects, or that form resides in the cognitive system from which identity and representation of objects is given?
I wouldn’t be so bold as to make a positive claim in that regard.
The form is in the object (in relation to Alice). It's not determined to be there with certainty, it is instead presupposed by the model.
One instead chooses whether to use this model or some other model (assuming one thinks about these sorts of things at all, which is Wayfarer's usual complaint).
I grant Alice has a form for herself, which has been called, among other things, the transcendental object, or transcendental ego, the “I” of subjective activity. But the “I” is never used in pure thought, and only becomes manifest in communication as an explanatory placeholder.
I don’t dispute your rationality, one can think whatever he wants, but I nevertheless categorically reject the notion that Alice observes herself, or that she is in the scene. Way too much Cartesian theater for me.
And Alice isn’t in the scene as much as she IS the scene.
So what is Alice observing when she looks at her hands? Merely her body? On my model, the "I" for Alice is a human being, not a mind or a body.
As long as you see that it is absolutely impossible to know everything there is to know about anything a posteriori, which the principle of induction demands, then you must see it is possible for there to be a reason why the two instances of an object are not identical. And possibility is its own justification; we don’t need to know what the difference is, only that a difference is possible. This is why the thing-in-itself is a knowledge claim, not a reality claim. Reality does not depend on us, but our knowledge of reality sure as hell does.
I agree there is no certainty when one claims that this thing that they are pointing at is what they think it is. There are various ways of going wrong. The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge. So her claim is always provisional.
?Andrew M
If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.
I mean subjective experience, of pain for example, yes radically private. You deny? Ok, let us hear your reasoning then.
Language depends on public criteria. See Wittgenstein's private language argument and specifically regarding pain, see his beetle-in-a-box thought experiment.
I agree. Wittgenstein's point is radical and yet often ignored (just as similar Derridean insights are ignored.)
For me it's not as some in is thread might see it. It's not that private experience like pain is being denied. We know what people mean by such talk (we know how to get along in less philosophical conversation.) Nor is something like the presence of meaning being denied. But this general notion of immediate contact with sensation or meaning is revealed as a largely unquestioned assumption, to those willing to suffer the damage such an insight does to their current attachments.
I would interpret this as a statement of Plato's attitude towards written texts generally.
Indeed, and it's precisely this demotion of writing in the name of speech that is strangely presented with a metaphor that involves writing. Socrates contrasts to writing that cannot defend itself 'an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner.'
That this metaphor is not accidental is suggested by the relationship of ideality and iterability (explored in Voice and Phenomenon). The relative permanence of writing is presumably being borrowed.
His Hindu contemporaries philosophical teachings were likewise called 'upanisads' - meaning 'sitting close to', i.e. indicating a spoken or silent teaching between guru and chela.
I'm open to the value of spoken and silent teaching. I also like Hadot. But is there not always the risk of performative contradiction? What does it mean to make written gestures away from writing? Is writing merely a recruitment tool, a half-truth that lures the student in for a personal initiation? The implication seems to be that what is learned is non-verbal --perhaps like learning to ride a bike. I find that kind of knowledge not only plausible but ubiquitous.
But how is one to distinguish one variety of mute know-how from another? As the outward sign is demoted or denied, so is rationality. This is fine, but why should access to the super-rational present itself rationally ? 'He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.' And yet he who 'knows' feels compelled to say so. To me it's this need that makes me skeptical of the needy person's Enlightenment or mystic access. They are compelled to write just like me, even if they also remember peak experiences in which they temporarily felt beyond the need to explain or justify or even describe. How can such experiences even be talked about, though, without retrospective or anticipatory metaphors?
?Andrew M
So I had to read all that just to see your point is that you are refusing to talk because you have nothing relevant to say about it.
It seems you misunderstood my response. If pain were radically private (in the Cartesian sense), then we would not have language to talk about it. Yet we do. So the term pain must have public criteria. This is surprising to many people. The links were to Wittgenstein's arguments against the possibility of a private language, in case you or other readers weren't familiar with it.
For me it's not as some in is thread might see it. It's not that private experience like pain is being denied. We know what people mean by such talk (we know how to get along in less philosophical conversation.) Nor is something like the presence of meaning being denied. But this general notion of immediate contact with sensation or meaning is revealed as a largely unquestioned assumption, to those willing to suffer the damage such an insight does to their current attachments.
We don't feel other people's pain in a literal sense. We observe some linguistic and bodily behaviours. These behaviors provoke an immediate response in our feelings and behaviour. This response is not deliberate and conscious. Therefore, we can say that we feel the pain of others. But this is not literally true. The only pain we feel is our own.
Reply to David Mo Yes, our feelings are our own and not someone else's. And we don't literally see someone's pain, though we might see that they are in pain.
For me, the philosophical point is that pain, happiness, someone's belief that it is raining, etc., can all be referenced (and, in principle, explained) on a natural model - there's no need to invoke a Cartesian-style mind/body distinction. Further, such a claimed distinction rests on a category mistake - the idea that we are ghosts in machines (per Ryle's metaphor). Both idealist and materialist theories of mind can fall prey to this category mistake (in distinctive ways):
Although neuroscientists are committed materialists, and adamantly insist on this aspect of their anti-Cartesianism, they have, Bennett and Hacker argue, merely jettisoned the dual substance doctrine of Cartesianism, but retained its faulty structure with respect to the relation of mind and behavior.
We have this one word 'pain' for something that we are all supposed to experience privately. How do I know that what I call my pain is what you call your pain?
Exactly. So even though we have a certain intuition that the word 'pain' is attached to private experiences which cannot be compared, the concept only works because of various social conventions. In my view, Wittgenstein's point about the beetle in the box is a radical insight. It applies not only to pain or sensation but also to the issue of meaning. If the concept of pain depends on social convention, then so does the meaning of 'subject' and 'object.' The basic philosophical prejudice is arguably the notion that words are attached somehow directly to mental entities. And then this prejudice understands social practice to be secondary and derivative, ignoring that the functioning of a concept is radically dependent on social practice.
We have this idea of private experience that by definition cannot provide evidence. I can never know whether we 'mean' the same thing according to the private conception of meaning. All we can do is trade more signs, witness one another's behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x86hLtOkou8
[quote=Wittgenstein]
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
[/quote]
I think Derrida is making a related point in Signature, Event, Context. The point is not to simply deny the privacy of pain or meaning but to root out unquestioned assumptions or dominant metaphors.
One such metaphor is the mind as an eye that gazes on atemporal meaning.
I add this quote to the conversation for anyone who might find it useful. It's more difficult prose than that inSignature, Event, Context, but it touches on the relationship of the ideal and that which can be repeated.
For instance, 2 is an ideal object because it's always the same when I bring it back to mind. I can repeat the cognition or experience of this ideal object again and again. Its ideal reality is 'in' this possibility of reliable repetition. 2 doesn't exist as a physical object but either as innate form of human cognition (Kantianism of some kind) or as an object in some nonphysical realm for which humans have a 'sense' organ (mathematical Platonism).
[quote=Derrida]
The unique and permanent motif of all the mistakes and distortions which Husserl exposes in "degenerated" metaphysics, across a multiplicity of domains, themes, and arguments, is always a blindness to the authentic mode of ideality, to that which is, to what may be indefinitely repeated in the identity of its presence, because of the very fact that it does not exist, is not real or is irreal—not in the sense of being a fiction, but in another sense which may have several names, whose possibility will permit us to speak of nonreality and essential necessity, the noema, the intelligible object, and in general the nonworldly. This nonworldliness is not another worldliness, this ideality is not an existent that has fallen from the sky; its origin will always be the possible repetition of a productive act. In order that the possibility of this repetition may be open, ideally to infinity, one ideal form must assure this unity of the indefinite and the ideal: this is the present, or rather the presence of the living present. The ultimate form of ideality, the ideality of ideality, that in which in the last instance one may anticipate or recall all repetition, is the living present, the self-presence of transcendental life. Presence has always been and will always, forever, be the form in which, we can say apodictically, the infinite diversity of contents is produced. The opposition between form and matter—which inaugurates metaphysics—finds in the concrete ideality of the living present its ultimate and radical justification.
…
Husserl will awaken it, recall it, and bring it back to itself in the form of a telos— that is, an Idea in the Kantian sense. There is no ideality without there being an Idea in the Kantian sense at work, opening up the possibility of something indefinite, the infinity of a stipulated progression or the infinity of permissible repetitions. This ideality is the very form in which the presence of an object in general may be indefinitely repeated as the same. The nonreality of the Bedeutung, the nonreality of the ideal object, the nonreality of the inclusion of sense or noema in consciousness (Husserl will say that the noema does not really—reell—belong to consciousness) will thus give the assurance that presence to consciousness can be indefinitely repeated—ideal presence to an ideal or transcendental consciousness. Ideality is the preservation or mastery of presence in repetition. In its pure form, this presence is the presence of nothing existing in the world; it is a correlation with the acts of repetition, themselves ideal.
[/quote]
from Voice and Phenomenon.
It seems you misunderstood my response. If pain were radically private (in the Cartesian sense), then we would not have language to talk about it.
We don't have language to describe ontology of pain or any of the qualia. We can talk about it on a superficial level because we share similar experience.
We sure can not talk about qualia in terms of size, weight, speed, charge… or ony of the physical units of measurement. How come?
Yet we do. So the term pain must have public criteria. This is surprising to many people. The links were to Wittgenstein's arguments against the possibility of a private language, in case you or other readers weren't familiar with it.
What is your conclusion then: there is no hard problem, there is no qualia, or what?
There's no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here (...). The issue is over whether this is characterized in a naturally observable way or in a radically private way (...).
Ok. Keeping context in the fore.....
You: By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something;
Me: The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it?;
You: there is no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here.
.....it seems established that Alice, the actor, is directing her focus intelligently towards something, the object of her focus. To be pointing to a tree, as precedent has it herein, would certainly appear to be naturally observable, by anyone physiologically equipped to observe as does Alice herself. But I’m worried about the meaning of pointing to with respect to focus towards. Pointing to, in its strictest sense, would seem to be undeniably naturally observable, but focusing on seems just as undeniably radically private. Doing anything intelligently implies a source of intelligence, which implies radically private, but does not necessarily imply the naturally observable act of pointing.
So saying, when I point to, I mean to physically indicate. Therefore, I do not point with that which is radically private. My focusing on is not naturally observable, because focusing on, that is to say, the instantiation of a rational methodology, is an act of the intelligence, hence radically private. Thus, to resolve the issue as stated, I submit that all acts of the intelligence are characterized as radically private, all intelligent acts are naturally observable, and in general, the human does both.
———————
....what could Alice possibly be pointing at, if not an object that impresses her senses?
— Mww
It's of course true that she wouldn't be pointing at the tree if she hadn't sensed it. What I'm distinguishing here is the object itself (which she has a representation of) and the representation itself (as a kind of reified object).......
(Ok. Understood.)
........An analogy would be with a photograph of Alice's son Bob. When Alice shows the photo to a friend and says that this is her son Bob, she doesn't mean that the photograph she is pointing at is her son, she means that the person that the photo represents is her son. (....) That's what I'm indicating with (hyphenated) object-of-sense there.
Looks a lot like the ol’ map/territory paradox. Alice shows her friend the map of what she sees as the territory. ‘Course, the photo is a map to Alice as well; it’s just that she knows the territory better than the map depicts. Actually, she knows the territory so well, the map is quite useless to her. So she has both a first-hand, useful representation of her son, and a second-hand perfectly useless representation of the exact same thing in the photo of her son.
I, on the other hand, as Alice’s friend to whom she shows the photo, has a representation of the territory given from the map. The map, however, by telling me merely what the territory looks like, gives me no experience of the territory, so the map is useless to me as well.
——————-
....does not tell us anything about how she arrived at the correspondence required (...) such that the pointing and the understanding don’t contradict each other.
— Mww
So on my model, "correspondence" is not the right term here, which implies a matching up between what she is doing physically and what she is doing mentally (...). But she is not performing two activities, she is performing one activity which is simply pointing at the tree. It's an identification (i.e., that this thing that Alice is pointing at is what she means by tree), so isn't subject to dualism's intractable interaction problems.
Ok, understood. But your model presupposes knowledge. Alice points to a thing she already understands as being identifiable as a tree. In such case, it is more parsimonious to attest she is performing a single task, but in doing so, reason is cast aside, which begs the monstrous question.....how can reason be so readily cast aside. Kant asked Hume this very question, because Hume agrees with you, insofar as, in effect, Alice identifies what she means for no other apparent reason than that’s what she always does. It’s called constant conjunction. And it’s empirically justified, but rationally, it sheer hogwash.
Constant conjunction...better known as mere habit....says what is done in the performance of one activity, but never how what is done comes about. Now you can bring in your language dudes, because they will inform you that language tells Alice what to do. Somebody told those dudes what to do, and somebody told those somebodies what to tell the dude to tell Alice....and eventually we end up asking the very same question Kant asked: how does the first guy find out what to tell everybody else? And if that is so patently obvious a problem for all people in general, it absolutely must be the exact same problem for any single member of that general population. Which gets us right back into where your model wants to get us out of...the dual aspect of physically doing, and mentally understanding what to do, so the two don’t contradict each other. Or, if you wish, so Alice is enabled to perform her single act.
—————-
This raises the issue of how she can be certain she has successfully pointed at the tree (perhaps it is an illusion). The short answer is that she can't be certain.
True, she can’t. Her rationality relies on the law of non-contradiction, even if she’s not aware of it. She will become aware as soon as she makes a mistake in her pointing. Wonder what she’ll do when she has to learn something all on her own, where no kind of experience can help her. When all she has to go on is how it feels.
The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge.
Not my model. My model says on the condition that Alice has knowledge, she has thereby acquired the means to identify an object in the world. Whether or not the object is a tree depends on something else.
In my view, Wittgenstein's point about the beetle in the box is a radical insight. It applies not only to pain or sensation but also to the issue of meaning. If the concept of pain depends on social convention, then so does the meaning of 'subject' and 'object.' The basic philosophical prejudice is arguably the notion that words are attached somehow directly to mental entities. And then this prejudice understands social practice to be secondary and derivative, ignoring that the functioning of a concept is radically dependent on social practice.
Nicely said. This contrast in approach to meaning can also be traced back to Plato for whom the natural world was secondary and derivative (compared to the ideal Forms), and Aristotle for whom the natural world was intelligible.
Thus, to resolve the issue as stated, I submit that all acts of the intelligence are characterized as radically private, all intelligent acts are naturally observable, and in general, the human does both.
So I characterize it differently on my model. Keep in mind(!) that I reject radical privacy, but not mind-related terminology.
Alice might point at the tree in a focused way, in a distracted way, or entirely randomly. The first involves intelligence, the latter two not so much. Or perhaps it turns out that she wasn't pointing at all, but instead made an incidental hand movement while talking about something else. So context matters here.
Describing an action as intelligent is a way to characterize that action (as opposed to the action being thoughtless, for example). There isn't a separate private mental act over and above the action.
And, contra behaviorism, neither is her action reducible to a mechanical or external body movement. That framing implicitly assumes the dualism that is at issue.
There have always existed in the breasts of philosophers, including our own breasts, two conflicting tempers. I nickname them the "Reductionist" and the "Duplicationist" tempers, or the "Deflationary" and the "Inflationary" tempers. The slogan of the first temper is "Nothing But . . ."; that of the other "Something Else as Well . . ."
An analogy would be with a photograph of Alice's son Bob. ...
— Andrew M
Looks a lot like the ol’ map/territory paradox.
OK, so I'd like to try to use those metaphors to illustrate our respective models.
On my model, when Alice looks at the tree, she is not looking at a photograph of the territory (since there is no photograph), she is looking at the territory which has a specific form in relation to her. Her beliefs about the territory are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves).
Whereas on your (Kantian) model, Alice is looking at a photograph (the territory in sense) of the territory-in-itself. Her beliefs about the photograph are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves). Whereas the territory-in-itself remains unknowable.
Ok, understood. But your model presupposes knowledge.
Not quite. It presupposes objects that can be known about.
You asked about how the first person bootstraps their knowledge on my model. The answer is that they try something and, if that doesn't work out, they try something else (assuming they survive long enough to do so). And language builds up around those experiences.
For example, suppose Robinson Crusoe needs to build a shelter and he's looking for a tall, straight stick to support the roof. He encounters a stick partially submerged in water. He assumes he's seeing a bent stick and continues looking elsewhere. This is a kind of naive realism that assumes that things are always just as they appear. From his perspective, he believes (mistakenly) that he has acquired knowledge of the object.
Later he happens to pull the stick out and realizes it is straight. He makes a mental note of the implications of this discovery for future reference.
And so knowledge and language accrete in tandem with practical experience. One step forward and, sometimes, one step back.
Now would Robinson Crusoe have had a considered philosophical explanation for all this? Probably not. Lucky for him that we're here!
A couple of points. First, the above is not a description of Humean constant conjunctions, it is a description of Crusoe's practical experiences in terms of his purposes and achievements.
Second, on my model, the references to "pull the stick out", "realizes" and "mental note" do not imply a physical/mental dualism. They should be understood as holistic descriptions of his actions.
That is, he did not "physically" pull the stick out and, as a separate action, "mentally" realize that it was straight. Instead his realization that it was straight was part-and-parcel of pulling the stick out - a single action (which we can then go on to separate in an abstract sense for analysis). Note that in some other context, he may pull the stick out and not realize it was straight. The key is to resist reducing those two different actions (in their respective contexts) to equivalent "physical" behaviors + some additional and separate "mental" activity.
With "mental note", that should be understood as remembering something (in contrast with writing it down on paper). It has an apparent Cartesian implication, but it's just a way of speaking about the exercise of a particular human ability, in this case committing something to memory.
The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge.
— Andrew M
Not my model. My model says on the condition that Alice has knowledge, she has thereby acquired the means to identify an object in the world. Whether or not the object is a tree depends on something else.
Do you mean that if she has knowledge of the appearance (the photo in my illustration), she can then go on to identify an object such as a tree? Also, what does "whether or not the object is a tree" depend on?
Yeah, so how do you reject the hard problem of consciousness?
I reject the hard problem of consciousness because it's premised on dualism. I reject dualism because it arises from a language confusion (which we briefly discussed here). Philosophers Pigliucci and Hacker make the same argument:
I think that the idea of a hard problem of consciousness arises from a category mistake. I think that in fact there is no real distinction between hard and easy problems of consciousness, and the illusion that there is one is caused by the pseudo-profundity that often accompanies category mistakes.
The philosopher Peter Hacker argues that the hard problem is misguided in that it asks how consciousness can emerge from matter, whereas in fact sentience emerges from the evolution of living organisms.[76] He states: "The hard problem isn’t a hard problem at all. The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with. [...] The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme."[76]
?Andrew M So do you think a third-person description of pain is pain?
No, a description is not the thing itself. Is that what you're asking?
If Alice says, "My tooth hurts" (first-person) and Bob says, "Alice's tooth hurts" (third-person), then both are describing exactly the same thing - Alice's toothache. However neither Alice's nor Bob's description of her pain is the pain itself.
Reply to Andrew M Right. And it’s the inability to objectively capture the subjective quality (=qualia) of pain (etc) which constitutes “the hard problem”.
I think this is because the quale (the beetle in the box) is more or less defined as what we cannot be objective about. I can't know what redness is for others as a kind of direct sensation, but I do trust that we all have the same set of red things. We know how to use 'red.' But this applies not only to redness but to the meaning of 'meaning' and of 'quale' itself.
[quote=Chalmers]
It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
[/quote]
Does it seem objectively unreasonable? What does that even mean? Is he just saying that it's strange that the right arrangements of otherwise inert stuff become sure that they have feelings? I agree: it is strange. But strange compared to what? And what of the contingency of the world itself?
What is an explanation? How can that which is not observable or comparable by definition by integrated within an objective causal nexus? What can be dealt with is sentences and other signs of consciousness. Does anesthesia work? We think so, and we can give reasons without ever having been put under. From an instrumentalist point of view, we have already made progress on the hard problem. Though this requires working with the trusted signs of private experience. 'How can we explain why a person talks about a pain that is otherwise undetectable?" This kind of talk (a public phenomenon) can be worked into a system for prediction and control.
If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.
While I think we mostly agree, I can't quite fit this outright denial of 'private, immaterial experiences' into my perspective. I think the phrase does serve a purpose. I believe in a redness that I can't compare with the rednesses of others. I experience something that I am tempted to call 'meaning' as I read a book.
At the same time this 'private' experience can't ground social practice, and it's social practice that makes it possible for us to talk even with ourselves about an infinitely private experience of redness. In short, the folk metaphysics of dualism seems to be not absurd but only blissfully unaware of how the beetle in the box cannot ground the talk about the beetle. Perhaps denying the beetle is also saying too much?
The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with. [...] The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme."
Is Hacker right? I'm sympathetic to where he's coming from, but perhaps the perspective matters. Metaphysically the hard problem is just a sub-problem of 'why is there is anything at all'? Certain philosophers gesture at the limitations of explanatory discourse. That there is a world in the first place cannot be explained as a matter of principle. Does this make the question 'why is there something?' grand or pointless? The philosopher offers a profound freakout for those who will follow his argument. The scientist is concerned with questions that can be answered (partially) increased conceptual organization, prediction, and control. (Or that's my read of the situation.)
It's the inability to explain how and why humans experience pain, etc., that constitutes "the hard problem".
Do you agree with that characterization of the problem?
It's rather glib, don't you think? Chalmers' opening paragraph:
Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.
I'm wary of your dismissal of the problem as being either 'terminological confusion' or 'a category mistake' (and yes, I have studied Ryle). It seems to me the motivation for such dismissals amounts to a refusal to acknowledge that there is a problem at all (per Dennett).
But I see Chalmers as articulating a very real and profound philosophical problem, which is that no matter how much knowledge we accumulate about the objective domain - and after all, this is what science is in the business of - that the nature of the knowing subject will always elude this analysis.
It's not a problem in the sense that the person in the street is going to be bothered by it (although it might affect him in ways she's not likely to understand). But it's a problem for science when it confronts the question of the nature of consciousness (or even just 'mind'). And understanding why it's a problem and what kind of problem it is, is indeed difficult.
What is an explanation? How can that which is not observable or comparable by definition by integrated within an objective causal nexus? What can be dealt with is sentences and other signs of consciousness. Does anesthesia work? We think so, and we can give reasons without ever having been put under. From an instrumentalist point of view, we have already made progress on the hard problem.
Scientific hypotheses have two sides. The left-hand side is the equation, hypothesis, theory, or what have you. The right-hand side is the result or prediction. Water boils at 100 degrees, lead at 374, and so on. So a scientific explanation ties together predictions which have been tested against results - left hand and right hand side. That is what a scientific explanation is, in a very general sense.
But the philosophical issue is that, in the case of understanding consciousness, we are what we seek to know; we are both object and subject. That's why, for instance, Daniel Dennett has to claim that humans are merely and purely objects ('moist robots' he says, semi-humorously); because if the human subject is real, then his project (which is based on positivism and behaviourism) is stymied. And why? Because the mind is real but not objective.
[quote=Thomas Nagel] Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”[/quote]
[quote=Ernst Cassirer]The man who believes himself endowed with an autonomous will thus places himself in another order of things and relates himself to determining grounds of an entirely different sort from when he perceives himself as a phenomenon in the sense-world and subordinates his causality to external determination under natural laws. The fact that he has to represent and think everything in this twofold way is not at all contradictory, for it rests in the first place on his consciousness of himself as an object affected by the senses, in the second on the consciousness of himself as intelligence, that is, as an active subject who, in using reason, is freed from any passive attachment to sensory impressions.[/quote]
Quoted in Pollok, Konstantin Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason (Kindle Locations 68-74). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
I reject radical privacy, but not mind-related terminology.
Understood. One can’t reject mind-related terminology yet still talk about mind-like things. Still, because minds, in and of themselves, would seem to be irrefutably private, it seems odd...or self-contradictory....to reject radical privacy in the mental sense, which is what we’re discussing here.
—————-
On “Thinking and Saying”:
I understand you to be countering the predicates my continental transcendentalism with it, but I’m not seeing how that gets accomplished. Rather than dissect it ad nauseam, I’ll just bring forth one item I noticed, abruptly, so to speak, and that comes from.....
“.....This notion of thinking is that of pondering or trying to solve a problem, not that of believing or feeling sure, which unfortunately goes by the same English name of "Thinking." I am interested in cogitation, not credence; in perplexity, not unperplexity. Our specimen thinker is going to be the stilI baffled Penseur, not the man who, having reached conviction, has stopped struggling to reach it....”
.....which is found in the first paragraph after the topic break on p5. The “man who, having reached conviction...” has cognized that which he was beforehand thinking. To say interest in cogitation, not credence: is self-defeating, for credence IS cogitation, as opposed to arriving at cogitation, by means of “pondering or trying to solve a problem”, which is, of course, what le penseur is actually doing when he thinks.
“.....To think an object and to cognize an object are by no means the same thing. In cognition there are two elements: firstly, the conception, whereby an object is thought (the category); and, secondly, the intuition, whereby the object is given. For supposing that to the conception a corresponding intuition could not be given, it would still be a thought as regards its form, but without any object, and no cognition of anything would be possible by means of it, inasmuch as, so far as I knew, there existed and could exist nothing to which my thought could be applied....”
(B147)
Now, one may perhaps interject that Ryles is not talking about cognition when he uses the term cogitation. If that is the case.....I give up. Anybody can say whatever they want if they also invent the terms to justify it. Just going to be mighty difficult to find common ground, though.
“....What is the point of the under-breath muttering which the thinker really is very often doing when thinking? What is the heuristic use of soliloquizing? There is no one-strand answer.....
(Of course there is: understanding)
......The still baffled Pythagoras, in again and again muttering a geometrical phrase to himself, may be intending, by way of rehearsal, to fix it in his memory; or in discontent with its slack phrasing, he may be intending, if he can, to stiffen it; or he may be meaning to re-savour the thrill of a recent discovery...”
....all possible, yet all reducible to........go ahead, take a guess.
Now, about these under-breath mutterings. Ever read a book that thoroughly enthralled you? I mean...took you away and put you right where the author wanted you to be. For me, it was Stephen King, and I’m here to tell ya I never saw the words he wrote, and I never muttered a damn thing. All that says, is that it is entirely possible to have mental activity without the slightest internal muttering, which makes explicit there are certain mental activities in which language has no play. If there are some mental activities in which language has no play, yet mental activities are completely comprehensible, the whole intentionality thing is rather worthless, at least from a radical private perspective.
Anyway, thanks for the reference showing me the ground of your arguments so far. Rest assured I don’t necessarily disagree with them entirely, even if I find such grounding both insufficient for theoretical completeness, and misguided in theoretical derivation.
Ok, fine. Two items. Pg7:
“...Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed. But now he reduces, in its turn, observation itself to Nothing But some oddly stingy minimum. However, this stinginess of the empiricist must not soften us towards the lavishness of the transcendentalist. For though he properly acknowledges the differences between kicking and scoring, or between just presenting arms and obeying the order to present arms, yet he goes on to make these differences occult ones. For since they are not to be the earthly or muscular differences demanded in vain by the empiricist, they will have instead to be unearthly, nonmuscular differences that transcend the referee's and the sergeant's powers of perception...”
In the immortal words of Herr Pauli......That is not only not right, it is not even wrong! One has no business qualifying the transcendental with the transcendent, and neither are necessarily occult in nature. Ryles may have been nodding toward Steiner, re: “The Outline of Occult Science”, 1909, but Steiner was no proper transcendentalist, but rather a mere mystic, or spiritualist, a la Swedenborg.
——————
On my model, when Alice looks at the tree, she is not looking at a photograph of the territory (since there is no photograph), she is looking at the territory which has a specific form in relation to her. Her beliefs about the territory are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves).
Whereas on your (Kantian) model, Alice is looking at a photograph (the territory in sense) of the territory-in-itself. Her beliefs about the photograph are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves). Whereas the territory-in-itself remains unknowable.
Does that capture your model, on your view?
My model: as you put it, is pretty much the case, yes. I balk at “her beliefs”, however, because if she knows the object as a tree, she has no need to merely believe in the properties that cause it to be a tree in the first place. This is a reflection on my thesis that we attribute properties to objects, as opposed to your thesis that objects are necessarily in possession of intrinsic properties belonging to them irrespective of the perception of them.
———————
You asked about how the first person bootstraps their knowledge on my model. The answer is that they try something and, if that doesn't work out, they try something else (assuming they survive long enough to do so). And language builds up around those experiences.
Ok, fine. I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
Later he happens to pull the stick out and realizes it is straight. He makes a mental note of the implications of this discovery for future reference. And so knowledge and language accrete in tandem with practical experience.
Robbie can certainly pull and realize simultaneously. Or, if he happens to be on a tide flat and perceives the exposure of rocks, he can realize without any pulling. But mental note-taking is precisely the other part of the dualism being discussed. And in no case is it possible for Robbie to realize something before his experience of it. He can think it, but thinking is not realizing.
That is, he did not "physically" pull the stick out and, as a separate action, "mentally" realize that it was straight. Instead his realization that it was straight was part-and-parcel of pulling the stick out - a single action (which we can then go on to separate in an abstract sense for analysis).
Even if it be granted the action of pulling and the action of realizing are part-and-parcel of each other, simply from their simultaneity, they are still parts. Besides, realization can be considered really nothing other than a change in subjective condition, and all change takes time, so......
I know what you’re trying to say, and at first glimpse there is force to the argument. But the argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, because no explanation sufficient to facilitate it has as much power as an explanation that refutes it. The only reasonable recourse such argument has going for it, is to deny the theoretical reality of what Ryles calls “....any catalogue of simple qualities and simple relations, whether rude or refined...”. Which is tantamount to denying reason itself, because reason is exactly that catalogue.
——————
The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge.
— Andrew M
Not my model. My model says on the condition that Alice has knowledge, she has thereby acquired the means to identify an object in the world. Whether or not the object is a tree depends on something else.
— Mww
Do you mean that if she has knowledge of the appearance (the photo in my illustration), she can then go on to identify an object such as a tree? Also, what does "whether or not the object is a tree" depend on?
No. Forget appearances, they are subconscious, theory-specific hypotheticals. Technically, they are means to an end, but a relatively minor one. I meant by my model, re: on the condition that Alice has knowledge, that given a series of mental activities, pursuant to a perception of sense, knowledge of what that perception entails, is given.
Whether or not the perception entails the conception of a particular object, depends exclusively on extant experience. After learning the identity of some particular object....
(Dad, what is this thing? Son, that’s what we call a fork. Oh. Ok)
.......every subsequent perception of a similar object will, all else being equal, be identified as that kind of object....
(SON!! Use your fork, not your fingers!! Oh. Ok.)
Before learning the identity of a particular kind of object, a perception will entail an unknown something in general, which is thereby left open to any non-contradictory judgement the perceiver’s naming method permits.
(What the hell is THAT?? Damned if I know...call it a ______ )
We understand this, because the very first instance of naming anything, is never conditioned by what the object is, but only as how we wish to know it.
(electrostatic discharges of black-body radiation are not fire arrows of the gods; the fundamental constituency of hadrons are not colored)
That's why, for instance, Daniel Dennett has to claim that humans are merely and purely objects ('moist robots' he says, semi-humorously); because if the human subject is real, then his project (which is based on positivism and behaviourism) is stymied. And why? Because the mind is real but not objective.
I'm not defending Dennett, since I don't think consciousness is an illusion.
But I don't think that one can say that the mind is not objective. This is the general idea of a 'publicly traded' concept. It functions socially. It's supposed to refer to lots of individual minds. Yet some would have these minds be so private that they are utterly incomparable.
I don't know the quale that you call 'red.' I only trust that we both know that the prototypical rose is red. Indeed, the moist robot metaphor is made possible in the first place by the notion of the radically private mind. While only a sociopath doubts that others have feelings 'behind' their behavior, the notion of the private mind creates an infinite chasm one mind and another. A sophisticated enough moist robot would presumably fool us into caring about it, perhaps electing it to lead us. On the other hand, how do we know that a coffee cup isn't conscious? If a [s]lion[/s] coffee cup could speak, we wouldn't understand it. Language depends on social practice.
I know more or less what you mean by the mind is real but not objective. But I also gave the example of anesthesia for surgery. The technician definitely wants to keep the patient from feeling the surgery. But the technician can't directly mind-melt with the patient to guarantee unconsciousness. Clearly there are signs of consciousness, and these signs are part of the public concept of consciousness. In terms of prediction and control, we are already chipping away at the hard problem. If we abandon prediction and control, then what kind of explanation do we want? A poem that satisfies intuition? The story of God breathing life into Adam?
The world as a whole can't be explained. So I'm not bothered by the radical version of the hard problem. But that radical version is framed to be insoluble.
I also gave the example of anesthesia for surgery.
Ever heard of Wilder Penfield? He was a Canadian neurosurgeon and a pioneer of modern neurosurgery. Among the curious facts about neurosurgery is that the brain doesn't have pain receptors, so he was able to carry out surgery on conscious patients as a matter of routine. He found that he could elicit very detailed memories by stimulating areas of the brains of patients under surgery - so detailed that the patients could literally 'smell the coffee' (to give one example). But the point which intrigued him is that the subjects always knew when it was something that was being done from them, and could distinguish it from something they themselves were doing. On this basis, he (somewhat reluctantly) adopted a dualist philosophy, which became subject of a well-known popular book by him, Mysteries of the Mind.
It's also interesting to note that Australian neurosurgeon, Sir John Eccles, likewise developed a dualist view of mind and brain (and in fact co-authored a book with Karl Popper on this subject.)
Of course all of this is subject to dispute. However I'm inclined towards a form of dualism. But the crucial mistake since Descartes is to view 'res cogitans' as something objectively real (or conversely not objectively real); a literal substance, a thinking thing (which is the literal meaning of 'res cogitans'). There is no 'thinking thing' but the fact that there is not, is the denial of something which never existed in the first place. It's a false conceptualisation, in which sense I agree with Ryle's criticism of it, but I draw radically different conclusions from that.
But I don't think that one can say that the mind is not objective.
Mind is not an object - this is an empirical statement. There are billions of things that are objects - but 'mind' is not among them. The fact that 'it functions socially' is only a statement of something everyone supposes to be true. In fact, the mind is a mystery in the midst of being - that is why materialists feel such a sense of urgency in denying it! If you admit the reality of mind, then materialism is unsustainable.
I'm not defending Dennett, since I don't think consciousness is an illusion.
The reason I keep referring to Dennett is that he is a textbook materialist; if you want to understand what that theory means, then he's the go-to. So he's not a straw man, he's the genuine article. If you want to criticize materialist philosophy of mind, then look no further.
While only a sociopath doubts that others have feelings 'behind' their behavior, the notion of the private mind creates an infinite chasm one mind and another.
But that's not the point at issue. The 'hard problem of consciousness' is that, no matter how complete a functionalist theory of mind is, there is always going to be an explanatory gap. It wouldn't be a problem, were it not for those who say 'what "gap"?' 'What is left out?' Because when you can't answer the question in their terms - that is, objectively - they say: "aha! It's nothing, see!" That's because, as I say, it's not an objective reality; rather it is that which the whole concept of objectivity is founded on. But 'the subject forgets himself' - as Schopenhauer puts it. Or as Jacques Maritain says:
[There is] an inevitable confusion and inconsistency even in what [the Empiricist] says: for what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it. [This describes Dennett.] A confusion which comes about all the more easily because, on the one hand, the senses are, in actual fact, more or less permeated with reason in man, and, on the other, the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent.
the point which intrigued him is that the subjects always knew when it was something that was being done from them, and could distinguish it from something they themselves were doing.
The paracingulate sulcus differentially marks reports of sensory stimulation from the specific brain regions responsible for sensory processing depending on their correspondence with other somatic input. It's just science, we don't have to invoke some magical woo every time we don't know how something works.
Reply to Isaac The 'magical woo' involved is simply that of interpreting signs and signals, without which no discoveries of the kind you mention would ever have been made. Such discoveries depend on reason, but the ability to reason doesn't depend on such discoveries. Probably you call it 'woo' because you're unclear about what 'reason' is.
I should also add, Penfield was a rigorous scientist and surgeon, and came to his conclusions on the basis of many hundreds or even thousands of observations. The only 'woo' involved was his observation that the subject was always aware of the distinction between being manipulated by the surgeon and his or her own volitional actions. I would be interested to know how that subjectively-observed difference could be validated with respect to neural data.
StreetlightJanuary 28, 2020 at 10:38#3765030 likes
Yeah nah definately woo invoked by our resident woo oil salesman.
Reason is simply a method of thinking. One which has proven remarkably successful for understanding the world. One key tenet in this method is not inventing new structures until it is clear existing ones do not suffice. To see such a difference as Penfield did and formulate a hypothesis not that some other part of the brain he's looking at must perform this function (as it turned out was the case) but to instead invent an entirely fabricated realm of existence for which we have no empirical evidence at all, is not 'reason'.
It's the equivalent of me inventing an invisible race of key-eating aliens every time I lose my keys rather than the simpler explanation that I've simply forgotten where I put them.
I think the man is absolutely brilliant and any short comings can be made up for the fact that we are all standing on his foundation in some sense. I couldn't find out if he was a Christian but i know he believe in a God/god.
The only 'woo' involved was his observation that the subject was always aware of the distinction between being manipulated by the surgeon and his or her own volitional actions.
Any scientist worth their salt would have followed established principles of scientific investigation and looked for the simplest explanation provided within theories which already have good foundational support. If a subject is aware of something, that awareness is most likely provided by a region of the brain. We know this because thus far we've been able to correlate awareness with brain activity in every case we've tested.
So if a patient is aware of some distinction (between externally and internally invoked sensation), then the simplest explanation is that some region of the brain is providing this awareness. It's no surprise at all then, that this turned out to be the case.
It also opened up some incredibly useful avenues of treatment for paranoid schizophrenia (whose sufferers seem to have diminished paracingulate suculi). What use has your dualistic answer been?
I would be interested to know how that subjectively-observed difference could be validated with respect to neural data.
It's complicated, obviously, but a simple summary is that the brain has suppressive, backward acting neural signals which suppress output from neural collections on the basis of higher brain activity. The network makes a prediction about the source of stimulation, updates that prediction on the basis of other forward-acting signals, and then suppresses contrary signals to yield a consistent model.
Elsewhere you asserted logic is simply a method of thinking.
Are there more?
Well, yes. Depends on the purpose of the categorisation. Some psychologists distinguish between intuitive and reasoned thinking, others between emotive and rational. Some consider reflex a kind of thinking. It's not like there's a laid out taxonomy or anything, it depends on the field of enquiry as to what categorisation might be most useful.
Mind is not an object - this is an empirical statement. There are billions of things that are objects - but 'mind' is not among them. The fact that 'it functions socially' is only a statement of something everyone supposes to be true. In fact, the mind is a mystery in the midst of being - that is why materialists feel such a sense of urgency in denying it! If you admit the reality of mind, then materialism is unsustainable.
I think you are missing my point. I'm not saying that minds are objects like balloons or clouds. I'm saying that 'the mind' is a publicly tradable concept. Their are more and less intelligible ways to employ this word. I don't legislate the language. It is given like the law. To deny this is to implicitly confirm it.
Any denial is only intelligible in the first place in terms of social conventions.
Also lots of classic materialists were something like dualists.
[quote=Hobbes]
Concerning the Thoughts of man, I will consider them first Singly, and afterwards in Trayne, or dependance upon one another. Singly, they are every one a Representation or Apparence, of some quality, or other Accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an Object. Which Object worketh on the Eyes, Eares, and other parts of mans body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of Apparences.
The Originall of them all, is that which we call Sense; (For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of Sense.) The rest are derived from that originall.
...
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense...
[/quote]
Then, more generally,
[quote=Wiki]
According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist.
[/quote]
To me the essence of materialism is something like a taking of the physical substratum seriously. It's not a denial of sensation or thought but a belief in some kind of substratum or matrix/matter with a controlling influence on 'mind.' Democritus theorized atoms that were too small for human eyes to see. The substratum (in this case atoms and void) had to be approached indirectly. Another crucial aspect of materialism (according to Lange) is that this 'matter' is subject to simple human-indifferent laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Materialism_and_Critique_of_Its_Present_Importance
In short, I don't associate philosophical materialism with the denial of what we aim at with 'mind.' I'm a materialist, yet I feel no need to deny mind. Nor am I afraid to admit the necessity of contingency (that the world as a whole is inexplicable and hence mysterious). I'm also more of an instrumentalist than a realist when it comes to theories about the substratum, yet:
[quote=link]
More recently, Stein (1989) has argued that the dispute between realism and instrumentalism is not well joined: once realism has been sophisticated (as he suggests it must be) to give up its pretensions to metaphysically transcendent theorizing, to eschew aspirations to noumenal truth and reference, and to abandon the idea that a property of a theory might somehow explain its success in a way that does not simply point out the use that has been made of the theory, and once instrumentalism has been sophisticated (as he suggests it must be) to recognize the scope of a theory’s role as an instrument to include not just calculating experimental outcomes, but also adequately representing phenomena in detail across the entire domain of nature and providing resources for further inquiry, there remains no appreciable difference (or no difference that makes a difference) between the two positions.
[/quote]
https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/pkylestanford/files/2016/10/InstrumentalismRoutledge.pdf
If method is a systematic procedure according to rules, then reason should be readily granted as the method of (human) thinking. But I’m reluctant to admit we have methods of thinking corresponding to the plethora of subjects being thought about.
I’m not going to argue against your expertise in psychology, obviously; just looking for a little clarity.
The reason I keep referring to Dennett is that he is a textbook materialist; if you want to understand what that theory means, then he's the go-to. So he's not a straw man, he's the genuine article. If you want to criticize materialist philosophy of mind, then look no further.
Perhaps someone will speak up for Dennett. If not, then he's a strawman in this context.
The 'hard problem of consciousness' is that, no matter how complete a functionalist theory of mind is, there is always going to be an explanatory gap. It wouldn't be a problem, were it not for those who say 'what "gap"?' 'What is left out?' Because when you can't answer the question in their terms - that is, objectively - they say: "aha! It's nothing, see!" That's because, as I say, it's not an objective reality; rather it is that which the whole concept of objectivity is founded on. But 'the subject forgets himself' - as Schopenhauer puts it.
The kind that that is the subject of philosophy as distinct from science.
I ask again what kind of explanation is sought? I accept the necessary contingency of the world as a whole. So I'm not anti-mystery. If the explanatory gap is just that again, then OK. But what is philosophical explanation? If not prediction and control, then perhaps it's conceptual coherence or an emotionally satisfying narrative about how things hang together.
I mentioned anesthesia because we do indeed have practical theories about consciousness that allow for prediction and control.
If others object to the 'explanatory gap,' I'm guessing that they do so because they expect this 'gap' to be filled nevertheless with a metaphysical or religious explanation. Some might just be anti-mystery. Others are just OK with the mystery but more interested in useful & illuminating theories (conquering ignorance and impotence ).
I’m reluctant to admit we have methods of thinking corresponding to the plethora of subjects being thought about.
Why? A soldier at war demonstrably thinks differently to a mathematician working on a problem. People even think differently depending on whether or not they're too hot or cold. We can see the different areas of the brain involved, we can judge by the results of problem solving exercises and confirm by subjective self-reporting. The evidence is quite compelling that both sensory inputs and recalled data are processed differently given different contexts. I just wonder why you'd have some reluctance to this idea, does it conflict with some other, equally compelling view?
he 'magical woo' involved is simply that of interpreting signs and signals, without which no discoveries of the kind you mention would ever have been made. Such discoveries depend on reason, but the ability to reason doesn't depend on such discoveries.
I agree that we have to already share a lifeworld and a language before we can do science. As Bohr put it:
[quote =summary by link of Bohr]
1. The interpretation of a physical theory has to rely on an experimental practice.
2. The experimental practice presupposes a certain pre-scientific practice of description, which establishes the norm for experimental measurement apparatus, and consequently what counts as scientific experience.
3. Our pre-scientific practice of understanding our environment is an adaptation to the sense experience of separation, orientation, identification and reidentification over time of physical objects.
4. This pre-scientific experience is grasped in terms of common categories like thing’s position and change of position, duration and change of duration, and the relation of cause and effect, terms and principles that are now parts of our common language.
5. These common categories yield the preconditions for objective knowledge, and any description of nature has to use these concepts to be objective.
6. The concepts of classical physics are merely exact specifications of the above categories.
The classical concepts—and not classical physics itself—are therefore necessary in any description of physical experience in order to understand what we are doing and to be able to communicate our results to others, in particular in the description of quantum phenomena as they present themselves in experiments.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
We also find something like this in Husserl's Crisis. I understand as a kind of socialized less rigid Kantianism.
[quote=Husserl]
[In] my naive self-consciousness as a human being knowing himself to be living in the world, for whom the world is the totality of what for him is valid and existing, I am blind to the immense transcendental dimension of problems … I am completely … bound by interests and tasks … [and] a certain habitual one-sidedness of self interest … I can, however, carry out the transcendental re-orientation in which … I now have, as a new horizon of interest … a new, infinite scientific realm—if I engage in the appropriate systematic work …
[One] kind of thinking … tries to bring ‘original intuition’ to the fore—that is, the pre- and extrascientific lifeworld … The proper return to the naïveté of life—but in a reflection that rises above this naiveté—is the only way to overcome [this] … naiveté …
In science we measure the lifeworld … for a well-fitting garb of ideas … It is … a method which is designed for progressively improving … through ‘scientific’ predictions, those rough predictions which are the only ones that are possible within the sphere of what is actually experienced and experienceable in the lifeworld …
Considering ourselves … as scientists … the manner of scientific thinking puts questions and answers them theoretically in relation to the world … Cofunctioning here are the other scientists who, united with us in a community of theory, acquire and have the same truths or … are united with us in a critical transaction aimed at critical agreement …
For the human being in his surrounding world there are many types of praxis, and among them is this peculiar … one, theoretical praxis. It has its own professional methods; it is the art of … discovering and securing truths with a certain new ideal sense which is foreign to [extra]scientific life, the sense of a certain ‘final validity’ …
[/quote]
https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/husserl-on-the-task-of-science-in-and-of-the-lifeworld
For me the problem is ignoring that concept is social rather than private.
Equally compelling views is a relative quality, but still, the enabling parameters for neural networks corresponding to war being different than enabling parameters for neural networks corresponding to peace remain enabled neural networks nonetheless.
From a more esoteric domain, it is unarguable that the human doesn’t think in terms of neural networks, even if neural networks are the physical mechanisms for it. If the brain operates under a strict, singular, mechanically deterministic method, however complex it may be, why wouldn’t the merely philosophical operate under some method as singular, strict and logically deterministic, with some arbitrary corresponding complexity?
Either way, the conditions under which a method operates, shouldn’t determine the rules of the method.
To me the essence of materialism is something like a taking of the physical substratum seriously. It's not a denial of sensation or thought but a belief in some kind of substratum or matrix/matter with a controlling influence on 'mind.'
That's completely accurate. I did an essay on Lucretius under Keith Campbell in his Philosophy of Matter class. Mind is the product of matter - that's really all there is to it.
If the brain operates under a strict, singular, mechanically deterministic method, however complex it may be, why wouldn’t the merely philosophical operate under some method as singular, strict and logically deterministic, with some arbitrary corresponding complexity?
The brain almost certainly isn't a strict singular mechanically deterministic system. Neural signals are rapid stocatto outputs and trace complex routes, they are inhibited by incoming signals which are also rapidly intermittent. This creates a stochastic, probabilistic system because small changes in the route taken by the outgoing signal determines whether it comes before or after the suppressing one. I won't go on, I'm not a neuroscientist myself so this is second hand knowledge, suffice to say the brain is probabilistic... Probably.
the conditions under which a method operates, shouldn’t determine the rules of the method.
'Shouldn't' in what sense? As in you don't think it ought to, or as in there's some law of thought preventing it? If the former, then tough, it does. So you'll just have to live with that. If the latter (and you're not denying the evidence I've alluded to) then you're simply extending the definition of rational thought to cover all thought. Not only is this contrary to most use, but it renders the term useless. We can suffice with just 'thought'.
You used system in regard to a strict, singular, deterministic; I used method. The method is the rules, the system is the use of the rules. No matter the particulars, the brain (the system) obeys the laws attributed to natural forces (the method).
Shouldn’t in the sense that should would be destructive, insofar as if the conditions under which the method is used determine the method, the method is no longer rule-based, therefore not a proper method.
If we can suffice with just “thought”, which I advocate as being the case, why do we need more than one method for it?
There's nothing dualist about it - concepts are the simple residuum of the effects of sensations.
I guess it depends on what one means by dualism. I had something in mind like indirect realism. The quoted article explores how indirect realism clashes with elimination materialism.
[quote=link]
Sense data are seen as inner objects, objects that among other things are colored. Such entities, however, are incompatible with a materialist view of the mind. When I look at the coffee cup there is not a material candidate for the yellow object at which I am looking. Crudely: there is nothing in the brain that is yellow. Sense data, then, do not seem to be acceptable on a materialist account of the mind, and thus, the yellow object that I am now perceiving must be located not in the material world but in the immaterial mind. Indirect realism is committed to a dualist picture within which there is an ontology of non-physical objects alongside that of the physical.
[/quote]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2
Hobbes definitely sounds like an indirect realist at the beginning of Leviathan.
[quote=Hobbes]
And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained.
[/quote]
The object is one thing and the image of the object is another. This is the object-in-itself and the object-for-us, matter and mind.
Below is a great slice of Hobbes that shows to what degree he was an armchair scientist of the soul, a folk psychologist knee deep in the 'transcendental pretense' mentioned earlier. To know others we must know ourselves, for others have reasons to conceal from us what we don't necessarily conceal from ourselves. His book appeals to the soul-searching of its readers.
[quote=Hobbes]
Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in power, towards their inferiors; or to encourage men of low degree, to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters; But to teach us, that for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope, Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men, Desire, Feare, Hope, &c; not the similitude or The Objects of the Passions, which are the things Desired, Feared, Hoped, &c: for these the constitution individuall, and particular education do so vary, and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of mans heart, blotted and confounded as they are, with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible onely to him that searcheth hearts. And though by mens actions wee do discover their designee sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himselfe a good or evill man.
But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him onely with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be onely to consider, if he also find not the same in himselfe. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm
I guess it depends on what one means by dualism. I had something in mind like indirect realism.
Strictly speaking it means mind and matter are different substances - in the philosophical sense, not the everyday sense, which is radically different. But this is where Cartesian dualism departed radically from scholastic dualism (i.e. hylomorphism). It's a deep subject, that book I mentioned by Pollok has a whole chapter on Kant and hylomorphism. But hylomorphism is 'matter-form' dualism, which is very different to Descartes' 'matter-mind' dualism. The problem with Cartesianism is that it posits 'res cogitans;' as a literal substance in an objective sense - something which objectively exists. And that leads to the intractable problem of how this 'ghost in the machine' can pull levers or do anything (which is Ryle's criticism).
My approach is 'mind is that which grasps meaning'. And the reason we can't say what mind really is, is because of the reflexive problem of consciousness, i.e. that 'the eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself.' That's why I say mind is not an objective reality - it is that which 'objective reality' depends on. Whereas materialism inverts this, and says that the mind is dependent on its own objects. This is the realisation that prompted Schopenhauer's remark about the 'Olympian laughter':
[Materialism] seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility - that is knowledge - which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result - knowledge, which it reached so laboriously - was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought "matter", we really thought only "the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it". Thus the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unexpectedly.”
My point exactly.
Hobbes is just the kind of target Kant had in mind when he criticized empiricism. I won't try and re-state all the details, but suffice to say everything Hobbes writes about the mind, is subject to the criticism 'percepts without concepts are blind'.
I'm thinking you still don't see what I mean by that. There's a certain overlap in our positions, which is something like: Concepts are important. They exist. Perceptions are concept rich, but just stupid sensations. We need language/thinking even to absurdly deny the existence of language and thinking. We need linguistic conventions for denying the centrality of such conventions.
[quote = link]
In dualism, ‘mind’ is contrasted with ‘body’, but at different times, different aspects of the mind have been the centre of attention. In the classical and mediaeval periods, it was the intellect that was thought to be most obviously resistant to a materialistic account: from Descartes on, the main stumbling block to materialist monism was supposed to be ‘consciousness’, of which phenomenal consciousness or sensation came to be considered as the paradigm instance.
The classical emphasis originates in Plato's Phaedo. Plato believed that the true substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms of which bodies are imperfect copies. These Forms not only make the world possible, they also make it intelligible, because they perform the role of universals, or what Frege called ‘concepts'. It is their connection with intelligibility that is relevant to the philosophy of mind. Because Forms are the grounds of intelligibility, they are what the intellect must grasp in the process of understanding. In Phaedo Plato presents a variety of arguments for the immortality of the soul, but the one that is relevant for our purposes is that the intellect is immaterial because Forms are immaterial and intellect must have an affinity with the Forms it apprehends (78b4–84b8). This affinity is so strong that the soul strives to leave the body in which it is imprisoned and to dwell in the realm of Forms.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#MinBodHisDua
[quote=Culler]
What Freud, Saussure and Durkheim seem to have recognized is that social sciences could make little progress until society was considered a reality in itself: a set of institutions or systems which are more than the contingent manifestations of the spirit or the sum of individual activities. It is as though they had asked: “what makes individual experience possible? what enables men to perceive not just physical objects but objects with a meaning? what enables them to communicate and act meaningfully?” And the answer which they postulated was social institutions which, though formed by human activities, are the conditions of experience. To understand individual experience one must study the social norms which make it possible.
[/quote]
[quote= Saussure]
The notion of value... shows us that it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements.
[/quote]
[quote=Chandler on Saussure]
The arbitrariness principle can be applied not only to the sign, but to the whole sign-system. The fundamental arbitrariness of language is apparent from the observation that each language involves different distinctions between one signifier and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'free') and between one signified and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'bush'). The signified is clearly arbitrary if reality is perceived as a seamless continuum (which is how Saussure sees the initially undifferentiated realms of both thought and sound): where, for example, does a 'corner' end? Commonsense suggests that the existence of things in the world preceded our apparently simple application of 'labels' to them (a 'nomenclaturist' notion which Saussure rejected and to which we will return in due course). Saussure noted that 'if words had the job of representing concepts fixed in advance, one would be able to find exact equivalents for them as between one language and another. But this is not the case' (Saussure 1983, 114-115; Saussure 1974, 116). Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided up very differently. Indeed, no two languages categorize reality in the same way. As John Passmore puts it, 'Languages differ by differentiating differently' (cited in Sturrock 1986, 17). Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no 'natural' concepts or categories which are simply 'reflected' in language. Language plays a crucial role in 'constructing reality'.
[/quote]
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htm
What I make of this is that we are trained as children to employ a system of signs in the context of a social life which is largely non-linguistic. This system of signs is also a taken-for-granted lens on the world. It makes philosophy and science possible. It is their 'ground.' And yet philosophy and science seek out the ground of this ground (metaphysical or physical substratum). The Mobius strip comes to mind.
Derrida's concept of iterability is attempt to make sense of the realm of the ideal, the realm of Forms. What is this human passion to dwell in the realm of the forms? To escape time, decay, vulnerability, confusion... I share this passion. We want to add to the Book, live in the Book.
You used system in regard to a strict, singular, deterministic; I used method. The method is the rules, the system is the use of the rules. No matter the particulars, the brain (the system) obeys the laws attributed to natural forces (the method).
Maybe, but if the deterministic natural forces are expressed through a stochastic system then there's no reason at all to suppose a deterministic method will result.
should would be destructive, insofar as if the conditions under which the method is used determine the method, the method is no longer rule-based, therefore not a proper method.
I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here, but at a guess, you seem to be hinting at the idea that rules determine which set of rules to use. That may be (although see above as to the underlying uncertainty in the system), but again, you're defining away rational thought. If rational thought is not a type of thought then the word 'rational' is pointless.
If we can suffice with just “thought”, which I advocate as being the case, why do we need more than one method for it?
We don't have more than one method because we need to. We simply observe thinking strategies and decide we're going to gives different names to some of the differences we see. We could not do that, and just call it all 'thought'. We could divide it into a hundred different types based on every tiny difference we observe. It's just a matter of utility.
. I'm saying that 'the mind' is a publicly tradable concept.
— jjAmEs
— Wayfarer
Sure.
— Wayfarer
I'm thinking you still don't see what I mean by that.
But remember why I was making this point. The discussion is about 'objects and subjects' and by implication, the role of 'the objective sciences' in regards to this question.
So in saying that 'the mind is not objective', I'm not saying that it's not possible to discuss the nature of mind, or that the concept is not meaningful in various domains of discourse. The reason I'm saying that mind is not objective, is to undercut the presumption that it is a subject for the objective sciences at all. And the reason I refer to Dennett, is because his attitude of 'eliminativism' recognizes this fact. (IN that, it's very similar to, and maybe descended from, behaviourism).
But what eliminative materialism wants to eliminate or deny or describe as 'folk psychology' is in fact the fundamental nature of being itself. TO which the materialist reply is invariably: TOSH. There is no such 'fundamental nature'. If there were, you would be able to demonstrate it empirically'.
My approach is 'mind is that which grasps meaning'. And the reason we can say what it is, is because of the reflexive problem of consciousness, i.e. 'the eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself.' That's why I say mind is not an objective reality - it is that which 'objective reality' depends on.
But isn't your description precisely the eye seeing itself? The hand grasping itself? The mind is the meaning-grasper, the meaning-hand. Or the mind is sense organ for the otherwise invisible conceptual realm. The mind is a special kind of hand or a special kind of eye. Both metaphors are great.
For me objective just means 'expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.' It's not about objects, though everyday objects are usually admitted without controversy or bias and therefore naturally come to mind.
I do understand that sans consciousness there would be no there there. Consciousness and being have an intimate if complicated relationship. Yet some kind of substratum that survives the coming and going of individual consciousnesses is just as intuitive as consciousness grounding being. We read the traces of dead philosophers and repeat (we hope) their cognitive leaps. They etched something in/on the realm of forms.
The problem with Cartesianism is that it posits 'res cogitans;' as a literal substance in an objective sense - something which objectively exists. And that leads to the intractable problem of how this 'ghost in the machine' can pull levers or do anything (which is Ryle's criticism).
Perhaps you can expand on your distance from this Cartesianism.
Whereas materialism inverts this, and says that the mind is dependent on its own objects. (This is the realisation that prompted Schopenhauer's remark about the 'olympian laughter':
[Materialism] seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility - that is knowledge - which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality. Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result - knowledge, which it reached so laboriously - was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought "matter", we really thought only "the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it". Thus the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unexpectedly.”
I agree with you and Schopenhauer that a certain kind of materialism is the just target of Olympian laughter. I don't gel with Dennett, for instance. But if we leave metaphysics and just think of technology, then it makes good sense to see how we can construct the complex from the simple. In my view, 'matter' is just as problematic as 'mind.' The mind-matter distinction is useful in many contexts but doesn't work as a crisp and final metaphysics. 'Matter' is something like an old stand-in for the 'thing in itself' or the substratum. My own position is something like a generalized instrumentalism, but that's largely an attitude. To me most of the 'great' philosophers got something right, were illuminating.
Hobbes is just the kind of target Kant had in mind when he criticized empiricism. I won't try and re-state all the details, but suffice to say everything Hobbes writes about the mind, is subject to the criticism 'percepts without concepts are blind'.
I know. Of course Kant made important advances on Hobbes. I'm hardly suggesting that Hobbes is up-to-date and hot off the press. But, as others have noted, Kant's theory is only intelligible against the background of Hobbes and Locke.
https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lk
[quote=link]
These correspondences between Kant’s and Locke’s frameworks point up some character differences between their corresponding elements. One such difference is that between ‘things themselves’ and ‘things in themselves’. As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense.
...
Now it will be seen that behind Kant’s positing unknowable ‘things in themselves’ and reinterpreting the ordinary external things in space as internal representations, the naturalistic logic of the seventeenth century theories of ideas is tacitly operating. If this were not the case, he would have no reason for regarding the objects of our experience as internal from the start and for grasping them as appearances in contrast to things in themselves. Further, the view that things in themselves ‘affect’ our senses would not make sense without our ordinary experience concerning the causal process of sense perception (or some physical view framed by sophisticating it). That is, it seems that the very framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism could not be established if it were not based on our ordinary experience or more sophisticated physical view.
[/quote]
One great thing about Kant is that he opens up the possibility of thinking the-world-as-it-really is without the assumption of 3 spatial dimensions. All kinds of new models become acceptable. Maybe we are 'really' in Flatland or Lineland or [math] \infty [/math]-land. To me such theories are 'just' instruments, but still he drops the assumption that space is really there. Was he the first? If so, that's impressive indeed. I agree that intutions without concepts are blind, and that's why I make so much of language/community and speak of a socialized neo-Kantianism. While mind depends in one sense on the individual brain, it depends in another sense (just as important for human beings) on learning to speak among others.
The temptation is to emphasize the isolation of our minds as an echo of the physical distance between our brains. But this is to ignore the point of brains, which is to be networked. It's like only understanding the internet from the perspective of individual chromebooks. The chomebooks are for the internet, and the internet depends on chromebooks. A sane human being is plugged in to a language and various social norms. His internal monologue occurs in linguistic conventions he received like the law. And metaphysical versions of mind and matter seem parasitical upon pre-understandings of either in ordinary language.
But what eliminative materialism wants to eliminate or deny or describe as 'folk psychology' is in fact the fundamental nature of being itself. TO which the materialist reply is invariably: TOSH. There is no such 'fundamental nature'. If there were, you would be able to demonstrate it empirically'.
Do you see my point?
Yes, I see your point. And I agree with you against the position that denies consciousness. I wonder if Dennett is half-trolling. No bad publicity, etc.
The reason I'm saying that mind is not objective, is to undercut the presumption that it is a subject for the objective sciences at all.
But what about psychology? And even Husserl's phenomenology aimed at objectivity and freedom from bias. If we emphasize that aspect of mind that is most distant from any kind of peer review or experiment, then indeed we take the mind out of serious conversation altogether. Even metaphysicians have no choice but to employ metaphors. I can't say the phenomenal redness of the rose. I can never know that others see red as I see red (or hear the same middle C.) I can say that grass is not red and that stop signs are. I have to enter the public sign system. And yet we all understand something like qualia if we can't compare them. Which is why Dennett will probably sound like a half-troll or clever moist robot himself to most of us.
I'm sure you've seen this, but for others....
[quote=Searle]
To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?
[/quote]
Yeah what about it? I studied undergrad psych and it was abundantly obvious that the whole field was philosophically fractured. (The only essay I ever failed was my first psych essay, about intelligence testing. On the upside, met my future wife in psych tutorials.)
Husserl's epoche was not aimed exactly at objectivity, but at detachment. They're close, but not the same. Actually comparisons have been made between Husserl's epoche and the Buddhist sunyata, in that both philosophies are concerned with cultivating close awareness of the texture and nature of experience without a sense of attachment. (There’s an essay out there somewhere called Epoche and ??nyat?).
But isn't your description precisely the eye seeing itself? The hand grasping itself? The mind is the meaning-grasper, the meaning-hand. Or the mind is sense organ for the otherwise invisible conceptual realm. The mind is a special kind of hand or a special kind of eye. Both metaphors are great.
But you can't! That's the point! Hence the role and importance of not knowing! And I mean that in the fully Socratic sense.
You asked me what an explanation is, in philosophy. One answer would be: an explanation of why we’re tied in knots. That’s close to Wittgenstein’s attitude, isn’t it? The ladder and the discarding of it. But first we have to climb it, and it’s more than just a verbal matter.
You mentioned Crisis - see if you can find the passage on Descartes. It’s a very perceptive critique. I am meaning to get another copy of that book, it’s kind of a core book.
Have I mentioned Michel Bitbol to you? I was alerted to him by Pierre Normand on this forum.
In short, the folk metaphysics of dualism seems to be not absurd but only blissfully unaware of how the beetle in the box cannot ground the talk about the beetle. Perhaps denying the beetle is also saying too much?
What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pain, colors and meaning - they have a place in the language game. Whereas the beetle - a hypothetical entity that can't be referenced or talked about - drops out as irrelevant.
So I think its reasonable to talk about pains, colors, etc., as we ordinarily do, and deny the ghostly entities.
Metaphysically the hard problem is just a sub-problem of 'why is there is anything at all'? Certain philosophers gesture at the limitations of explanatory discourse. That there is a world in the first place cannot be explained as a matter of principle.
It seems to me that there should be explanations for these things. I'm not sure how not having satisfactory answers given our present state of knowledge should ever imply that there are no explanations to be had.
But I see Chalmers as articulating a very real and profound philosophical problem, which is that no matter how much knowledge we accumulate about the objective domain - and after all, this is what science is in the business of - that the nature of the knowing subject will always elude this analysis.
You frame the problem in terms of a subject/object dualism which, as jjAmEs has also noted, makes it insoluble by definition. So the point at issue is really a conceptual one of naturalism versus dualism.
if the deterministic natural forces are expressed through a stochastic system then there's no reason at all to suppose a deterministic method will result.
True enough. Still, in the compendium of practical matters in which humans can agree with each other on an arbitrary set of empirical determinations in accordance with their respective communicative means (if I ask every rational English-speaking body in NYC to point to his foot, they will all point to the same place), there would seem to indeed be a singular deterministic method in place that supports practical matters in general.
Nahhhh......if all humans didn’t have a common thinking method intrinsic to themselves alone, they’d be mere primates.
(if I ask every rational English-speaking body in NYC to point to his foot, they will all point to the same place)
I doubt that. Some would disobey on principle, some would absentmindedly point elsewhere because they weren't paying attention (not weren't listening, just reacting on instinct), some would point to their hand (thinking they're making a joke), etc...
The more complex you make the instruction, the more challenging the environment you make it in the more varied the results.
Try telling a soldier on active duty to point to his foot, he'll tell you to shut up without even registering what you said. Try telling a person to point to their foot after they've been primed to respond to all commands by pointing to their hand (behavioural priming), they'll point to their hand. I mean, all these experiments have been done, there's tonnes in the literature. People do not consistently respond in a 'rational' manner and the manner in which they do respond differs from 'rational' in predictable ways. You might not like that, maybe it makes us a bit more 'mere primate-like' than you'd prefer, but that's the empirical data. Ignore it if you like, but that would be irrational, wouldn't it?
Reply to Mww I'm finding it difficult to keep my reply short! However I think we may be finding some points of agreement (or at least better understanding our disagreements!)
Understood. One can’t reject mind-related terminology yet still talk about mind-like things. Still, because minds, in and of themselves, would seem to be irrefutably private, it seems odd...or self-contradictory....to reject radical privacy in the mental sense, which is what we’re discussing here.
I would say irrefutably not private (per the PLA). Or, to take a broader perspective, we have different ways of conceptualizing mind:
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience - Bennett and Hacker:Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise. Of course that does not mean that people do not have minds of their own, which would be true only if they were pathologically indecisive. Nor does it mean that people are mindless, which would be true only if they were stupid or thoughtless. For a creature to have a mind is for it to have a distinctive range of capacities of intellect and will, in particular the conceptual powers of a language-user that make self-awareness and self-reflection possible. [bold mine]
On my view, to interpret a figurative expression as a Cartesian-style mind is a conceptual mistake.
To say interest in cogitation, not credence: is self-defeating, for credence IS cogitation, as opposed to arriving at cogitation, by means of “pondering or trying to solve a problem”, which is, of course, what le penseur is actually doing when he thinks.
The difference is between task and achievement words (which Ryle describes in The Concept of Mind, p131-p135). Cogitation is a task word (which is Ryle's interest in his essay), credence (as with knowledge) is what is acquired or achieved as a result of cogitation. Consider the difference between running a race and winning a race. Winning entails that a race was run. But winning is not reducible to running. Neither is winning an additional task performed to the running. It is instead a logical condition that depends on specific criteria, such as that the runner crossed the finish line before the other runners, followed the rules, etc. So context matters here.
In a similar vein, thinking is a task word. Whereas to have made up one's mind is an achievement phrase.
Now, one may perhaps interject that Ryles is not talking about cognition when he uses the term cogitation. If that is the case.....I give up. Anybody can say whatever they want if they also invent the terms to justify it. Just going to be mighty difficult to find common ground, though.
So Ryle's usage here (as an ordinary language philosopher) matches ordinary use.
Cognition: The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
Cogitation: The action of thinking deeply about something; contemplation.
Note how cogitation describes a task - that of thinking about something. Whereas cognition describes an achievement - the knowledge and understanding acquired as the result of thinking about something.
For Alice to cogitate about the tree (Are its leaves really green? Is it an illusion?) is one thing, to cognize that its leaves are green is a (logically) different thing.
....all possible, yet all reducible to........go ahead, take a guess.
As you may have also guessed by now, for Ryle (and in ordinary use), understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).
Alice might not understand why the tree's leaves are green, or what it means for them to be green at a deeper level. But she at least understands that they are green.
[Note that this is from my perspective, of course. Others may dispute that she understands that at all if they think such things are illusions, appearances or secondary qualities. But that is a difference over what is understood, not with how the term understanding is ordinarily used.
A discussion of dualism/naturalism is particularly challenging because there is a whole web of language that is interpreted according to one philosophical premise or the other (and sometimes an entangling mixture of both).]
If there are some mental activities in which language has no play, yet mental activities are completely comprehensible, the whole intentionality thing is rather worthless, at least from a radical private perspective.
Note that Ryle explicitly rejects the "thought is language" slogan, which belongs to behaviorism. Where language comes in is that we need language to identify thinking at all, which means that it is a public term.
That Le Penseur can think without visible indication is mundane privacy. And in those cases, we might sometimes be mistaken about what he's doing (perhaps he's fallen asleep). But radical privacy would be invisible even to scientists investigating brain activity or physicists describing particle movements. That's the interaction problem of the Cartesian model and why Ryle's ghost in the machine metaphor is apt.
Anyway, thanks for the reference showing me the ground of your arguments so far. Rest assured I don’t necessarily disagree with them entirely, even if I find such grounding both insufficient for theoretical completeness, and misguided in theoretical derivation.
And thank you for taking the time to articulate your position and objections. I think we both agree on the importance of a sound philosophical grounding for one's position.
Gilbert Ryle - Thinking and Saying:...Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed. But now he reduces, in its turn, observation itself to Nothing But some oddly stingy minimum. However, this stinginess of the empiricist must not soften us towards the lavishness of the transcendentalist. For though he properly acknowledges the differences between kicking and scoring, or between just presenting arms and obeying the order to present arms, yet he goes on to make these differences occult ones. For since they are not to be the earthly or muscular differences demanded in vain by the empiricist, they will have instead to be unearthly, nonmuscular differences that transcend the referee's and the sergeant's powers of perception...
One has no business qualifying the transcendental with the transcendent, and neither are necessarily occult in nature. Ryles may have been nodding toward Steiner, re: “The Outline of Occult Science”, 1909, but Steiner was no proper transcendentalist, but rather a mere mystic, or spiritualist, a la Swedenborg.
It has nothing to do with Steiner and "occult" in that sense, but his description is apt nonetheless. Note that Ryle's reference is to Descartes (mind/body) and Plato (ideal Forms/natural world).
The transcendentalist - of whom Descartes and Plato are examples for Ryle - frame things in terms of a ghostly other-world and a mechanical or cave-like world of the senses. The reductionist, who Ryle also criticizes there, dismisses the ghost but retains the machine and/or cave metaphor.
Ryle's broader argument is that by rectifying the logical geography here (i.e., rejecting both the ghost and the machine and reallocating the facts marshalled by the transcendentalist and reductionist), the natural world becomes intelligible.
I balk at “her beliefs”, however, because if she knows the object as a tree, she has no need to merely believe in the properties that cause it to be a tree in the first place. This is a reflection on my thesis that we attribute properties to objects, as opposed to your thesis that objects are necessarily in possession of intrinsic properties belonging to them irrespective of the perception of them.
OK. But isn't that open to the problem of Crusoe attributing bentness to the (straight) stick? Does he "know" it is bent at the time?
Also note that I deny that an object has intrinsic properties. I instead say that the object has form in relation to Alice.
Anyway, my guess is that we're saying the same thing here in our respective terminologies. We can sometimes be mistaken about what we think we know but, in general, need not be.
I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
No, I don't agree with that! Though I accept that we sometimes retroactively change the language used to describe a prior experience. For example, Crusoe's experience always involved a straight stick, not a bent stick, even if he had described it as bent at the earlier time.
Besides, realization can be considered really nothing other than a change in subjective condition, and all change takes time, so......
I regard realization there as a logical condition, not a process in time. As an analogy, when Bob crossed the finish line, what was the time lapse between the states of "has not yet won the race" to "has won the race"? The question doesn't really apply since to win is the logical condition of having crossed the finish line first, not a process in time.
I know what you’re trying to say, and at first glimpse there is force to the argument. But the argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, because no explanation sufficient to facilitate it has as much power as an explanation that refutes it. The only reasonable recourse such argument has going for it, is to deny the theoretical reality of what Ryles calls “....any catalogue of simple qualities and simple relations, whether rude or refined...”. Which is tantamount to denying reason itself, because reason is exactly that catalogue.
He's denying a stamp-collecting approach to thinking and saying, either as a catalog of bodily movements or as a catalog of mental activities. Ryle brings in reason in the completion of that sentence where he includes the logical conditions under which thinking and saying occur, "... but some nexus of statable because statement-shaped conditions."
By analogy, we don't find Bob's race win either in his bodily movements or in his or others' private thoughts. It's instead a logical condition that obtains in that scenario (with the context being that a competitive race is being run, there's a start and finish line, there are rules of conduct, etc.).
As I'm reading you, there are surface similarities here to a Kantian-style transendentalism (just as Plato's Forms have surface similarities to Aristotle's forms). The issue is whether reason is apart from nature or a part of nature (suitably expanded to incorporate intentions and purposes).
We understand this, because the very first instance of naming anything, is never conditioned by what the object is, but only as how we wish to know it.
OK, thanks. I take you to be saying that we can conceptualize things however we like (as long as its coherent). If I want to define chairs as having backs and you don't then that's fine. The thing we're looking at doesn't care what we call it or how we categorize it.
So that's fair enough. But I also think there is a give-and-take - some conceptual schemes are natural and well-motivated, others not so much. If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?
All of which validates the premise that method is a systematic procedure according to rules, but not according to laws. Because there is no promise all humans think about things the same way makes explicit the systematic procedure cannot be predicated on laws, even while a logically deterministic method under which the procedure operates, certainly does not have that restriction.
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The more complex you make the instruction, the more challenging the environment you make it in the more varied the results.
Agreed, in principle. Which is why the exemplary instruction is as simple as possible. Point-to-foot. Subject/copula/predicate. Unencumbered by manufactured conditionals.
The empirical psychologist will inform me as to the myriad of reasons why the guy won’t point to his foot, but all I want to know is how he understood me when I asked him to.
all I want to know is how he understood me when I asked him to.
Crikey, is that all! You know entire textbooks have been written just on the subject of how language is processed? Just distinguishing speech from non-speech involves a complicated feedback mechanism between areas in the auditory cortex. At least five other regions are involved in distinguishing phonemes and breaking out tonal variation. This is all before the message even gets out of the auditory cortex for the first time (yes - the first time, the message gets checked and modified by other feedback mechanisms before it even gets to the temporal cortex where the first stage of syntactic processing takes place)....
The point is, there is a complicated process, it's probably a Bayesian inference model. It's almost certainly not deterministic and it definitely changes depending on the state other areas of the brain are in.
"Point to foot" is definitely not "unencumbered by manufactured conditionals". The words don't even get to the point of being recognised as such without passing through several predictive models, each of which alters the message about what is heard so that it reaches the temporal cortex as the best estimate of what was said, given the context, and that's only if the filtering algorithm from the vorbis even determines that any of it is going to get any of the temporal cortex's precious bandwidth.
If you want to call the whole thing 'rational' thinking without distinguishing any finer category, be my guest, but I'm not sure I see the advantage.
What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pain, colors and meaning - they have a place in the language game. Whereas the beetle - a hypothetical entity that can't be referenced or talked about - drops out as irrelevant.
I mostly agree with you. Note however that we are talking about the beetle. To me qualia serve that kind of goal. Maybe what I call 'red' is what you call 'green.' No way to check! And yet I think our language game includes this phenomenal redness. I do see that the sign 'red' has to function independently of this beetle, this pure redness. And I agree that we need an entire sign system and form of life in order to gesture toward it. And we have that system! Which allows us to say that it drops out as irrelevant, which it is for the functioning of the sign.
It seems to me that there should be explanations for these things. I'm not sure how not having satisfactory answers given our present state of knowledge should ever imply that there are no explanations to be had.
The point I was trying to make is perhaps a little strange. I understand explanation to be relational. The world as the entire system of entities and their relationships cannot be put into relation to something outside of it, for there is nothing outside of it by definition.
Sartre wrote on this in Nausea. He's very dramatic about what can also be contemplated coolly.
[quote=Sartre]
I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, wearing their spring clothes. I said, like them, "The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence conceals itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word "being." Or else I was thinking — how can I put it? I was thinking of properties. I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that green was one of the qualities of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature.
...
The word Absurdity is emerging under my pen; a little while ago, in the garden, I couldn't find it, but neither was I looking for it, I didn't need it: I thought without words, on things, with things. Absurdity was not an idea in my head, or the breath of a voice, only this long serpent dead at my feet, this serpent of wood. Serpent or claw or root or vulture's talon, what difference does it make? And without formulating anything clearly, I understood that I had found the clue to existence, the clue to my nauseas, to my own life. In fact, all I could grasp beyond that comes down to this fundamental absurdity. Absurdity: another word. I struggle against words; beneath me there I touched the thing. But I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity. A movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd — in relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium. But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root — there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound, secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
...
This moment was extraordinary. I was there, motionless, paralyzed, plunged in a horrible ecstasy. But at the heart of this ecstasy, something new had just appeared; I understood the nausea, I possessed it. To tell the truth, I did not formulate my discoveries to myself. But I think it would be easy for me to put them in words now. The essential point is contingency. I mean that by definition existence is not [logical] necessity. To exist is simply ... to be there; existences appear, let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce them. Some people, I think, have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a being that was necessary and self-caused. But no necessary being [i.e., God] can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, an appearance which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, and, therefore, perfectly gratuitous. Everything is gratuitous, this park, this city, and myself. When you realize this, your heart turns over and everything begins to float....
[/quote]
http://twren.sites.luc.edu/phil120/ch10/nausea.htm
Absolutely. No meaningful discourse when the parties all agree with each other. Still, in Ryle, as you say....... Quoting Andrew M
understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).
......to better understand our disagreements is an achievement, which we can then say only evolves by the faculty of understanding being tasked to achieve it.
Such would be a semantic quibble if it weren’t already a theoretical tenet.
—————-
Still, because minds, in and of themselves, would seem to be irrefutably private....
— Mww
I would say irrefutably not private (per the PLA). Or, to take a broader perspective, we have different ways of conceptualizing mind:
Agreed, not private (per the PLA), because there is no such thing as a PLA anyway. I meant private insofar as inaccessible except as the necessarily abstract ground for transcendental philosophy. Therein, the mind is conceived as the irreducible condition for all that pure reason seeks for itself.
Commonly, I suppose, and granting the complementary nature of human rationality, that which is ultimately real, and possibly knowable, the object, is incomprehensible without logical juxtaposition to the ultimately not-real, hence only thinkable, the mind.
More commonly, I suppose, mind is what the brain does, which is just about as empty a conception as there could ever be.
On my view, to interpret a figurative expression as a Cartesian-style mind is a conceptual mistake.
Given this highlighted section: “...Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise...”, I suppose this to be a figurative expression, and if it is, I agree such talk is a conceptual mistake. I don’t talk about or of the mind per se, but rather talk about certain human faculties and their exercise on their own validity and merits alone.
And your different way of conceptualizing mind would be......? Which I take as a different concept of mind, in as much as I think we all conceptualize, as a task, the same way.
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On ordinary language: thanks for the explanations; things are clearer for me with them, with respect to Ryle.
On theoretical terminology: understood, even if I maintain that hardly any of it is necessary. I mean...thinking and thinking deeply being two different things? I don’t see the theoretical benefit in that fine a distinction.
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In the immortal words of Herr Pauli......That is not only not right, it is not even wrong!
— Mww
On the contrary, Ryle gets it right! And it's such a clear distillation of Ryle's view that I had to requote it.
The minor objection: the passage itself may be a clear distillation of Ryle, but I don’t get where he thinks Descartes and Plato are transcendentalists.
The major objection: for those I do see as Transcendentalists, or, more properly, transcendental idealists, it must be granted that the “lavishness of the transcendentalist” means the invocation of a priori cognitions and knowledge, and calling such invocation occult-ish and “transcending powers of perception”, is what is not even wrong.
Can you show what the lavishness of the transcendentalist is, that isn’t the advocacy of the a priori, to show what I thought Ryle meant, is incorrect?
Ryle's broader argument is that by rectifying the logical geography here (i.e., rejecting both the ghost and the machine and reallocating the facts marshalled by the transcendentalist and reductionists), the natural world becomes intelligible.
On the other hand, rejecting the alleged ghost and the machine the ghost supposedly lives in, seems to be rejecting the a priori aspect of human reason, and by association, the faculties in which the a priori resides. The intelligibility of the natural world is not the same as knowledge of the natural world, however, and because of that, I reject the notion that the latter is even possible without the former.
Yeah what about it? I studied undergrad psych and it was abundantly obvious that the whole field was philosophically fractured.
You said that the mind was not objective. I'm saying that psychology is a objective-unbiased science of behavior and mind, including 'conscious and unconscious phenomena.' Perhaps you mean that the mind is not an object like a rock or a cloud. Of course I agree. But it is a noun that's tangled up in our sayings and doings. We know things about it and apply that knowledge. It's included in a (probabilistic) causal nexus.
Husserl's epoche was not aimed exactly at objectivity, but at detachment. They're close, but not the same. Actually comparisons have been made between Husserl's epoche and the Buddhist sunyata, in that both philosophies are concerned with cultivating close awareness of the texture and nature of experience without a sense of attachment. (There’s an essay out there somewhere called Epoche and ??nyat?).
I don't claim that bracketing == objectivity. I read Husserl as trying to do a supremely scientific kind of philosophy, an ur-science that grounds the others. Objectivity is baked in to this approach. Detachment is of course related to objectivity. Bias is interest. Unbiasedness (objectivity) is disinterestedness. Or we might that the the objective approach is interested in what's 'really' there apart from biased or subjectivity-tainted distortions. Of course we need a subject to experience in the object in the first place. So the scientist is ideally an objective subject, an unbiased subject, who reports things as they are, who sacrifices hypotheses that don't survive testing or criticism. We seem to agree that the phenomenologist cultivates 'close awareness of the texture and nature of experience without a sense of attachment,' and therefore without a bias that distorts the objective.
[quote=Husserl]
The greatness of the natural sciences consists in their refusal to be content with an observational empiricism, since for them all descriptions of nature are but methodical procedures for arriving at exact explanations, ultimately physico-chemical explanations. They are of the opinion that 'merely descriptive' sciences tie us to the finitudes of our earthly environing world.4 Mathematically exact natural science, however, embraces with its method the infinites contained in its actualities and real possibilities. It sees in the intuitively given a merely subjective appearance, and it teaches how to investigate intersubjective ('objective') nature itself with systematic approximation on the basis of elements and laws that are unconditionally universal. At the same time, such exact science teaches how to explain all intuitively pre-given concretions, whether men, or animals, or heavenly bodies, by an appeal to what is ultimate, i.e., how to induce from the appearances, which are the data in any factual case, future possibilities and probabilities, and to do this with a universality and exactitude that surpasses any empiricism limited to intuition. The consistent development of exact sciences in modern times has been a true revolution in the technical mastery of nature.
In the humanistic sciences the methodological situation (in the sense already quite intelligible to us) is unfortunately quite different, and this for internal reasons. Human spirituality is, it is true, based on the human physis, each individually human soul-life is founded on corporeality, and thus too each community on the bodies of the individual human beings who are its members. If, then, as is done in the sphere of nature, a really exact explanation and consequently a similarly extensive scientific practical application is to become possible for the phenomena belonging to the humanistic sciences, then must the practitioners of the humanistic sciences consider not only the spirit as spirit but must also go back to its bodily foundations, and by employing the exact sciences of physics and chemistry, carry through their explanations. The attempt to do this, however, has been unsuccessful (and in the foreseeable future there is no remedy to be had) due to the complexity of the exact psycho-physical research needed in the case of individual human beings, to say nothing of the great historical communities.
If the world were constructed of two, so to speak, equal spheres of reality - nature and spirit - neither with a preferential position methodologically and factually, the situation would be different. But only nature can be handled as a self-contained world; only natural science can with complete consistency abstract from all that is spirit and consider nature purely as nature. On the other side such a consistent abstraction from nature does not, for the practitioner of humanistic science who is interested purely in the spiritual, lead to a self-contained 'world', a world whose interrelationships are purely spiritual, that could be the theme of a pure and universal humanistic science, parallel to pure natural science. Animal spirituality, that of the human and animal 'souls', to which all other spirituality is referred, is in each individual instance causally based on corporeality. It is thus understandable that the practitioner of humanistic science, interested solely in the spiritual as such, gets no further than the descriptive, than a historical record of spirit, and thus remains tied to intuitive finitudes. Every example manifests this. A historian, for example, cannot, after all, treat the history of ancient Greece without taking into consideration the physical geography of ancient Greece; he cannot treat its architecture without considering the materiality of its buildings, etc., etc. That seems clear enough.
[/quote]
While we can and have abstract a mechanical nature from the total human situation (the early materialists were especially impressive in this regard), we can't abstract pure spirit from the total situation and leave behind the brain and the environment. 'Spirit' or culture is at the top and depends on everything below it. Whatever your misgivings about psychology, the mind and consciousness are already understood practically-technologically in a nexus that includes nature. Certain molecules change consciousness. We give the dying as much morphine as they want, for their comfort, which we gauge indirectly via expression and conversation. Violence, accident, and disease apparent end consciousness altogether, at least in the usual sense. We bury and cremate corpses.
To switch themes, we have
[quote=Husserl]
This rough sketch will gain in completeness and intelligibility as we examine more closely the historical origin of philosophical and scientific man and thereby clarify the sense of Europe and, consequently, the new type of historicity that through this sort of development distinguishes itself from history in general.23
First, let us elucidate the remarkable character of philosophy as it unfolds in ever-new special sciences. Let us contrast it with other forms of culture already present in prescientific man, in his artefacts, his agriculture, his architecture, etc. All manifest classes of cultural products along with the proper methods for insuring their successful production. Still, they have a transitory existence in their environing world. Scientific achievements, on the other hand, once the method of insuring their successful creation has been attained, have an entirely different mode of being, an entirely different temporality. They do not wear out, they are imperishable. Repeated creation does not produce something similar, at best something similarly useful. Rather, no matter how many times the same person or any number of persons repeat these achievements, they remain exactly identical, identical in sense and in value. Persons united together in actual mutual understanding can only experience what their respective fellows have produced in the same manner as identical with what they have produced themselves. In a word, what scientific activity achieves is not real but ideal.
[/quote]
We see that the ideal realm depends upon the possibility of perfect iteration. This is its atemporality. Generations come and go like leaves, but certain cognitions are imperishable because each new generation can enjoy them. The flame leaps from melting candle to melting candle. This is the realm of the forms, the book of the forms that can even be extended by works of genius/revelation. This is a 'god' that mortals can incarnate or participate in through science/philosophy.
This last quote echos what you said earlier, I think.
[quote=Husserl]
In the focus on the environing world, a constantly objective attitude, everything spiritual appeared to be based on physical corporeality. Thus an application of the mode of thought proper to natural science was obvious. For this reason we already find in the early stages Democritean materialism and determinism.47 However, the greatest minds recoiled from this and also from any newer style of psychophysics (Psychophysik). Since Socrates, man is made thematic precisely as human, man with his spiritual life in society. Man retains an orientation to the objective world, but with the advent of Plato and Aristotle this world becomes the great theme of investigations. At this point a remarkable cleavage makes itself felt: the human belongs to the universe of objective facts, but as persons, as egos, men have goals, aims. They have norms for tradition, truth norms - eternal norms. Though the development proceeded haltingly in ancient times, still it was not lost. Let us make the leap to so-called 'modern' times. With glowing enthusiasm the infinite task of a mathematical knowledge of nature and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinary successes of natural knowledge are now to be extended to knowledge of the spirit. Reason had proved its power in nature. 'As the sun is one all-illuminating and warming sun, so too is reason one' (Descartes). The method of natural science must also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spirit is real and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. With this the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantly dualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality -only split in two- embraces the one world; the sense of rational explanation is everywhere the same, but in such a way that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in which it can be universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-contained search for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychology or theory of spirit beginning with the ego in psychical self-experience and extending to the other psyche. The way that must be traveled is the external one, the path of physics and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, of the common will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like, are romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of concepts that have a proper sense only in the individual personal sphere. Spiritual being is fragmentary. To the question regarding the source of all these difficulties the following answer is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysical interpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naïve one-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of the spirit as reality (Realitat), presumably a real (realen) annex to bodies and having its supposedly spatiotemporal being within nature, is an absurdity.
[/quote]
All quotes from here: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html
This also sounds like Heidegger. The 'subject' should not be treated like a present-at-hand piece of nature. While this may be a good approach for curing cancer, it's inferior approach for figuring out who-not-what we are and who-not-what we should be.
You asked me what an explanation is, in philosophy. One answer would be: an explanation of why we’re tied in knots. That’s close to Wittgenstein’s attitude, isn’t it? The ladder and the discarding of it. But first we have to climb it, and it’s more than just a verbal matter.
Perhaps you mean that a philosophical explanation unties knots. Or helps the fly out of the bottle. I like that. And a related idea is that philosophy offers and criticizes general frameworks (like what counts as science and philosophy in the first place.) The ladder metaphor is great, too. Flies in bottles, disposable ladders...these metaphors are 20th century [s]theology[/s] ur-science.
On the issue of the subject, it seems that isolating some strictly metaphysical or non-empirical subject is equivalent to saving philosophy as metaphysics. To me the 'I' has its meaning within an entire system of signs and conventions for their use. That's why Husserl/Derrida on repetition are so important. Plato's realm of forms can be naturalized. Sharing in language is sharing in norms of intelligibility. To me this embodied sign-system is an operating system that we can't get behind, an abyssal ground. 'It is there, like the world.' The intuition is that pure literal meaning is grasped by the subject as a [s]sense-organ[/s] meaning-eye. This meaning-eye is the same in all of us, and it allows us all to grasp the same set of pure, literal meaning. If we talk to ourselves, the phonemes don't matter. Such words might be ambiguous to those who overhear us or read our diary, but in the moment of speaking we know exactly what we mean. Of course such pure literal meaning must be translatable in principle. Eternal, universal knowledge cannot be trapped in English or French, etc. Is this not the non-empirical object of philosophy? This immaterial meaning-organ and its immaterial meanings? (Or are there just immaterial meanings among which the meaning-organ is an explanatory posit, a convenient noun to tie a bundle of thoughts to a body and the word 'I' which must correspond to a spiritual object?)
[quote=Bohr]
The experimental practice presupposes a certain pre-scientific practice of description, which establishes the norm for experimental measurement apparatus, and consequently what counts as scientific experience.
[/quote]
[quote=Husserl]
The investigator of nature, however, does not make it clear to himself that the constant foundation of his admittedly subjective thinking activity is the environing world of life. This latter is constantly presupposed as the basic working area, in which alone his questions and his methodology make sense.
...
In so far as the intuitive environing world, purely subjective as it is, is forgotten in the scientific thematic, the working subject is also forgotten, and the scientist is not studied.
...
It is true, of course, that since Kant we have a special theory of knowledge, and on the other hand there is psychology, which with its claims to scientific exactitude wants to be the universal fundamental science of the spirit. Still, our hope for real rationality, i.e., for real insight, is disappointed here as elsewhere.
[/quote]
What counts as real insight? If certain knots are untied, if prediction and control is increased, then progress is made. But there is an itch for something ultimate, it seems. To plug directly into the mystical Logos. And yet I agree with Derrida that we don't know exactly what we are talking about, or at least that the perfect presence (here before me and now) of clear literal meaning is a or the central myth of philosophy, which isn't to deny it a certain truth or worth.
Reply to jjAmEs Dennett is constantly mischaracterized by @Wayfarer; he doesn't deny the reality of consciousness, he just says that it is not what we think it is.
Thanks for the link. It encouraged me to find a pdf of Consciousness Explained --easily foundvia googling.
Here are some clarifying quotes:
[quote=Dennett]
There is the lurking suspicion that the most attractive feature of mind stuff is its promise of being so mysterious that it keeps science at bay forever.
This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, its most disqualifying features and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up (as in Figure 2.4, page 38).
[/quote]
On this point I side more with Dennet, While I think there is a certain necessary contingency with respect to the world as a whole, in all other cases we can and do look for useful relationships. Inasmuch as dualism 'smells' like a god-of-the-gaps strategy, it is offputting to those who want more insight and power, which is to say knowledge. Dualism also connects perhaps to preserving philosophy as an armchair science of the spiritual, just as Kant 'had to deny knowledge to make room for faith.
This quote makes it clear that Dennett does after all believe in consciousness.
[quote=Dennett]
So let's take a brief tour of the phenomenological garden, just to satisfy ourselves that we know what we are talking about (even if we don't yet know the ultimate nature of these things). It will be a deliberately superficial introductory tour, a matter of pointing and saying a few informative words, and raising a few questions, before we get down to serious theorizing in the rest of the book. Since I will soon be mounting radical challenges to everyday thinking, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was simply ignorant of all the wonderful things that inhabit other people's minds. Our phenom is divided into three parts: (1) experiences of the "external" world, such as sights, sounds, smells, slippery and scratchy feelings, feelings of heat and cold, and of the positions of our limbs; (2) experiences of the purely "internal' world, such as fantasy images, the inner sights and sounds of daydreaming and talking to yourself, recollections, bright ideas, and sudden hunches; and (3) experiences of emotion or "affect" (to use the awkward term favored by psychologists), ranging from bodily pains, tickles, and "sensations" of hunger and thirst, through intermediate emotional storms of anger, joy, hatred, embarrassment, lust, astonishment, to the least corporeal visitations of pride, anxiety, regret, ironic detachment, rue, awe, icy calm.
[/quote]
But Dennett asks for trouble.
[quote=Dennett]
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for, is materialism: there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter — the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology — and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain. According to the materialists, we can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same physical principles, laws, and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition, and growth. It is one of the main burdens of this book to explain consciousness without ever giving in to the siren song of dualism.
[/quote]
This is a monistic materialism, it seems to me. I find it just as metaphysical as dualism. The 'physical' is just as slippery and caught up in a system of signs as the 'mental.' The physical/mental distinction and an everyday loose dualism are both quite useful. They prove their value as instruments. But I agree with Dennett that science and philosophy should generally seek knowledge and pierce that which seems mysterious and sacred.
I balk at “her beliefs”, however, because if she knows the object as a tree, she has no need to merely believe in the properties that cause it to be a tree in the first place.
— Mww
OK. But isn't that open to the problem of Crusoe attributing bentness to the (straight) stick? Does he "know" it is bent at the time?
Nahhh...., Robbie has experience of sticks on the ground and branches in trees, so he knows normally sticks aren’t bent in the way they seem when half i/half out of the water. He’ll just think that’s the weirdest stick he’s ever seen. Upon perceiving the stick without its illusory appearance, he’ll understand why it looked so weird. The bent stick isn’t a very good example anyway, because their illusion are so easily remedied, and anything easily remedied isn’t really a problem. The illusion of sunrise is much better, because it took so long to remedy, and because we thought of the sun as actually rising/setting for so long, we still use the terminology for it in common understandings.
——————
Also note that I deny that an object has intrinsic properties. I instead say that the object has form in relation to Alice.
Anyway, my guess is that we're saying the same thing here in our respective terminologies.
Not so sure, myself. I don’t know what it means for an object to have form in relation to a perceiver. What is the relationship between your form and my properties?
——————-
I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
— Mww
No, I don't agree with that!
Then you are forced to admit to naming things, or at least to admit it is not a problem to name things, about which you know nothing whatsoever. In addition, you’ll find yourself unable to explain how it is that, sittin’ ‘round the dinner table as a kid, you didn’t understand what it meant when your parents talked about balancing the checkbook.
You’re talking about language in the sense of stringing symbols together to form a communication. I’m talking about the relation between a conception we think and the symbolism assigned that makes language possible. Because the same thing can be said in many different languages across cultures, and because the same thing can be said in exactly the same language regardless of culture, re: mathematics, and....as if that wasn’t enough...the same symbolism across cultures can indicate very different things, re: football, then it is readily apparent that experience of the thing being talked about, grounds the symbolism for talking about it.
Disclaimer: I detest language philosophy; its what professionals do because all the cool stuff’s been done already and they can’t think of a way to improve on it.
——————-
I regard realization there as a logical condition, not a process in time.
Understood, and I can see that as a logical condition. What would you say to this: all human thought is singular and successive. If such should be the case, then change in subjective condition (Bob racing, Bob winning) is necessarily a process in time.
——————-
He's denying a stamp-collecting approach to thinking and saying, either as a catalog of bodily movements or as a catalog of mental activities. Ryle brings in reason in the completion of that sentence where he includes the logical conditions under which thinking and saying occur, "... but some nexus of statable because statement-shaped conditions."
See....I didn’t catch any of that from the passage. And I couldn’t unpack that last part at all. And I don’t understand “stamp-collecting”.
——————
But I also think there is a give-and-take - some conceptual schemes are natural and well-motivated, others not so much. If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?
No fair. We already know tails from legs. But if the very first naming of that wispy thing hanging off the south end of a north-bound horse was “leg”, or whatever.....that’s what we’d be calling it today, and all horses would have but one leg.
This is a monistic materialism, it seems to me. I find it just as metaphysical as dualism. The 'physical' is just as slippery and caught up in a system of signs as the 'mental.' The physical/mental distinction and an everyday loose dualism are both quite useful. They prove their value as instruments. But I agree with Dennett that science and philosophy should generally seek knowledge and pierce that which seems mysterious and sacred.
OK, but if you are not going to support any claim that there are two radically different substances or realms or dimensions, or whatever term you want to use, to reality, then you are pretty much left with some kind of monism, no?
And if what science can deal with is, by definition, only the physical, and there is no other substance, realm or dimension, then a monistic materialism would seem to logically follow.
Of course we can do the Kantian move and say that we don't, and can't, know what that which appears to us as the physical "really is in itself"; but since that can never be known it is irrelevant to our inquiries, unless we want to illegitimately use it to reify our spiritualist fantasias (in other words practice traditional metaphysics and theology which are the very things Kant is working against).
(I am aware that Kant offers what he sees as practical reasons for believing in God, Freedom and Immortality, but that is a separate entirely ethical issue and has nothing to do with what we are justified in thinking regarding either ontology or metaphysics).
I also acknowledge that there can be a profound aesthetic dimension to "spiritualist fantasias", but again that fact says nothing about what we ought to believe regarding metaphysics or ontology.
The problem with Cartesianism is that it posits 'res cogitans;' as a literal substance in an objective sense - something which objectively exists. And that leads to the intractable problem of how this 'ghost in the machine' can pull levers or do anything (which is Ryle's criticism).
— Wayfarer
Perhaps you can expand on your distance from this Cartesianism.
Because, as Husserl explains in Crisis of European Sciences, Descartes' depiction of 'res cogitans' leads to it being characterised as a literal substance, something that objectively exists (or doesn't exist). Whereas I say that because you can never get outside consciousness, then it is never amongst the things that exist. It doesn't exist anywhere at all, certainly not 'in' brains or 'in' minds.
That is why I keep referring back to the passage in the Upanisad about the 'unknowability of Brahman'. 'The eye cannot see itself, it can only see another'. This is also at the basis of an article by Michel Bitbol, 'It is not known but it is the knower'. This requires a radical re-orientation in order to grasp it, something like a gestalt shift (and I'm sure the inventors of gestalt had just this kind of perspective in mind.
Dennett is constantly mischaracterized by Wayfarer; he doesn't deny the reality of consciousness, he just says that it is not what we think it is.
Take it up with John Searle, then.
John Searle:To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?
Reply to Wayfarer There is no point quoting Searle's opinion of Dennett's views on consciousness; you should quote Dennett himself. Have you actually read Dennett or even listened to any of his interviews?
Dennett is not an eliminativist (listen to the interview with Sean Carroll I linked) and nor does he deny that we have what we call "first person experiences"; he's not that stupid. What he says is that those experiences are not what we think they are.
I find it incredible that after all these years you are still indulging in this kind of ignorant Dennett-bashing, while continuing to fail to provide a shred of evidence from Dennett's own words to support what you are claiming.
StreetlightJanuary 30, 2020 at 01:19#3770940 likes
Lol you think Wayfarer reads books and not blurbs.
Because, as Husserl explains in Crisis of European Sciences, Descartes' depiction of 'res cogitans' leads to it being characterised as a literal substance, something that objectively exists (or doesn't exist). Whereas I say that because you can never get outside consciousness, then it is never amongst the things that exist. It doesn't exist anywhere at all, certainly not 'in' brains or 'in' minds.
Consciousness understood in this way is like being itself. As someone once muttered, being is not itself an entity. Human existence is its there.
[quote=Sartre]
Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
[/quote]
Or (this is more what you are saying, I think) Wittgenstein:
In fact what solipsism means, is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself. That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which only I understand) mean the limits of my world.
The world and life are one.
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing. If I wrote a book “The world as I found it”, I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made.
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted? You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.
…
This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is also a priori. Everything we see could also be otherwise. Everything we can describe at all could also be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori.
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I. The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the “world is my world”. The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world.
[/quote]
'I am my world.' 'Limit' is harder to parse. Consciousness is just being. Except we have reasons to use it in more practical ways. My headache is not your headache, etc. Where I am, death is not. Where death is, I am not. In other words, we have good reasons to treat consciousness as a kind of object in a brain, which can be soothed with aspirin or kind words. We have reasons to bring consciousness into the causal nexus, even if a more metaphysical approach would shrink it to a dimensionless point or go all the way and see that it's completely transparent and in fact just being, the 'there' itself.
This requires a radical re-orientation in order to grasp it, something like a gestalt shift (and I'm sure the inventors of gestalt had just this kind of perspective in mind.
Personally I don't find it that hard to grasp, but, like you, I've been reading crazy philosophers for a long time.
In some ways, you yourself as saying consciousness doesn't exist (as an object), which echoes William James.
I like his approach:
[quote=W James]
“As ‘subjective’ we say that the experience represents; as ‘objective’ it is represented. What represents and what is represented is here numerically the same; but we must remember that no dualism of being represented and representing resides in the experience per se. In its pure state, or when isolated, there is not self-splintering of it into consciousness and what the consciousness if ‘of.’ Its subjectivity and objectivity are functional attributes solely, realized only when the experience is ‘taken.’ i.e., talked of twice, considered along with its two differing contexts respectively but anew retrospective experience, of which that whole past complication now forms the fresh content.”
[/quote]
More generally, I like how Richard Bernstein interprets him:
[quote=Bernstein]
[James believes that philosophers] misunderstood their own conceptual distinctions. They have mistaken distinctions, which are useful and important for particular purposes, for the concrete reality of experience itself. They have been guilty of what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” and James calls “vicious intellectualism.” It is a fallacy that occurs when we mistake some abstraction or conceptual distinction (which is important for specific intellectual purposes) for the concrete reality of experience itself. It is a fallacy that according to Whitehead, James, and Bergson has had disastrous consequences for a philosophic understanding of the world. Abstractions are important; we cannot think without them. But abstractions are abstractions from a concrete reality.
[/quote]
The mental/physical distinction is useful and sensible in many contexts. And in these useful contexts there is no chasm. The surgery didn't hurt because I was giving general anesthesia. We constantly invoke a causal nexus that includes both the mental and the physical. Meta-physicians who insist on making these distinctions absolute and foundational rather than instrumental and subject to revision create new, unnecessary problems.
Both quotes from:
http://faculty.fiu.edu/~hauptli/James'DoesConsciousnessExistandTheContinuityofExperience.htm
OK, but if you are not going to support any claim that there are two radically different substances or realms or dimensions, or whatever term you want to use, to reality, then you are pretty much left with some kind of monism, no?
I understand why someone might see it that way, but I don't. My dodge is to not insist on treating various useful distinctions as absolute. No need to officially be a dualist or a monist. Instead we operate in concrete contexts, employing our linguistic knowhow in particular situations. I'm impressed by Saussure's notion of relational identity. Derrida took it and ran with it, but much of what I love in Derrida is also in Saussure.
[quote=link]
Saussure argued that signs only make sense as part of a formal, generalized and abstract system. His conception of meaning was purely structural and relational rather than referential: primacy is given to relationships rather than to things (the meaning of signs was seen as lying in their systematic relation to each other rather than deriving from any inherent features of signifiers or any reference to material things). Saussure did not define signs in terms of some essential or intrinsic nature. For Saussure, signs refer primarily to each other. Within the language system, ‘everything depends on relations’ (Saussure 1983, 121). No sign makes sense on its own but only in relation to other signs. Both signifier and signified are purely relational entities (ibid., 118). This notion can be hard to understand since we may feel that an individual word such as ‘tree’ does have some meaning for us, but Saussure’s argument is that its meaning depends on its relation to other words within the system (such as ‘bush’).
...
Saussure emphasized in particular negative, oppositional differences between signs. He argued that ‘concepts . . . are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not’ (Saussure 1983, 115; my emphasis).
[/quote]
https://slavicgf.sitehost.iu.edu/assignments/Chandler_ch1_pt1.pdf
[quote=Saussure]
The notion of value . . . shows us that it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements.
[/quote]
[quote=Flores]
For Saussure, there are no objects (words/texts/others) that carry inherent, autonomous, "positive" meaning: there are only points of view whose meanings depend on their interrelatedness: Saussure states that "in language there are only differences without positive terms" (LT 88). Signifiers (sound images) and signifieds (concepts/meanings) are not fixed and universal and do not simply reflect or represent prior categories (the world/ideas/forms): language articulates or makes such categories and concepts possible. Because there is no necessary or inherent relation between words and objects, the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (e.g., similar meanings correspond in practice rather than in some natural or essential way to different words across languages or across time as words change). Yet because the sign's structure is arbitrary, it is subject both to history and to a synchronic study of its relational function within a signifying system (la langue) that is not arbitrary but conventional and socially constructed. To explain a signifying action (individual utterance, speech act, parole) is therefore to relate it to the underlying system of norms (conventions/practices) that makes it possible: hence, a structural rather than a strictly causal explanation (synchronic rather than diachronic/historical).
[/quote]
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~sflores/saussure.html
I suppose I'm guilty of a kind of structural holism, but I'm not at all against ten thousand less metaphysical and scientific attempts to explain consciousness, etc. From an instrumentalist point of view, we want prediction, control, and of course the criticism, construction, and destruction of stragetic frameworks within which such is possible. And of course we want the technology of morale (orienting myths, etc.)
And if what science can deal with is, by definition, only the physical, and there is no other substance, realm or dimension, then a monistic materialism would seem to logically follow.
If one insists on identifying what science deals with as the physical, then perhaps. I still find that too metaphysical, though I guess the 'physical' is a codeword for an anti-metaphysical attitude that I can relate to.
[quote=Wittgenstein On Certainty]
35. But can’t it be imagined that there should be no physical objects? I don’t know. And yet “there are physical objects” is nonsense. Is it supposed to be an empirical proposition?—And is this an empirical proposition: “There seem to be physical objects”?
36. “A is a physical object” is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn’t yet understand either what “A” means, or what “physical object” means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and “physical object” is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity, …) And that is why no such proposition as: “There are physical objects” can be formulated. Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn.
...
476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books,
sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.
Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a
unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding
question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence
of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?
477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition
exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the
opposite?
For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?
478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a
mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
[/quote]
https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/files/wittgenstein-on-certainty.pdf
I'm tempted to say that metaphysics believes and traffics in the fantasy of context-independent meanings, as if 'mental' or 'physical' out of all context were much worth talking about.
'The mind is [just] the brain' is a nice aphorism if the point is to explain the mind as much as possible in terms of the brain, but it's also a bit trollish. Exaggeration, click-bait?
Of course we can do the Kantian move and say that we don't, and can't, know what that which appears to us as the physical "really is in itself"; but since that can never be known it is irrelevant to our inquiries, unless we want to illegitimately use it to reify our spiritualist fantasias (in other words practice traditional metaphysics and theology which are the very things Kant is working against).
(I am aware that Kant offers what he sees as practical reasons for believing in God, Freedom and Immortality, but that is a separate entirely ethical issue and has nothing to do with what we are justified in thinking regarding either ontology or metaphysics).
I also acknowledge that there can be a profound aesthetic dimension to "spiritualist fantasias", but again that fact says nothing about what we ought to believe regarding metaphysics or ontology.
I like that you mention Kant's belief in God, Freedom, and Immortality. Perhaps such beliefs motivated to some degree his distance from Locke. I also agree that Kant was working against traditional metaphysics and theology. My own POV is maybe a kind of naturalized and socialized post-Kantianism. For me, the spiritual dimension is also roughly aesthetic. At the same time, that is in my view a kind of ontological-metaphysical commitment. 'Spirituality is [just] thoughts, metaphors, feelings, rituals.' I mostly agree, but that 'just' is not some neutral judgment. As I see it, my atheism is not perfectly justified or justifiable. Top-level frameworks are perhaps always leaps to some degree. And the 'we' of science tacitly involves some commitment to a rationality that is something like a spiritual project. (I embrace this project, but that too could be worked into a causal nexus or metaphorical top-level vision of reality.)
If one insists on identifying what science deals with as the physical, then perhaps. I still find that too metaphysical, though I guess the 'physical' is a codeword for an anti-metaphysical attitude that I can relate to.
Surely science deals with the material or physical world, though; the world as revealed to us by the senses (or augmented senses)? What else could it deal with?
If you want to call the whole thing 'rational' thinking without distinguishing any finer category, be my guest, but I'm not sure I see the advantage.
I walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what’s going on in your brain right now?
Or, I walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what does this look like to you.
Which question will he answer?
Humans don’t express thought in terms of brain mechanics. Even though natural law is its ground, the human does not think in terms of charge, spin, quantum number, activation potential and such. So the advantage to calling the whole thing rational thought, is the absolute impossibility of individual comprehensions in particular and thereby meaningful communication in general given from it, in any other terms.
walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what’s going on in your brain right now?
Or, I walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what does this look like to you.
Which question will he answer?
Either. It depends on whether they know the answer to the first. A neuroscientist or a psychologist might answer the first. A student would certainly answer the first if it was asked in a lecture about computational neuroscience.
the advantage to calling the whole thing rational thought, is the absolute impossibility of individual comprehensions in particular and thereby meaningful communication in general given from it, in any other terms.
I have tried several times, honestly, but I'm afraid I still don't know what you're saying here, sorry.
No worries, s’all good. My fault for posing somewhat vague scenarios, in the interest of reductionist simplicity.
I will offer that you are guilty of a Ignoratio Elenchi for giving correct technical answers to what was, for all intents and purposes, a strictly non-technical question. So you are right of course, but under unwarranted conditions.
Again....my fault. Can’t blame a guy for being correct.
I understand why someone might see it that way, but I don't. My dodge is to not insist on treating various useful distinctions as absolute. No need to officially be a dualist or a monist. Instead we operate in concrete contexts, employing our linguistic knowhow in particular situations. I'm impressed by Saussure's notion of relational identity. Derrida took it and ran with it, but much of what I love in Derrida is also in Saussure.
I'm not treating any distinction as absolute. What we have been discussing is the question as to what can plausibly, coherently and consistently be said regarding the ontological question about whether there are different kinds of fundamental "stuff". Derrida rejects metaphysics and ontology altogether unless I am mistaken, so the question for him would have no definite meaning; and this makes your reference to him irrelevant to the context of this discussion, as far as I can see.
The salient point is: we know there is physical, material "stuff", "for us" at least, because that is what science can observe, measure and model. Do we know (in any kind of analogous inter-subjective way) that there is any other kind of "stuff"? Spiritual or mental stuff, for example? Do we even have any idea what it could mean for there to be such "stuff" ("stuff" that could be inter-subjectively dealt with in determinate ways as we do with physical "stuff")?
As I have already said we don't know how to answer any question that asks whether there is any kind of stuff at all in any absolute "in itself" sense, but that is irrelevant to the question under discussion, which is concerned with what we can justifiably say relative to our inter-subjectove experience of things.
Derrida rejects metaphysics and ontology altogether unless I am mistaken, so the question for him would have no definite meaning; and this makes your reference to him irrelevant to the context of this discussion, as far as I can see.
I believe Wayf was criticized for not quoting Dennett. Perhaps you should quote Derrida to support your notion of his rejection of 'metaphysics and ontology altogether.' While I don't claim to be a expert on his work, I've read enough of it (in English translation) to see how badly he tends to be caricatured.
I will requote for your convenience what I quoted before.
[quote=Derrida]
In order for my "written communication" to retain it function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable -- iterable -- in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability...structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved (whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to cite the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable -- iterable -- beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.
...
What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance", it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful , of my wish to communicate, from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
[/quote]
How am I applying this in our context? The point is that we don't look into our souls or the realm of forms to find some magical meaning that corresponds to 'mental' or 'physical.' Both signs are caught up in social conventions, ways they tend to be and are intelligibly used in various contexts. The vice of philosophers is the fantasy of the celestial dictionary, crammed with one [s]size[/s] definition fits all (contexts.) And we also then need the subject as meaning-organ to scoop up all of these essences of Pure Mind. An alternative approach is understand 'subject' and 'meaning' as more signs in the system.
The salient point is: we know there is physical, material "stuff", "for us" at least, because that is what science can observe, measure and model. Do we know (in any kind of analogous inter-subjective way) that there is any other kind of "stuff"? Spiritual or mental stuff, for example? Do we even have any idea what it could mean for there to be such "stuff" ("stuff" that could be inter-subjectively dealt with in determinate ways as we do with physical "stuff")?
Note that you use 'stuff.' Then you use 'for us.' All this takes us right back into metaphysical confusion. There is 'stuff' ---for us. ' It's all physical.' 'Ah, but it's physical for us. So it's all mental!' And then you imply that science can only observe 'physical' stuff, but that would make psychology (which claims to study behavior and mind) and Dennett's work impossible too --unless we are back to the caricature of Dennett denying consciousness. Then there's sociology. Physics isn't all of science. More practically, aspirin and Novocain are judged/tested in terms of the 'mental.' We include both 'mind' and 'matter' in our explanatory causal nexus all of the time. 'The surgery didn't hurt because they put me under.' And as Husserl & Bohr note in quotes above, science only makes sense in a life-world that includes ordinary language.
You also ask whether we have any idea of what other kind of stuff than the 'physical' there could be or what we could mean by that. But then you use 'intersubjectively' without hesitation, as if this didn't invoke that other kind of stuff at least in a loose way.
As I have already said we don't know how to answer any question that asks whether there is any kind of stuff at all in any absolute "in itself" sense, but that is irrelevant to the question under discussion, which is concerned with what we can justifiably say relative to our inter-subjective experience of things.
'Our intersubjective experience of things' is already loaded with idealism. So the real world is the intersection of our 'dreamworlds'? Or (where I think we agree) 'intersubjective' hints at social conventions , norms of intelligibility and epistemic norms. It's only in terms of such norms that they can be questioned and modified (Neurath's boat.) And it's only in terms of ordinary talk about 'mind' and 'matter' (largely a matter of blind skill that is trained into us) can be rarefied into metaphysical exaggeration: 'All is mental' or 'the mind is the brain.' To some degree we can make our tacit skill in navigating social conventions and life itself explicit. But it's not clear that we need to figure out the cosmic truths of the 'mental' and 'physical' and 'the thing-in-itself' outside of all contexts.
Reply to jjAmEs I did say re Derrida's rejection of metaphysics "unless I am mistaken", so I haven't made any blanket claim such as Wayfer has re Dennett..
As to there being or not being mental "stuff": remember the point I made was that there is no determinate mental "stuff". Of course we can and do say there is mental stuff going on, and we seem to naturally and unreflectively fall into a dualist mode in imagining that there is some immaterial substance involved in the mental stuff we say is going on. But if the indeterminate mental stuff going on is really just an emergent property or attribute of the the determinate physical stuff (which given what we know, seems most reasonable), then we have no need of, or rational justification for, dualistic metaphysics.
Derrida:In order for my "written communication" to retain it function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable -- iterable -- in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability...structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved (whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to cite the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable -- iterable -- beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.
I didn't pay that much attention to this passage when first cited (as Derrida is not on my reading list), however on re-reading it, I think I can see the point.
When he says that 'To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive' I think what he's wanting to argue is that symbolic communication (of any kind) must have real meaning, or a real reference, if it is not simply idiosyncratic to the one who generates it. (Note - the root of 'idiot' is the same as 'idiosyncratic', i.e. someone who cannot be understood by anyone else or who speaks in a language that only he understands).
In other words, he's arguing that for writing to be writing, it has to have real meaning, i.e. meaning that is not simply dependent on the minds of either the writer or reader. So even though it can only be interpreted by a mind capable of reading, it is not dependent on that mind, but has a reality of its own.
I think what he's wanting to argue is that symbolic communication (of any kind) must have real meaning, or a real reference, if it is not simply idiosyncratic to the one who generates it. (Note - the root of 'idiot' is the same as 'idiosyncratic', i.e. someone who cannot be understood by anyone else or who speaks in a language that only he understands).
As I understand him, I agree with you that symbolic communication cannot by purely idiomatic, and this is close to Wittgenstein's denial of private language. In this special sense, the community is prior to the individual subject as speaker of the language. 'Language speaks the subject' means, as I read it, that the 'subject' is one more sign caught up in norms of intelligibility.
But Derrida argues against a pure ideality. And the system of language is more important than the individual sign. I'll quote from a translator's intro to one of Derrida's classic and early works, Speech and Phenomenon.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8261/6adfe3d796df144ba6e3ef8300e160c54635.pdf
[quote= link]
Following Saussure, Derrida maintains that linguistic meaning is not so much the product of an explicit meaning-intention as it is the arbitrary configuration of differences between signs. Meaning derives from the distance that extends between one particular sign and the system of other signs in linguistic use. It is this differential character of signs which must first be reckoned with, and this results from conventions existing within language; it is not a matter of meaning-intentions that supervene from without. There is no meaning, no signified content, that stands above and is free from this play of differences. Nor could meaning withstand the continuous shifting of differences, the continuous sedimenting of traces, as some ideal identity. For Derrida, there is only a likeness or sameness to meaning, which is constituted across the history of everchanging usage. Absolute objectivity, therefore, could never be claimed for meaning (yet for Husserl, the highest degree of objectivity is that of absolute ideality, the perfect identity of an omnitemporal meaning). What is striking in Derrida's claim is the objection that linguistic meaning can never be completely present. There can never be an absolutely signified content, an absolutely identical or univocal meaning in language. All these values are denied to meaning once we admit its dependence upon nonpresent elements. Meaning can never be isolated or held in abstraction from its context, e.g., its linguistic, semiotic, or historical context. Each such context, for example, is a system of reference, a system of signifiers, whose function and reality point beyond the present. What is signified in the present, then, necessarily includes the differentiating and nonpresent system of signifiers in its very meaning. We can only assemble and recall the traces of what went before; we stand within language, not outside it.
[/quote]
We might say that there is a system of quasi-forms (signifieds), but its ideality is not pure and the system is subject to modification. Historicity & finitude. We stand within the talk of our time, not outside, though we try. That (present) signs are largely their differences from other (nonpresent) signs becomes more concrete if one reads in more detail from Saussure. Surprises follow from the arbitrary nature of the sign. But it goes back to Aristotle, who is quoted in the intro.
[quote= Aristotle in De Interpretatione]
A name is a spoken sound significant by convention, without time, none of whose parts is significant in separation. .. . I say 'by convention' because no name is a name naturally but only when it has become a symbol. Even inarticulate [agrammatoi] noises (of beasts, for instance) do indeed reveal something, yet none of them is a name.
[/quote]
Here is more of the subject being 'spoken by language' (a 'product' of the sign system).
From the same book:https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8261/6adfe3d796df144ba6e3ef8300e160c54635.pdf
[quote=Derrida]
When I say /, even in solitary speech, can I give my statement meaning without implying, there as always, the possible absence of the object of speech—in this case, myself? When I tell myself "I am," this expression, like any other according to Husserl, has the status of speech only if it is intelligible in the absence of its object, in the absence of intuitive presence—here, in the absence of myself. Moreover, it is in this way that the ergo sum is introduced into the philosophical tradition and that a discourse about the transcendental ego is possible. Whether or not I have a present intuition of myself, "I" expresses something; whether or not I am alive, I am 'means something'
[/quote]
I also requote Culler in this new context, for there is no perfect repetition.
[quote=Culler]
What Freud, Saussure and Durkheim seem to have recognized is that social sciences could make little progress until society was considered a reality in itself: a set of institutions or systems which are more than the contingent manifestations of the spirit or the sum of individual activities. It is as though they had asked: “what makes individual experience possible? what enables men to perceive not just physical objects but objects with a meaning? what enables them to communicate and act meaningfully?” And the answer which they postulated was social institutions which, though formed by human activities, are the conditions of experience. To understand individual experience one must study the social norms which make it possible.
[/quote]
links quoted in previous post
That what I vaguely mean by 'socialized Kantianism.' The story of anti-realism largely moves in this direction.
Here's Jameson's emphasis on the holism involved.
[quote=Jameson]
It is not so much the individual word or sentence that ‘stands for’ or ‘reflects’ the individual object or event in the real world, but rather that the entire system of signs, the entire field of the langue, lies parallel to reality itself; that it is the totality of systematic language, in other words, which is analogous to whatever organized structures exist in the world of reality, and that our understanding proceeds from one whole or Gestalt to the other, rather than on a one-to-one basis.
[/quote]
https://slavicgf.sitehost.iu.edu/assignments/Chandler_ch1_pt1.pdf
Sir Philo SophiaJanuary 31, 2020 at 04:51#3773780 likes
Wayfarer;377091:Because, as Husserl explains in Crisis of European Sciences, Descartes' depiction of 'res cogitans' leads to it being characterised as a literal substance, something that objectively exists (or doesn't exist). Whereas I say that because you can never get outside consciousness, then it is never amongst the things that exist. It doesn't exist anywhere at all, certainly not 'in' brains or 'in' minds.
That seems like some big leaps of assumptions to conclusions, resulting in an off-the-wall sounding position. Please clarify your logic/evidence why "It [consciousness] doesn't exist anywhere at all, certainly not 'in' brains or 'in' minds" In my current model, consciousness is in a unified resonance w/ the various brain/mind structures and I see some mechanics on how it could work.
You’re talking about language in the sense of stringing symbols together to form a communication. I’m talking about the relation between a conception we think and the symbolism assigned that makes language possible. Because the same thing can be said in many different languages across cultures, and because the same thing can be said in exactly the same language regardless of culture, re: mathematics, and....as if that wasn’t enough...the same symbolism across cultures can indicate very different things, re: football, then it is readily apparent that experience of the thing being talked about, grounds the symbolism for talking about it.
Disclaimer: I detest language philosophy;
you are talking about verbal language. However, under my theory I am working out a non-verbal linguistics that would certainly be independent of any verbal language or culture, and I'm not talking about anything like body-language. I see verbal language as the tip of the iceberg compared to all the non-verbal linguistics our brains/minds must use to ground our consciousness into sensory-motor & environmental realities.
[quote="link"]This notion can be hard to understand since we may feel that an individual word such as ‘tree’ does have some meaning for us, but Saussure’s argument is that its meaning depends on its relation to other words within the system (such as ‘bush’).
...
Saussure emphasized in particular negative, oppositional differences between signs. He argued that ‘concepts . . . are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not’ (Saussure 1983, 115; my emphasis).
I think Saussure is wrong on that. I'm sure both modes are employed. It would make little sense to do it one way or the other. A bush is just a parametric variant of a linguistic tree concept, so there is no need to instantiate one as a negative of the other b/c they are in fact on a continuum of the same parametric variables on the same model (e.g., has roots, trunk, branches, leaves, etc.) where the bush might be a shorter, wider, more leaf/branching density, less trunk thickness, etc.
Flores:For Saussure, there are no objects (words/texts/others) that carry inherent, autonomous, "positive" meaning: there are only points of view whose meanings depend on their interrelatedness: Saussure states that "in language there are only differences without positive terms" (LT 88). Signifiers (sound images) and signifieds (concepts/meanings) are not fixed and universal and do not simply reflect or represent prior categories (the world/ideas/forms): language articulates or makes such categories and concepts possible.
how would Saussure (et. al.) refute my above positive meaning of a linguistic tree vs bush concepts?
As to there being or not being mental "stuff": remember the point I made was that there is no determinate mental "stuff".
Fair enough. I think we agree on that point. But I don't see why there should be some kind of determinate physical stuff either. (I don't really want to say that 'there is not determinate stuff' but that other approaches seem more promising.)
But if the indeterminate mental stuff going on is really just an emergent property or attribute of the the determinate physical stuff (which given what we know, seems most reasonable), then we have no need of, or rational justification for, dualistic metaphysics.
To be clear, I'm not defending a dualistic metaphysics. Personally I'm not crazy about the 'really just as emergent property.' It's still too metaphysical. Better to say perhaps that treating mind as a function of matter in certain contexts is useful. I like the spirit of the empiricists. I love Hobbes.
A bush is just a parametric variant of a linguistic tree concept, so there is no need to instantiate one as a negative of the other b/c they are in fact on a continuum of the same parametric variables on the same model (e.g., has roots, trunk, branches, leaves, etc.) where the bush might be a shorter, wider, more leaf/branching density, less trunk thickness, etc.
I understand your point, but expressing such a continuum would require an infinite number of signs. To be sure, individual human beings might have trouble choosing between 'bush' or 'shrub' in a particular situation. The boundary might be undecidable. The quote below might clarify the issue (difference between the system and its use.)
I think a better argument against Saussure is our intuitive notion that individual signs hook up to individual intuitive content. But I don't think Saussure would deny it. Instead he stressed what might not be obvious to a non-linguist. (I'm not a linguist. I'm just studying Saussure lately and finding it illuminating.)
[quote=link]
Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speaking") are linguistic terms distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics. Langue encompasses the abstract, systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system; it is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users. Langue involves the principles of language, without which no meaningful utterance, "parole", would be possible. Parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue. This is the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject.[1] Saussure did not concern himself overly with parole; however, the structure of langue is revealed through the study of parole.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_and_parole
Sir Philo SophiaJanuary 31, 2020 at 05:18#3773850 likes
I understand your point, but expressing such a continuum would require an infinite number of signs.
I disagree, at least b/c in reality/practice there are a very finite set of linguistic object categories. I think you misunderstand my linguistic continuum to be like a number line. It is a quantized parametric continuum with a cloud of parametric variances (or fuzzy linguistic membership degree labels) separating adjacent sub-categories on the multi-dimensional linguistic model. Also, it is quite easy for a cNN to be trained to learn the hyper-planes that separate/clusters into the various object categories, and those could be linguistically labelled as such.
ndividual human beings might have trouble choosing between 'bush' or 'shrub' in a particular situation. The boundary might be undecidable
indeed, b/c they mean the same thing! :grin:
Definition of bush. (Entry 1 of 8) 1a : shrub especially : a low densely branched shrub. b : a close thicket of shrubs suggesting a single plant. 2 : a large uncleared or sparsely settled area (as in Australia) usually scrub-covered or forested : wilderness —usually used with the.
One last point worth mentioning I hope (and connected to the subject) is that, for Saussure, the sign is immaterial. Not just the signified but also the signifier!
[quote= Saussure]
A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept [signified] and a sound pattern [signifier]. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a ‘material’ element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.
[/quote]
To make this concrete and to amplify it, consider that voices vary. The word 'fish' sounds different as different individuals pronounce it. We can recognize a friend's voice over the telephone for instance. So it's not just that the sound 'image' is immaterial. It also has to be classified.
And then handwriting also varies. We don't all write zipcodes on envelopes the same way. Software can be trained to classify handwritten digits. Add to this the arbitrariness of the sign (what sound or shape we use doesn't matter) and the 'immateriality' of language becomes vivid. All the same it needs a medium.
Here's a great video by a great maker of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk
Perhaps this 'immateriality' of language has tempted us to think of an immaterial subject.
I disagree, at least b/c in reality/practice there are a very finite set of linguistic object categories. Also, it is quite easy for a cNN to be trained to learn the hyper-planes that separate/clusters into the various object categories, and those could be linguistically labelled as such.
That sounds like you agreeing! My point was/is that we use a finite set of signs. Perhaps re-read and see if it makes more sense. And I know about such classifiers. Funny you mention them. I just used them as an example in my previous post.
I don't understand. Seems way too vague to be useful. can you pls clarify in concrete terms, example(s) like I did mine.
I'll share a link with you. It's pointless to debate Saussure without you looking into him and getting the big picture. Also, if you read over the last few pages of this thread, you'll have some context. Without that context, of course it's vague! And that's one of the points made in this thread, that context is crucial. (And I also don't want to repeat all the stuff I've already said on this thread and clog it up.)
Sir Philo SophiaJanuary 31, 2020 at 06:22#3774000 likes
Saussure:A s
Saussure:The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses
not true. a sound pattern, after being converted to its electrical wave analog, is broken up into all kinds of meaningful physical features, many of which are well known (e.g., Hz, power, envelope, wavelets, harmonics, echos, reverb, etc., etc.). all of those parametric features can be captured as non-verbal linguistic labels, some of which can later aggregate into verbal linguistic meanings. As such, verbal linguistic meanings are not necessarily based on signs from the raw sensory signal, but actual sensor features (like the visual example for leaves on the tree are not signs of leaves but observed pixel analog pattern of tree leaves). the simplest (yet still highly simplified) example is sound hits the ear, the tapered cochlea does an effective FFT the hairs at the end detect the high pitches and generate corresponding electrical signal, auditory circuits detect the high Hz signal content and trigger a non-verbal concept of high pitch is present and a verbal circuit for the word 'high pitch' is bound to and triggered by this pathway being stimulated. So, when the person said that sound has 'high pitch' they are not relating to a sign of the 'high pitch' in the sound but an actual measurement transducer into an abstract verbal linguistic analog. How would Saussure counter this actual way things work in our brain, documented for such simple cases.
Saussure:The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.
Add to this the arbitrariness of the sign (what sound or shape we use doesn't matter) and the 'immateriality' of language becomes vivid. All the same it needs a medium.
this is just variance around central linguistic/visual model. There is nothing 'immaterial' about it. You just find the center of the training cluster and establish a linguistic category variance boundary (e.g., 1 standard deviation) to achieve a certain maximum error rate and you still have language based on actual raw data that is just characterized to be tolerant to parametric variation. Nothing to do with signs or abstractions creating immateriality. Please clarify further where my thinking is wrong there.
I'll share a link with you. It's pointless to debate Saussure without you looking into him and getting the big picture. Also, if you read over the last few pages of this thread, you'll have some context. Without that context, of course it's vague!
OK. thx. I'll read it over soon and come back to you understandings, pros/cons. However, based on our above exchange, I'm not expecting it to overcome my counter examples...
Sir Philo SophiaJanuary 31, 2020 at 06:25#3774010 likes
That sounds like you agreeing! My point was/is that we use a finite set of signs.
how is that agreeing b/c sounds like you critiqued me arguing the opposite: " but expressing such a continuum would require an infinite number of signs." I answered the continuum is quantized into fuzzy categories so very finite.
Perhaps this 'immateriality' of language has tempted us to think of an immaterial subject.
What is reason? How do we know what things mean? Especially ambiguous things - handwritten things, ambiguous signs? We make judgments, we say ‘this means that’. And that can never have a materialist explanation. Materialism only ever talks in terms of physical causality - that’s what materialism means. But ‘cause’ in a rational sense, in the sense deployed by reason and language, comprises solely the relations between ideas. That’s why you can represent the same idea in completely diverse ways.
I’m talking about the relation between a conception we think and the symbolism assigned that makes language possible. (...)
Disclaimer: I detest language philosophy;
— Mww
you are talking about verbal language.
Exactly the thing I’m NOT talking about. “Makes language possible” should have indicated I’m talking about the necessary a priori presuppositions for a particular human physical activity, not the enactment of it by means of its various indices.
(Repeat disclaimer here)
Sir Philo SophiaJanuary 31, 2020 at 16:40#3774990 likes
I'll share a link with you. It's pointless to debate Saussure without you looking into him and getting the big picture. Also, if you read over the last few pages of this thread, you'll have some context.
Sorry, but I've started reading your cite of Pierce, and, off-the-bat, the opener already tells me that it fails to overcome my above counter examples; e.g., my linguistic "High pitch" example. No sign was involved in that pathway from sound to word. Semiotics seems to be much more about dogma, and its ardent supports much more interested in being in the cult of that dogma than seeking the reality of how practical cognitive systems can and do robustly work. Until a Semiotics supporter logically and sensible overcomes my counter examples, I'll pay little respect/credence for it as a viable explanatory principle.
Can you (anyone) overcome my above concrete and simple counter examples?
see:
" Distinctively, we make meanings through our
creation and interpretation of ‘signs’. Indeed, according to Peirce, ‘we think only in
signs’ (Peirce 1931–58, 2.302). Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours,
flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs
only when we invest them with meaning. ‘Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a
sign’, declares Peirce (ibid., 2.172). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets
it as ‘signifying’ something – referring to or standing for something other than itself. We
interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of
conventions. It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of the concerns of
semiotics."
Sir Philo SophiaJanuary 31, 2020 at 18:11#3775060 likes
Reply to jjAmEs
The next paragraph actually uses sound as their example. See below . In my above example, one of the cochlear hairs/nerves will detect and convert a specific frequency, say 10 KHz, and say the neural circuits, up the abstraction chain to verbal, assign a verbal linguistic word of 'High Pitch" to signify the 10KHz detection . The fact that verbal communication is done using symbols does not mean that the word "High Pitch" is purely ‘psychological’ having no material substance analog for which is represents exists in the external world b/c conveying 'I hear a High Pitch" is equal to the physical fact that a 10 KHz sound wave impacted your ear. They are one and the same, grounded in the physical existence, not some sign/symbol of some psychological impression.
I read that whole chapter and am not impressed. Saussure’s original framework was clearly not workable or realistic, and his modern supporters fix only the most obvious flaws (e.g., admitting the signified can also be a physical object/event, not just a sign of a sign).
Again, can you (anyone) overcome my above concrete and simple counter examples? Seems pretty nonsensical to me otherwise.
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the fact that it is some times more efficient to say what something is not does not mean/prove that it is always done that way in the brain. Often simpler to positively identify; e.g., color Red has such and such value ranges, vs. Red is not an infinite list of other colors.
re "signs. He argued that ‘concepts . . . are defined not positively, in terms of their content,
but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each
most exactly is being whatever the others are not’ (Saussure 1983, 115; my emphasis).
This notion may initially seem mystifying if not perverse, but the concept of negative
differentiation becomes clearer if we consider how we might teach someone who did not
share our language what we mean by the term ‘red’. We would be unlikely to make our
point by simply showing that person a range of different objects which all happened to be
red – we would be probably do better to single out a red object from a sets of objects
which were identical in all respects except colour."
------------------------------------------
My cited passages where I see fails my counter examples:
"A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept
[signified] and a sound pattern [signifier]. The sound pattern is not actually a
sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s
psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his
senses. This sound pattern may be called a ‘material’ element only in that it is the
representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept. (Saussure 1983, 66)
For Saussure, both the signifier (the ‘sound pattern’) and the signified (the concept) were
purely ‘psychological’ (ibid., 12, 14–15, 66). Both were non-material form rather than
substance. Figure 1.2 may help to clarify this aspect of Saussure’s own model.
Nowadays, while the basic ‘Saussurean’ model is commonly adopted, it tends to be a
more materialistic model than that of Saussure himself. The signifier is now commonly
interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign – it is something which can be
seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted – as with Roman Jakobson’s signans, which he
described as the external and perceptible part of the sign (Jakobson 1963b, 111; 1984b,
98).
....
As for the signified, Umberto Eco notes that it is somewhere between ‘a mental
image, a concept and a psychological reality’ (Eco 1976, 14–15). Most commentators
who adopt Saussure’s model still treat the signified as a mental construct, although they
often note that it may nevertheless refer indirectly to things in the world. Saussure’s
original model of the sign ‘brackets the referent’, excluding reference to objects existing
in the world – somewhat ironically for one who defined semiotics as ‘a science which
studies the role of signs as part of social life’ (Saussure 1983, "
What is reason? How do we know what things mean? Especially ambiguous things - handwritten things, ambiguous signs? We make judgments, we say ‘this means that’. And that can never have a materialist explanation. Materialism only ever talks in terms of physical causality - that’s what materialism means. But ‘cause’ in a rational sense, in the sense deployed by reason and language, comprises solely the relations between ideas. That’s why you can represent the same idea in completely diverse ways.
From my perspective, 'matter' and 'mind' are two more signs employed in our life-world or form of life. What you call 'reason' sounds like what I call being-in-language-with-others.
https://teachlearn.pagesperso-orange.fr/Heidlang.pdf
[quote=Heidegger]
Man is said to have language by nature. It is held that man, in distinction from plant and animal, is the living being capable of speech. This statement does not mean only that, along with other faculties, man also possesses the faculty of speech. It means to say that only speech enables man to be the living being he is as man. It is as one who speaks that man is-man. These are Wilhelm von Humboldt's words. Yet it remains to consider what it is to be called-man.
[/quote]
He eventually quotes Haman.
[quote=Haman]
If I were as eloquent as Demosthenes I would yet have to do nothing more than repeat a single word three times: reason is language, logos. I gnaw at this marrow-bone and will gnaw myself to death over it. There still remains a darkness, always, over this depth for me; I am still waiting for an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.
[/quote]
Then comments:
[quote=Heidegger]
For Hamann, this abyss consists in the fact that reason is language. Hamann returns to language in his attempt to say what reason is. His glance, aimed at reason, falls into the depths of an abyss. Does this abyss consist only in the fact that reason resides in language, or is language itself the abyss? We speak of an abyss where the ground falls away and a ground is lacking to us, where we seek the ground and set out to arrive at a ground, to get to the bottom of something. But we do not ask now what reason may be; here we reflect immediately on language and take as our main clue the curious statement, "Language is language." This statement does not lead us to something else in which language is grounded. Nor does it say anything about whether language itself may be a ground for something else. The sentence, "Language is language," leaves us to hover over an abyss as long as we endure what it says.
[/quote]
To me the tautology language is language aims it emphasizing its primacy. An idealist might pose nature as derivative of 'spirit,' and the focus on language and the social is adjacent to idealism. A linguistic community can develop a tradition of explaining part of the world 'mechanically.' This part of the world, nature, ends up threatening 'spirit' as thinkers note that 'atoms and void' or their modern equivalent must somehow be the substratum of the human organism. So 'nature' is a creation of 'spirit' (a reasoning life-world-sharing community) and yet 'spirit' is (from a certain potent explanatory perspective) an epiphenomenon of nature. This gives us something like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip . But only perhaps if we insist that certain sentences remain forceful and true outside of all contexts. The world is 'really' mind or the world is 'really' matter. There's this stuff called 'meaning' or 'matter' that we are suppose to construct everything else out of. But language is neither/both, one might say. One is never done exploring this abyss.
[quote=Wittgenstein]
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
...
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.
[/quote]
The fact that verbal communication is done using symbols does not mean that the word "High Pitch" is purely ‘psychological’ having no material substance analog for which is represents exists in the external world b/c conveying 'I hear a High Pitch" is equal to the physical fact that a 10 KHz sound wave impacted your ear.
I think you are missing the argument for the 'immateriality' of the sign. Let's record 100 different Americans speaking the word 'calculator.' No two of those Americans will say calculator in exactly the same way. The vibrations in the air will differ in each case. Yet we are also experts at recognizing the 'same' word in an 'infinity' of possible vocalizations. That sameness is 'ideal.'
Or consider a classifier for handwritten digits. There are many ways to write a 7. None of these are the official or perfect way. The classifier learns from labelled examples to simulate the human ability of finding the ideally same in the concretely different.
A second issue is the supposed physicality of 10 KHz sound. That mathematics is projected on the physical seems natural enough, but mathematics has the same kind of 'ideality' or 'immateriality' discussed above. To be clear, I'm not trying to derive the physical from the mental/ideal or the mental/ideal from the physical. I'm just trying to point out the complexity of the situation. I do not believe that the so-called 'physical' is as simple as some would like.
Semiotics seems to be much more about dogma, and its ardent supports much more interested in being in the cult of that dogma than seeking the reality of how practical cognitive systems can and do robustly work. Until a Semiotics supporter logically and sensible overcomes my counter examples, I'll pay little respect/credence for it as a viable explanatory principle.
It's fine with me if you have no use for it. I suspect that dogma are functioning with your perspective as well. I find the idea of some perfectly neutral and presuppositionless perspective highly suspect.
I agree that disciplines concerned with prediction and control might not need much from semiotics or philosophy. A person can use the word 'physical' with a certain naivety (from my perspective) and still do important work, precisely because metaphysical concerns are often detached from differences that make a (practical) difference.
But anti-philosophy doesn't untie but merely cuts knots.
There is nothing 'immaterial' about it. You just find the center of the training cluster and establish a linguistic category variance boundary (e.g., 1 standard deviation) to achieve a certain maximum error rate and you still have language based on actual raw data that is just characterized to be tolerant to parametric variation. Nothing to do with signs or abstractions creating immateriality. Please clarify further where my thinking is wrong there.
What is this center? The center of a category? Let's say you want to sort examples into 10 categories. It's that notion of the category that would be 'immaterial.' How is the category physical ? To reiterate, this is less about a defense of spooky objects than it is a challenge to the complacent use of 'physical.' In general I don't think we know exactly what we mean by words. We instead employ a know-how that was trained into us. So for me it's not obvious that there is some clean division between purely mental and purely physical realms. What we may share is a suspicion of traditional metaphysics. Where we may differ is that I know what 'idealists' are trying to point (the 'element of thought' in which tokens like 'physical' have any purchase in the first place.)
The word 'physical' is a token within our being-in-language-with-others and being-in-the-world Even if we can profitably understand the 'life world' as founded on the physical (which of course we can and do), this kind of reductive understanding depends on what it reduces. For practical purposes, one can be philosophically lazy and embrace the 'physical' as what 'really' is. Why this is fine is IMV simply because the technology works. We might not know whether reality is 'ultimately' so-called mind or so-called matter or whether 'reality is really made of X' is a bogus approach in the first place. We can live and die without resolution of these fancy metaphysical issues. There's money and power in tech that works. Primarily practical animals are impatient with the 'pure' or merely theoretical tensions in concept systems. Philosophers are itchy artists, unreasonably reasonable, perhaps 'uselessly' fussy. To make this more concrete (the earlier point):
[quote=link]
Husserl’s most important point here, which I think is not explicitly made in the present collection, is that the standpoint or attitude that gives us the life-world (whether the same as the natural attitude of Ideas, I or not) is not just another one of the various possible standpoints on the world. Husserl’s view is that the world must first be given to us, experienced by us, in some “natural,” pre-theoretical, way and that only on the basis of that pre-given world can we adopt more specific standpoints from which we may examine the world. (See Crisis, §34e.)
Majer and Føllesdal do emphasize the pre-givenness of the life-world as the background, usually unarticulated and unthematized, against which all our human activities are carried out and without which they would be impossible. Majer, relating Husserl’s ideas to those of David Hilbert and Hermann Weyl, emphasizes that even the activities involved in doing science presuppose an “irreducible fundament” (Weyl’s term) of ordinary, pre-theoretical, abilities. He quotes Weyl: “In physics, when we perform measurements and their necessary operations, we manipulate boards, wires, screws, cog-wheels, point and scale. We move here on the same level of understanding and action as the cabinet-maker or the mechanic in his workshop.” (Quoted by Majer, p. 58.) "’Lebenswelt‘," says Majer, "means a mode of life in which no theoretical knowledge is required, but only some practical abilities of understanding and acting are supposed, like those of the craftsman" (p. 58). These practical abilities — e.g., to use chalk to write symbols on a blackboard, to use a scale for measuring — are enablers of science as a cultural product, and it is the practical rather than the theoretical characteristics of chalk and scale, e.g., that explains their role here. Føllesdal and Friedman note, too, that it is the life-world that provides the ultimate justification for the claims of science: these claims rise or fall on how well predictions match up with life-world experience.
[/quote]
[quote=Husserl]
The contrast between the subjectivity of the life-world and the “objective,” the “true” world, lies in the fact that the latter is a theoretical-logical substruction … of something that is in principle not perceivable, in principle not experienceable in its own proper being, whereas the subjective, in the life-world, is distinguished in all respects precisely by its being actually experienceable.
[/quote]
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/science-and-the-life-world-essays-on-husserl-s-crisis-of-european-sciences/
We don't experience electrons directly. They are theoretical entities that somehow are what is 'really' there. But I prefer instrumentalism. We have ways of talking that allow us to create useful technology. The issue of what is 'really' this or that seems secondary, except as it plays a role in worldviews (technologies of morale like religion or attachment to universal rationality and humanism.)
Fair enough. I think we agree on that point. But I don't see why there should be some kind of determinate physical stuff either. (I don't really want to say that 'there is not determinate stuff' but that other approaches seem more promising.)
All I'm saying is that there is, for all intents and purposes, determinate physical stuff, it's an epistemological claim, and I'm not trying to support any metaphysical claim beyond that or even that any such claim would be coherent.
It's about what we know (in the everyday, not in some absolutely certain, sense); we know there is physical stuff and that we can measure it, model it, theorize and make predictions about it. There is no analogous situation with any mysterious mental stuff that cannot be understood to consist in physical processes; i.e. neural structures and networks, and so on).
None of this diminishes in any way what we can feel in aesthetic, poetic or spiritual ways. We cannot understand (fully, at least) how such experiences are possible for physical systems, but that ignorance does give us any justification for believing in any mystical stuff, any justification for metaphysical dualism in other words.
Now I may have or have had experiences which lead me to believe in such mystical ideas, or at least entertain them as ideas, but such experiences can never be offered as inter-subjectively justifiable statements about some matters of fact or other.
It's about what we know (in the everyday, not in some absolutely certain, sense); we know there is physical stuff and that we can measure it, model it, theorize and make predictions about it.
Sure. I know what you are getting at, and I agree. We have prediction and control, technology. Ordinary language deals with this stuff successfully, practically. No one has to know exactly what 'physical' is supposed to mean in order to employ the sign in context to get things done.
There is no analogous situation with any mysterious mental stuff that cannot be understood to consist in physical processes; i.e. neural structures and networks, and so on).
My point is that mental stuff is quotidian, and we deal with it in the same casual way. Science also deals with it.
[quote=Wiki]
Linguistics is the scientific study of language.[1] It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context.[2] Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning.[3]
[/quote]
In particular, signs are not material/physical. The notion of the same word being used by different humans with different physical vocalizations is already 'immaterial.' I gave an informal argument for this above. Even just counting employs the ideal identity of different objects.
We can and do have a science of form and meaning. Indeed, science exists within something like form and meaning. Our models themselves are conceptual and mathematical and not physical, even if they are (only sometimes) about what we conveniently if vaguely categorize as physical. The temptation seems to be to identify the physical with that which we can talk objectively about. I don't think the reduction of objectivity to (physical) objects works. To be objective is to be unbiased, 'not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.'
None of this diminishes in any way what we can feel in aesthetic, poetic or spiritual ways. We cannot understand (fully, at least) how such experiences are possible for physical systems, but that ignorance does [not] give us any justification for believing in any mystical stuff, any justification for metaphysical dualism in other words.
I agree. I'd just add that our position is not some neutral position. Others can and have taken such feelings for justifications. That we exclude such 'justifications' as invalid says something about our own commitments. Our ontological prejudices (our pre-grasp of the situation) tend to understand the 'spiritual' in terms of mundane things like feelings, thoughts, myths. (Or I think we agree here.) I'd probably stress the sociality of the 'spiritual,' and include my own anti-metaphysical biases as an expression of a Baconian (anti-)spirtuality. The reason for being skeptical about 'mystical' stuff is (to overstate it) because it does not give us reliable technology, including techniques for reliable prediction. Instead the 'mystical stuff' is more like a technology of morale --it works if and because you believe in it. In contrast, we have a more objective science that works whether or not one believes in it. We distrust it at our own risk.
Now I may have or have had experiences which lead me to believe in such mystical ideas, or at least entertain them as ideas, but such experiences can never be offered as inter-subjectively justifiable statements about some matters of fact or other.
That's all I've been trying to point out.
We are basically on the same page on this particular issue. The essence seems to be that 'spirituality' is private matter. What's interesting is that such a view is public/dominant form of spirituality. Politics is applied religion, in other words, and the privatization of religion (which I am fine with) is the triumph of a particular (metaphorically) spiritual view.
What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pain, colors and meaning - they have a place in the language game. Whereas the beetle - a hypothetical entity that can't be referenced or talked about - drops out as irrelevant.
— Andrew M
I mostly agree with you. Note however that we are talking about the beetle.
Yes, but as a hypothetical entity. We can talk about ghosts as hypothetical entities as well, but we should resist the temptation to treat them as real.
To me qualia serve that kind of goal. Maybe what I call 'red' is what you call 'green.' No way to check!
I call fire engines 'red' - what do you call them? ;-)
What you're referring to, of course, is how something appears to you. But in this case, it's more or less certain that things appear differently to each of us, at least to some degree, since a lot of things can affect that. We can appreciate this when we wear sunglasses.
So we can investigate what those conditions might be, from the reflective surfaces to the lighting conditions to the physical composition of our eyes and brains. In each case we're investigating real things, not hypothetical entities.
So none of this is a reason to treat how something appears to us as an entity itself. That's just sense-data which brings its own notorious problems. It's like treating the "bent"-stick-in-water as an entity in its own right.
understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).
— Andrew M
......to better understand our disagreements is an achievement, which we can then say only evolves by the faculty of understanding being tasked to achieve it.
Such would be a semantic quibble if it weren’t already a theoretical tenet.
Sure. However the semantic quibble for me is the assigning of agency to a faculty...
Agreed, not private (per the PLA), because there is no such thing as a PLA anyway. I meant private insofar as inaccessible except as the necessarily abstract ground for transcendental philosophy. Therein, the mind is conceived as the irreducible condition for all that pure reason seeks for itself.
... and also here, the assigning of agency to (pure) reason. Only a human being is "tasked to achieve" something or "seeks for itself".
Your "except" above marks off our different approaches. You say mind is private because rationality transcends nature. I say mind is public because rationality is immanent in nature (and is thus observable). This is an example of reallocating facts - Ryle's logical cartography.
And your different way of conceptualizing mind would be......? Which I take as a different concept of mind, in as much as I think we all conceptualize, as a task, the same way.
I agree with the provided Bennett and Hacker quote, "Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise...". Whereas I reject the Cartesian-style conception of mind (and subject).
On ordinary language: thanks for the explanations; things are clearer for me with them, with respect to Ryle.
On theoretical terminology: understood, even if I maintain that hardly any of it is necessary. I mean...thinking and thinking deeply being two different things? I don’t see the theoretical benefit in that fine a distinction.
No, that's not the distinction. The distinction is between thinking (e.g., about a math problem) and the conclusion one reaches as the result of thinking (e.g., that 2+2=4).
So Alice might cognize that 2+2=4 after much cogitation. And note that she couldn't cognize that 2+2=5, since it's false - to cognize something imples that one has been successful - an achievement. Whereas Alice can nonetheless cogitate about two plus two equaling five or one hand clapping if that's her thing.
Put differently, it's like the difference between trying to find your keys (the task or process) and finding your keys (the achievement).
The minor objection: the passage itself may be a clear distillation of Ryle, but I don’t get where he thinks Descartes and Plato are transcendentalists.
Where he says, "Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed."
Those extravagences (the "lavishness of the transcendentalist") are Descartes' res cogitans and Plato's ideal Forms.
The major objection: for those I do see as Transcendentalists, or, more properly, transcendental idealists, it must be granted that the “lavishness of the transcendentalist” means the invocation of a priori cognitions and knowledge, and calling such invocation occult-ish and “transcending powers of perception”, is what is not even wrong.
Can you show what the lavishness of the transcendentalist is, that isn’t the advocacy of the a priori, to show what I thought Ryle meant, is incorrect?
If we did not know, we could now guess that there would have to arise a Hume to "reduce" thinking to mere processions of these faint and derivative introspectibles down channels shallowly dug by Association; and how there would then have to arise a Kant or a Bradley to impose upon these processions some responsible controls that transcend the pryings of introspection.
Hume reduces thinking to constant conjunctions. In response, Kant transcendentalizes thinking. Ryle suggests instead that thinking "is saying things to [one]self with a special governing purpose". That's a natural definition that is neither reducible to just talking to oneself nor appeals to anything that transcends what is observable.
Note that Ryle recognizes purpose (and logic and reason) as immanent in this world. Not in a reductionist sense (Nothing But, the machine) nor in a transcendent sense (Something Else As Well, the ghost).
Ryle's broader argument is that by rectifying the logical geography here (i.e., rejecting both the ghost and the machine and reallocating the facts marshalled by the transcendentalist and reductionists), the natural world becomes intelligible.
— Andrew M
On the other hand, rejecting the alleged ghost and the machine the ghost supposedly lives in, seems to be rejecting the a priori aspect of human reason, and by association, the faculties in which the a priori resides. The intelligibility of the natural world is not the same as knowledge of the natural world, however, and because of that, I reject the notion that the latter is even possible without the former.
Yes, knowledge is not possible without intelligibility. So the point at issue is whether that's because the conditions of experience transcend the natural world or because they are immanent in it.
For Kant, the a priori imposes controls on "the pryings of introspection". For Ryle, logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences and observations.
We're talking about the same thing, but just allocating them to different places.
The illusion of sunrise is much better, because it took so long to remedy, and because we thought of the sun as actually rising/setting for so long, we still use the terminology for it in common understandings.
I don’t know what it means for an object to have form in relation to a perceiver. What is the relationship between your form and my properties?
On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or invariant. We get a sense of how things can vary for different observers from, for example, color perception studies in animals and relativistic physics (reference frames).
I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
— Mww
No, I don't agree with that!
— Andrew M
Then you are forced to admit to naming things, or at least to admit it is not a problem to name things, about which you know nothing whatsoever. In addition, you’ll find yourself unable to explain how it is that, sittin’ ‘round the dinner table as a kid, you didn’t understand what it meant when your parents talked about balancing the checkbook.
You’re talking about language in the sense of stringing symbols together to form a communication. I’m talking about the relation between a conception we think and the symbolism assigned that makes language possible. Because the same thing can be said in many different languages across cultures, and because the same thing can be said in exactly the same language regardless of culture, re: mathematics, and....as if that wasn’t enough...the same symbolism across cultures can indicate very different things, re: football, then it is readily apparent that experience of the thing being talked about, grounds the symbolism for talking about it.
Disclaimer: I detest language philosophy; its what professionals do because all the cool stuff’s been done already and they can’t think of a way to improve on it.
Perhaps we're at cross purposes here - I don't understand what you're arguing above.
All I'm saying is that someone, somewhere, has to observe a tree (i.e., experience something) before people can meaningfully talk about trees (i.e., have language about something).
Edit: On rereading, I see that I misread your initial comment. We do agree that language always presupposes experience. Sorry about that!
I regard realization there as a logical condition, not a process in time.
— Andrew M
Understood, and I can see that as a logical condition. What would you say to this: all human thought is singular and successive. If such should be the case, then change in subjective condition (Bob racing, Bob winning) is necessarily a process in time.
I would deny that Bob racing and Bob winning are subjective conditions or thoughts at all, they instead take place in the world. Bob racing is a process that occurs over a period of time. Whereas Bob winning is a condition that obtains at a single point in time.
He's denying a stamp-collecting approach to thinking and saying, either as a catalog of bodily movements or as a catalog of mental activities. Ryle brings in reason in the completion of that sentence where he includes the logical conditions under which thinking and saying occur, "... but some nexus of statable because statement-shaped conditions."
— Andrew M
See....I didn’t catch any of that from the passage. And I couldn’t unpack that last part at all. And I don’t understand “stamp-collecting”.
By stamp-collecting, I mean a purposeless sequence of actions. When Alice is looking for her keys, that does not consist of merely looking here and looking there (the Nothing But story). Instead Alice has a purpose that explains her looking, namely, that of finding her keys.
Now that purpose is not transcendent to her looking as a separate mental action (the Something Else As Well story), that purpose is instead immanent in her looking and is what makes her actions intelligible to others.
But I also think there is a give-and-take - some conceptual schemes are natural and well-motivated, others not so much. If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?
— Andrew M
No fair. We already know tails from legs. But if the very first naming of that wispy thing hanging off the south end of a north-bound horse was “leg”, or whatever.....that’s what we’d be calling it today, and all horses would have but one leg.
What is a conceptual scheme?
A way of thinking about the world.
In my contrived example, it would be a model of a horse as having four legs and a tail and an alternative model of a horse having five legs.
In science, it would include heliocentrism v. geocentrism, and classical physics v. quantum physics.
In the context of this thread, dualism and naturalism are different conceptual schemes.
Sir Philo SophiaFebruary 01, 2020 at 03:25#3776180 likes
The intelligibility of the natural world is not the same as knowledge of the natural world, however, and because of that, I reject the notion that the latter is even possible without the former.
I disagree with that. I can think of practical situations where knowledge is formed from information that is not intelligible; that is, I do not believe that it is a requirement that the info is capable of being understood or comprehended by the cognitive agent, it only matters, for example, that the info in question can be pattern matched and associated (even correlated) with something useful or meaningful or reduces the entropy of something else.
Sir Philo SophiaFebruary 01, 2020 at 04:00#3776210 likes
Reply to Andrew M
sure. Pattern/event/object 'A' is observed and found to occur semi-periodically; however, 'A' is not understood in any way, we can only detect its occurrence (think like a sub-atomic particle in an accelerator collision). We notice that most of the time shortly after 'A' is observed occurring a desirable, yet otherwise completely temporally unpredictable, resource/object 'B' will be available for a brief moment. Having knowledge of this causal association we prepare ourselves to take advantage of 'B', and right after detecting 'A" we were, finally, able to acquire 'B'. 'A' is like a sign, we don't have to know what the sign says or means, we just have to uniquely recognize that pattern which we don't understand (pattern matching, no comprehension needed).
Reply to Sir Philo Sophia Thanks, but you're still talking generally. Can you give a concrete example, such as an everyday situation or a physics scenario that demonstrates your point?
Sir Philo SophiaFebruary 01, 2020 at 04:17#3776340 likes
we can only detect its occurrence (think like a sub-atomic particle in an accelerator collision)
so, we detected presence of a particle having a collision pattern like a Higgs boson would have with very high probability, so we conclude we have knowledge now that the theoretical Higgs field exists to give gravity to particles, never knowing or understanding what that Higgs particle really was, only that something having that mass/energy exists was enough it gain knowledge.
Yes, but as a hypothetical entity. We can talk about ghosts as hypothetical entities as well, but we should resist the temptation to treat them as real.
I don't think what the blare of a trumpet sounds like is all that comparable to a ghost. As for the word 'real,' that's a can of worms in itself. Out of all context, 'real' has no clear meaning at all. In this context, I think you inferring that the 'beetle' does not exist simply because it's 'invisible' in a certain way to language.
I call fire engines 'red' - what do you call them?
As I suggested to Wayf, the sign 'red' functions because we call the same things red. That is necessary and sufficient to ground the concept, it seems. At the same time, we have the word 'quale' to point at what almost escapes the language game. Paintings, music...these aren't just what we can say about them. To be sure, it looks impossible to be objective or scientific about qualia --more or less by definition. I assume non-sociopathically that you are not a moist robot and 'experience' life, no matter the constraints of what you can fit into ideal public intelligibility.
[quote="Andrew M;377599" ]
What you're referring to, of course, is how something appears to you. But in this case, it's more or less certain that things appear differently to each of us, at least to some degree, since a lot of things can affect that. We can appreciate this when we wear sunglasses.[/quote]
It seems to me by the first part of your post that 'how something appears to [me]' is not supposed to exist at all (is a hypothetical entity, like a ghost.) This 'we' seems to embrace the almost automatic transcendental pretense, which is that our inner lives share in the same structure. It's hard for me to believe that you and other human beings see the redness of the rose differently than me, though I don't see any proof could ever be given for or against. I also assume that when you put on sunglasses that the world looks dimmer to you, but that is talk of ghosts!
Yes, knowledge is not possible without intelligibility. So the point at issue is whether that's because the conditions of experience transcend the natural world or because they are immanent in it.
For Kant, the a priori imposes controls on "the pryings of introspection". For Ryle, logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences and observations.
I like where you are coming from here. I haven't studied Ryle, but I find something like this in my favorite thinkers. I don't think there is clean break between the mental and the physical or between the self and others.
so, we detected presence of a particle having a collision pattern like a Higgs boson would have with very high probability, so we conclude we have knowledge now that the theoretical Higgs field exists to give gravity to particles, never knowing or understanding what that Higgs particle really was, only that something having that mass/energy exists was enough it gain knowledge.
makes sense?
Yes and that's a fair example.
We have enough knowledge to formulate theories and make predictions even while lacking a deeper understanding about what is going on. On the other hand, the search for a theory of everything does presuppose that the world is intelligible, even if we can't make sense of it right now.
I don't think what the blare of a trumpet sounds like is all that comparable to a ghost.
Yes, to say that we can hear the blare of a trumpet (and compare it with other sounds) is perfectly fine. It's the positing of qualia as a mind-dependent substance or property between us and the world that's the problem. That's the ghost.
It seems to me by the first part of your post that 'how something appears to [me]' is not supposed to exist at all (is a hypothetical entity, like a ghost.)
The word "appears" is ordinarily used when we are qualifying a statement in some way. For example, that the stick appears bent (when partially submerged in water). That's consistent with the stick being straight and it doesn't imply that there are bent-stick qualia. Similarly, if I said that the rose appeared pink, I'm speaking in a qualified way that suggests that it might not be pink in normal circumstances. Otherwise I would have just said that the rose was pink.
That's all ordinary use and perfectly fine. However in certain philosophical uses, an "appearance" becomes an entity in its own right that plays a "middleman" role in perception and experience. That's the ghost.
Sir Philo SophiaFebruary 01, 2020 at 16:47#3777370 likes
On the other hand, the search for a theory of everything does presuppose that the world is intelligible, even if we can't make sense of it right now
Sorry, but I would not tend to agree with that statement either. I do not think that intelligibility is primal when it comes to building knowledge. I expect utility is more primal because it requires less energy/work/knowledge to enable us to reduce/increase certain entropy as desired to achieve desired outcomes.
For example, quantum particles and their behavior is completely intelligible to us; however, we can develop and detect statistical (math) generalizations that predict their observed behavior good enough to use them in useful devices/methods or to predict when/where they may occur with what likelihood and at what energy level, all w/ little to know understanding of what they really are about.
Sir Philo SophiaFebruary 01, 2020 at 17:10#3777420 likes
I don't think there is clean break between the mental and the physical or between the self and others.
I would tend to agree with that belief. In my current model, consciousness is an emergent 3rd entity that forms as a dynamic standing wave resonating with those as its boundary conditions. I am also leaning towards our internal consciousness being (maybe slightly) different than our social consciousness being (maybe slightly) different than our mind-body consciousness. So, Kant's cogito 'thinking' is far too simplistic, and misleading, to reason on what/if the internal "I" consciousness exists simply by virtue of his social consciousness questioning it, b/c they are possibly (likely) independent consciousness states, in my model. So, any reasoning applied to them might be like comparing apples to oranges to conclude bananas.
On the other hand, the search for a theory of everything does presuppose that the world is intelligible, even if we can't make sense of it right now
— Andrew M
Sorry, but I would not tend to agree with that statement either. I do not think that intelligibility is primal when it comes to building knowledge. I expect utility is more primal because it requires less energy/work/knowledge to enable us to reduce/increase certain entropy as desired to achieve desired outcomes.
It may be that people are driven more by utility than understanding. But that doesn't imply that that the universe can't be understood.
A theory of everything (TOE[1] or ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.
Note the terms "all-encompassing" and "fully explains". The universe can only be fully explained if it is intelligible.
however, we can develop and detect statistical (math) generalizations that predict their observed behavior good enough to use them in useful devices/methods or to predict when/where they may occur with what likelihood and at what energy level, all w/ little to know understanding of what they really are about.
That's true. But note that the proliferation of quantum interpretations also shows that people seek a deeper understanding of what is going on (beyond shut-up-and-calculate). And a complete explanation would also have utility.
I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
— Mww
No, I don't agree with that!
— Andrew M
(...) All I'm saying is that someone, somewhere, has to observe a tree (i.e., experience something) before people can meaningfully talk about trees (i.e., have language about something).
The only way we couldn’t be agreeing, is if your use of the experience of a particular object followed by meaningful talk of it, is not agreeable with my use of the universal objects of all experience followed by meaningful talk of any of them. Or, for you, observation is not connected to experience, maybe?
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On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or invariant. We get a sense of how things can vary for different observers from, for example, color perception studies in animals
Point to....agreed, if “point to” means manually indicate a physical reality;
Has form......ok, but in relation to an observer is too ambiguous. In relation to can mean internal relation or external relation. Because you have stipulated pointing to, which implies external to the observer, dialectical consistency suggests form is external to the observer as well.
Is the externality of form because you speak from a doctrine of nominalism, insofar as form as a universal representation in intuition is denied? That’s fine, and because I speak from a conceptualist perspective, the root of our dissimilar epistemological metaphysics is given.
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all human thought is singular and successive. If such should be the case, then change in subjective condition (Bob racing, Bob winning) is necessarily a process in time.
— Mww
I would deny that Bob racing and Bob winning are subjective conditions or thoughts at all, they instead take place in the world. Bob racing is a process that occurs over a period of time. Whereas Bob winning is a condition that obtains at a single point in time.
Then apparently, you have no reason to think Bob is thinking about racing and winning, as he goes about his worldly event, which you wouldn’t, if you deny subjective conditions. The only way to deny subjective conditions is to deny subjectivity, and by association, you must deny yourself as being a thinking subject. Hmmm.....who am I talking to, again?
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Oh. Thought so, just making sure. You know.....human understanding does that all by itself, without having to create a name for it. That’s its job, after all. Synthesize certain concepts in direct relation to observations. Of course, because of experience, a horse will have four legs, and a horse of any other alternative conceptual scheme won’t be a horse.
understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).
— Andrew M
......to better understand our disagreements is an achievement, which we can then say only evolves by the faculty of understanding being tasked to achieve it. Such would be a semantic quibble if it weren’t already a theoretical tenet.
— Mww
Sure. However the semantic quibble for me is the assigning of agency to a faculty...
I understand how assigning agency to a faculty sounds kinda hincky, but really....we only have two choices, within our current knowledge base. One is pure cognitive neuroscience, in which the brain is analyzed to a fare-thee-well but doesn’t tell us what we really want to know; the other is, we think our own cognitive, albeit speculative, metaphysics, which tells us exactly what we want to know, but has no means of empirical justification. The latter in general having been around grappling with the human experience a hellava lot longer than the former, but the former in general effecting the human experience with a hellava lot more power over a significantly lesser time than the latter, puts us into the cross-hairs of a major intellectual conundrum.
The use personal pronouns in the content of our communications merely from the demands of language, gives no logical ground for their origin. Agency is assigned to a faculty in cognitive metaphysics for the expressed purpose of giving that logical ground for the origin of that which the pronouns represent, and that for the excruciatingly simple reason that cognitive neuroscience doesn’t have the means for it.
Now, it is the common notion that pure empiricism is content to wait for its proper knowledge, while metaphysics creates its own, which is the kindly way of saying science is reluctant to invoke magic to get what it wants, while thumbing its collective nose at metaphysics for having no such trepidation. But what pure empiricism overlooks, is the fact that its logic is exactly the same logic employed by the speculative philosopher, and even if the empirical logic is practical, having real objects in its content, and the metaphysical logic is abstract, having merely possible objects in its content, it is still logic. So the reductionist attitude is that the scientist frowns on the metaphysician because the metaphysician can prove his theoretical tenets using a logical methodology, but the pure empiricist has nothing he can prove at all, still being stuck in the exploratory/experimental quagmire of his theoretical domain, notwithstanding his logical methodology, with respect to the assignment of agency.
All that being said, the hinckiness is quite evident, if one is inclined to insist there actually are faculties to which assigning anything at all makes sense. We both know there is no such thing as, e.g., a real, measurable faculty of representation, or a faculty that thinks, or that reason does things for itself. These are either mere figures of speech predicated entirely on the necessity for some arbitrary form of mutual interconnectivity. Or, if you wish.....
“....So since we could witness none of the things John Doe is doing were the required acts of having ideas, abstracting, making judgements, or passing from premise to conclusion, it would seem to be necessary to locate these actions on the boards of a stage to which only he had access. (...) The imputed episodes appeared to be impenetrably “internal” because they were genuinely unwitnessable. But they were genuinely unwitnessable because they were mythical. They were causal hypothesis substituted for functional descriptions of the elements of published theories ....”
(Ryle, 1949, pg 318)
Nevertheless, there are two instance where it is perfectly legitimate to insist on something, re: everybody thinks, and, no science is ever done that isn’t first thought. Put those two together, in a proper, logically consistent, theoretical system, and hinckiness disappears, justified by those very mythical, albeit quite causal, hypotheses.
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knowledge is not possible without intelligibility. So the point at issue is whether that's because the conditions of experience transcend the natural world or because they are immanent in it.
For humans anyway, to say experience transcends the natural world, is a contradiction, if it is the case that the conditions of experience are necessarily given from it. Kantian epistemology takes for granted the principles, which govern the conditions of experience, can be nothing but immanent, that is to say, strictly limited to the natural world......
“...we shall call those principles the application of which is confined entirely within the limits of possible experience, immanent; those, on the other hand, which transgress these limits, we shall call transcendent principles....”
(CPR, A296)
.....for no other reason than we ourselves determine the principles and we belong to the natural world. Nature being, of course, merely the manifold of occassions from which the principles can be thought. That things happen Nature is given; how things happen in Nature is determined solely by the investigating agency, the intelligibility of the former grounded explicitly in the a priori logical functions subsisting in the latter.
For Kant, the a priori imposes controls on "the pryings of introspection". For Ryle, logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences and observations.
Why is introspection not one of those unwitnessable, imputed episodes mentioned above? That he uses it as a causal hypothetical sorta detracts from his chastisement of the “...great epistemologists Locke, Hume and Kant....”, doesn’t it? That’s fine, though; we all need words, concepts, and language to get our points across no matter the era of our theories.
I get the gist, though. It is pure reason that imposes controls on the extravagances of private cognition, and pure reason is always a priori, so.....close enough.
While I agree with Ryle that logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences, the a priori has nothing to do with practical experience. I mean....that’s its distinction, having nothing to do with experience. So to reconcile, it must be that Ryle thinks logical conditions are themselves a priori, but if so, they cannot be implicit, but must be explicit. That is, logical conditions must be necessary, not just implied. We know this, because sometimes our observations contradict extant experience, and if the logical conditions weren’t already established, we wouldn’t have the means to recognize the contradiction.
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Hume reduces thinking to constant conjunctions. In response, Kant transcendentalizes thinking. Ryle suggests instead that thinking "is saying things to [one]self with a special governing purpose". That's a natural definition that is neither reducible to just talking to oneself nor appeals to anything that transcends what is observable.
Thinking has a special governing purpose, but only an analytic, language, philosopher would call it saying things to oneself. While it may be a “natural” definition, it is only so for that very constant conjunction we use all the time without ever realizing that’s exactly what we DON’T do. We don’t speak when we think; we speak when we express what we think.
“....Thought is cognition by means of conceptions...”.
(CPR B94)
Why does that which is unobservable have to be transcendent? If the theoretical wavefunction collapse is unobservable in and of itself, is it therefore transcendent? Seems rather intellectually inconsistent, to categorically reject the unobservable in speculative metaphysics, yet glorify it in empirical physics.
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thinking and thinking deeply being two different things? I don’t see the theoretical benefit in that fine a distinction.
— Mww
No, that's not the distinction. The distinction is between thinking (e.g., about a math problem) and the conclusion one reaches as the result of thinking (e.g., that 2+2=4).
OK, sorry, but you specifically mentioned thinking and thinking deeply, so I just ran with it.
So Alice might cognize that 2+2=4 after much cogitation. And note that she couldn't cognize that 2+2=5, since it's false - to cognize something imples that one has been successful - an achievement. Whereas Alice can nonetheless cogitate about two plus two equaling five or one hand clapping if that's her thing.
After much cogitation: Alice, assuming she already knows how to count, cogitates by assembling blocks by series of two’s, successfully achieves the cognizing of four by counting the totality of the series. So she couldn’t cognize five, because, according to you and Ryle, the logical conditions implicit in the observation, in this case, the counting, prevent it, but she could still cogitate it.
Alice barely knows how to count. How does she know about logical conditions? Kant has the answer; what does Ryle say?
On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or invariant. We get a sense of how things can vary for different observers from, for example, color perception studies in animals
— Andrew M
Point to....agreed, if “point to” means manually indicate a physical reality;
Has form......ok, but in relation to an observer is too ambiguous. In relation to can mean internal relation or external relation. Because you have stipulated pointing to, which implies external to the observer, dialectical consistency suggests form is external to the observer as well.
Yes it indicates a physical reality. Note that I reject an internal/external (or subject/object) dualism, so no such ambiguity arises on my model.
Is the externality of form because you speak from a doctrine of nominalism, insofar as form as a universal representation in intuition is denied? That’s fine, and because I speak from a conceptualist perspective, the root of our dissimilar epistemological metaphysics is given.
My position on universals is Aristotle's immanent realism. As against Nominalism and Platonic Realism in which we see, as Ryle puts it, "an Occam and a Plato skid into their opposite ditches".
I would deny that Bob racing and Bob winning are subjective conditions or thoughts at all, they instead take place in the world. Bob racing is a process that occurs over a period of time. Whereas Bob winning is a condition that obtains at a single point in time.
— Andrew M
Then apparently, you have no reason to think Bob is thinking about racing and winning, as he goes about his worldly event,
He presumably would be, but need not be. Whether Bob wins the race or not depends on whether he crosses the finish line first, not on what he's thinking about.
which you wouldn’t, if you deny subjective conditions. The only way to deny subjective conditions is to deny subjectivity, and by association, you must deny yourself as being a thinking subject. Hmmm.....who am I talking to, again?
As I've mentioned, I reject subject/object dualism. Minds don't think, human beings do.
I understand how assigning agency to a faculty sounds kinda hincky, but really....we only have two choices, within our current knowledge base.
I agree with everything you say about "pure cognitive neuroscience" and "pure empiricism". You're making Ryle's point for him against the Reductionists. But, as discussed, I also reject Transcendentalism - they're two sides of the same dualist coin.
The third choice I'm suggesting assigns agency to the human being, not to an idealist mind nor to a materialist brain. Since you mention metaphysics, note that this third approach is found not just in ordinary language but also in Aristotle where particulars are the locus of activity (and also of cause and effect). A particular is not the material object of the Reductionist (e.g., Democritus), it is a matter/form compound (per hylomorphism). That precludes the need for the idealist subject of the Transcendentalist (e.g., Plato) since the form (morphe or eidos) of every particular takes on that role. So it's a holistic approach rather than a dualistic approach.
Per Aristotle, science investigates the nature of things. And his philosophy of nature explicates the logic of this investigation. Which also, as it happens, reflects back onto and includes the investigator (i.e., the human being themselves is a hylomorphic particular that can be investigated like any other particular).
To reiterate, dualism maintains a separation between subject and object. Whereas with hylomorphism, form and matter are inseparable aspects of every object.
“...we shall call those principles the application of which is confined entirely within the limits of possible experience, immanent; those, on the other hand, which transgress these limits, we shall call transcendent principles....”
(CPR, A296)
.....for no other reason than we ourselves determine the principles and we belong to the natural world. Nature being, of course, merely the manifold of occassions from which the principles can be thought. That things happen Nature is given; how things happen in Nature is determined solely by the investigating agency, the intelligibility of the former grounded explicitly in the a priori logical functions subsisting in the latter.
Just when I thought we were going to agree, Kant adds an "on the other hand"!
This is where I say that we don't need the "on the other hand", and you will then say that things would be unintelligible (lacking the necessary resources to ground things). But Ryle discusses this:
Gilbert Ryle - Thinking and Saying:Our Reductionist is ex officio a zealous empiricist, whose constant complaint is that his Platonic or Cartesian or Hegelian opponent always fetches in unverifiables or unobservables to provide him with his occupational Something Else as Well. We sympathize until we find that our empiricist's own roster of observables is becoming disturbingly short, and his roster of unobservables disturbingly long.
This gets back to the earlier example of Bob winning the race. Contra both the Reductionist and the Transcendentalist, Bob winning the race is on the roster of observables.
While I agree with Ryle that logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences, the a priori has nothing to do with practical experience. I mean....that’s its distinction, having nothing to do with experience. So to reconcile, it must be that Ryle thinks logical conditions are themselves a priori, but if so, they cannot be implicit, but must be explicit. That is, logical conditions must be necessary, not just implied. We know this, because sometimes our observations contradict extant experience, and if the logical conditions weren’t already established, we wouldn’t have the means to recognize the contradiction.
The way I would put it is that those logical conditions are themselves discoverable (or, sometimes, negotiable). Bob might think that he has won the race, but then fails the subsequent drug test. He is disqualified even if he was unaware that that particular drug was on the ban list. So ours and his model for what it means to win the race can be subsequently revised. In which case we would retroactively change the language we use to describe Bob's race outcome - we thought he had won, but he hadn't. A metaphor here is that we are continually modifying the (logical) spectacles through which we view the world. Or, our experience of the world is like being on a boat that is continually being rebuilt while on the open sea. This applies not just to a human-created competition as is the case here, but generally to theories about the world (e.g., geocentrism / heliocentrism).
We don’t speak when we think; we speak when we express what we think.
Ryle isn't saying that we verbally utter words when thinking. He is saying that thinking is the utilization of language (with a governing purpose). So we can certainly think without speaking. But it's also possible to speak without thinking. And to speak thoughtfully, and to think out loud. Again, just one action - two aren't necessary (though one could also think for a while, then speak).
Why does that which is unobservable have to be transcendent?
The issue is that the unobservable is indistinguishable from a ghost. Ryle is arguing that the roster of observables is too short if it excludes thinking. We can observe that Le Penseur is thinking.
If the theoretical wavefunction collapse is unobservable in and of itself, is it therefore transcendent? Seems rather intellectually inconsistent, to categorically reject the unobservable in speculative metaphysics, yet glorify it in empirical physics.
Some interpretations say that wavefunction collapse is an illusion, others that the wavefunction isn't real. So maybe not the best example for making your point. ;-)
Alice barely knows how to count. How does she know about logical conditions? Kant has the answer; what does Ryle say?
The logical conditions are implicit in the language Alice uses to communicate and solve practical problems (whether in ordinary or specialized contexts). However she may not be able to explicitly articulate those logical conditions since that would require additional reflection and analysis, itself a skill.
It is similar to being able to play tennis without necessarily being able to theoretically explain what one is doing (as a coach would be able to do).
What was Kant's answer? That Alice automatically knows the logical conditions because they are a priori?
No one has to know exactly what 'physical' is supposed to mean in order to employ the sign in context to get things done.
But we do know what it means, just as much as we know what any category means. The usual objection
is that we don't know what it "really" means, whatever that means.
My point is that mental stuff is quotidian, and we deal with it in the same casual way. Science also deals with it.
Science only deals with it insofar as it is believed to manifest as observable behavior or neural process, though, and that is not what we seem, by default as it were, to imagine the mental to be. We actually don't have any positive conception of the mental; it is usually defined merely apophatically (emptily) as "not physical".
In particular, signs are not material/physical. The notion of the same word being used by different humans with different physical vocalizations is already 'immaterial.' I gave an informal argument for this above. Even just counting employs the ideal identity of different objects.
Signs are always in material/physical form. We do call notions of identity "immaterial" but they are really only formal approximations; nothing is ever "really identical" to anything else.
Our ontological prejudices (our pre-grasp of the situation) tend to understand the 'spiritual' in terms of mundane things like feelings, thoughts, myths.
Yes I'd agree with you that it is only in those terms that we can have any positive conception of the so-called spiritual.
We are basically on the same page on this particular issue. The essence seems to be that 'spirituality' is private matter. What's interesting is that such a view is public/dominant form of spirituality. Politics is applied religion, in other words, and the privatization of religion (which I am fine with) is the triumph of a particular (metaphorically) spiritual view.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. If you mean that although spirituality (faith) is a matter for the individual, nonetheless forms of spirituality, spiritual life, are never "private' but socially evolved, then I'd agree.
I am very disappointed in being sent to wiki.
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I get that hylomorphism attributes both matter and form to objects, such that form is relieved of its usefulness in minds. But I don’t get how that falsifies subject/object dualism itself. Aristotle grants that we think, for even the very opening paragraph of “Physics”, “...we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles...”, makes human thought explicit, of whatever kind it may be. As great length has been given in “Physics” to objects, and gives authority on the primacy of being of them and the relations between constituencies in them, it follows that such ontological predicates of objects are moot, if not irrelevant, if the reality of objects, whatever their constituency, is already presupposed. But referring to the quoted assertion, still leaves “we do not think we know a thing....”, which immediately invokes a subject/object dualism, insofar as there must be he who thinks himself acquainted with conditions and principles, and that to which the conditions and principles belong. So, yes, the internal/external dualism is eliminated by attributing form to objects proper, but eliminating internal/external dualism does not eliminate the subject/object dualism.
Of course, further examination of primary conditions and first principles, when found to be a functional acquaintance of the investigative agency himself, the necessity for subject/object dualism is given.
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No objections. Mind is nothing but an abstract placeholder, a euphemism for that which serves as the logical means for terminating the speculative tendency towards infinite regress. It’s just a common word for a transcendental idea. We could speak for hours without ever once mentioning the word, all the while having the idea as the silent ground.
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Then apparently, you have no reason to think Bob is thinking about racing and winning, as he goes about his worldly event,
— Mww
He presumably would be, but need not be.
Given your inclination towards intentionality, wouldn’t you agree that if Bob is in the race, then he is racing, and if he is in fact racing, he thereby intends to win? If he’s even in the race presupposes he intends to win, otherwise he’d just be a member of a group going from point A to point B, but from that alone, or that in relation to a standard of some sort, it couldn’t be said he is racing.
So granting he is thinking about racing because he’s in the race, and he’s thinking about winning because that’s the intent of racing, then wouldn’t you also grant he has different ideas about one as opposed to the other? And if he has different ideas, he must have different thoughts, and if he has different thoughts, he must have different subjective conditions which facilitate one in succession to the other.
No, he need not be. But not much reason to be there if he isn’t. And he is there, so.......
I get that hylomorphism attributes both matter and form to objects, such that form is relieved of its usefulness in minds. But I don’t get how that falsifies subject/object dualism itself. Aristotle grants that we think, for even the very opening paragraph of “Physics”, “...we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles...”, makes human thought explicit, of whatever kind it may be.
I'm not arguing that it falsifies it. It's a different approach that has no use for it. For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's knowledge of them.
So, for example, the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago, well before life emerged to know about it. Thus there were particulars (objects) at that time, but no subjects.
Mind is nothing but an abstract placeholder, a euphemism for that which serves as the logical means for terminating the speculative tendency towards infinite regress. It’s just a common word for a transcendental idea. We could speak for hours without ever once mentioning the word, all the while having the idea as the silent ground.
What infinite regress? Is mind required for the Earth to orbit the Sun?
Given your inclination towards intentionality, wouldn’t you agree that if Bob is in the race, then he is racing, and if he is in fact racing, he thereby intends to win? If he’s even in the race presupposes he intends to win, otherwise he’d just be a member of a group going from point A to point B, but from that alone, or that in relation to a standard of some sort, it couldn’t be said he is racing.
It's not so simple since "race/racing" can have different senses depending on the context. In our example, Bob is ostensively in a race. But if he doesn't intend to win then, as you say, he's not really racing, he's doing something else (e.g., pretending to race).
So, for example, Bob could have run in a race that he intentionally lost (e.g., he was being paid to lose) or unintentionally won (e.g., he was being paid to lose but the lead runner collapsed or was disqualified).
So granting he is thinking about racing because he’s in the race, and he’s thinking about winning because that’s the intent of racing, then wouldn’t you also grant he has different ideas about one as opposed to the other? And if he has different ideas, he must have different thoughts, and if he has different thoughts, he must have different subjective conditions which facilitate one in succession to the other.
We can characterize Bob's actions in different ways, but there isn't a requirement that an action be preceded by a thought, or needs a thought at all (people sometimes do things without thinking). If there were a requirement then, since that thought is itself an action, it must be preceded by a further thought. And so on in infinite regress. As it happens, this is Ryle's regress argument. (And note Kant's anticipation of the argument.)
Bob's intention to race is immanent in his running (form and matter are inseparable) which is, in principle, observable. His intention isn't something over and above the running itself (which would be to separate form from matter).
I also reject Transcendentalism - they're two sides of the same dualist coin.
Maybe....I dunno. Each of those doctrines have so many branches, there probably are some that interact as opposites of a dualism. I do favor methodological reduction, and transcendental philosophy, but I don’t have much to do with Transcendentalism the self-contained intellectual movement, except for Emerson and Thoreau, and that mostly from our common culture.
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The third choice I'm suggesting assigns agency to the human being, not to an idealist mind nor to a materialist brain.
And if agency, that is, rationality, morality, consciousness, intellect, are all predicated on either mind or brain, how is agency accounted for if not by those?
A particular is not the material object of the Reductionist (e.g., Democritus), it is a matter/form compound (per hylomorphism). That precludes the need for the idealist subject of the Transcendentalist (e.g., Plato) since the form (morphe or eidos) of every particular takes on that role. So it's a holistic approach rather than a dualistic approach.
The modern subject/object dualism does not concern itself with the dual nature of real objects in the world. In transcendental philosophy, and perhaps post-medieval systems in general, the subject is he who considers the relationship between himself and those objects. In Aristotle, subject is what is being talked about, in which case the real physical object is the subject of discussion, and he talks about object as subject in at least two different ways, one in “Categories” and the other in “Physics”. All well and good, but not the same kind of subject/object dualism of the moderns.
For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's knowledge of them. So, for example, the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago, well before life emerged to know about it. Thus there were particulars (objects) at that time, but no subjects.
This puts the particular right back into the purview of the the moderns, insofar as particulars are real objects, whether known from experience or not, and further allocates subject as a knowing being instead of the object of discussion.
To reiterate, dualism maintains a separation between subject and object. Whereas with hylomorphism, form and matter are inseparable aspects of every object.
Ok, no problem. Where is the subject in hylomorphism? If it is true Aristotle speaks of object as subject, and attributes both form and matter to the subjects he’s speaking about......where is the speaker? You said before he was treated as any other object, so it appears all those human agency predicates are merely particulars of some certain substance. Even if that gives us what they are, it does nothing to tell us how they work, and how they relate to each other in order to work together such that “agency” has any meaning.
Yes, one kind of modern dualism does maintain a separation between subject and object, but they are in no way to be considered the same kind of thing, as hylomorphism makes of every object including the subject of modern dualism.
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Just when I thought we were going to agree, Kant adds an "on the other hand"! (...) Contra both the Reductionist and the Transcendentalist, Bob winning the race is on the roster of observables.
Yes, absolutely. That isn’t the “other hand”, however, which resides in what does winning the race mean, over and above the merely empirical observation of it? As Aristotle himself says...we don’t care so much for what we know as for what we don’t. And Ryle is right that the empiricists list of observables gets smaller and smaller, winning is just one thing after all, and experiments usually give one result, yet eyeballs can see the multiplicity of observables in entire cosmological space available to it, while the rationalists list of unverifiables gets longer, which is your argument against e.g., appearances on one hand and other mythical “causal hypotheses” on the other.
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We don’t speak when we think; we speak when we express what we think.
— Mww
Ryle isn't saying that we verbally utter words when thinking. He is saying that thinking is the utilization of language (with a governing purpose). So we can certainly think without speaking. But it's also possible to speak without thinking. And to speak thoughtfully, and to think out loud. Again, just one action - two aren't necessary (though one could also think for a while, then speak).
I meant to speak is to use language, and the use of language does not necessarily include verbalizing. I should have said “we don’t use language when we think....”, which was implied by the CPR quote “thought is cognition by means of concepts”. As such, I reject that thinking is the utilization of language, while granting that thinking has a governing purpose, re: proper relations of concepts in order for cognitions not to contradict themselves. And even if that is an unverifiable in itself, it can manifest as an observable when we get around to actually verbalizing.
Man, just wait til things like schema, and phenomena, and spontaneity come up........no wonder Ryle scoffs at unverifiables, huh????
The issue is that the unobservable is indistinguishable from a ghost. Ryle is arguing that the roster of observables is too short if it excludes thinking. We can observe that Le Penseur is thinking.
Yeah, he got a lot of mileage out of that ghost thing, didn’t he? Sure we may observe that he is thinking. Doesn’t matter, though, really; observation of the manifestation of thought is not the thought process itself. We are still entitled to ask “why did you do that?” after observing what he did.
I’m having trouble understanding how it is at all possible to deny the private subject of human rationality.
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Some interpretations say that wavefunction collapse is an illusion, others that the wavefunction isn't real. So maybe not the best example for making your point.
Sure it is, if the transcendent is merely the unobservable, which I got from your, “transcends what is observable...”. Being illusory or even unreal satisfies being unobservable, but is that sufficient for transcendent? Being impossible as empirical phenomena is transcendent, but that which is illusory is not so impossible. And your ol’ nemesis “appearance” certainly isn’t real, but most certainly is an empirical phenomenon, under at least one metaphysical theory. I picked the wavefunction because it is mathematically real, albeit unobservable in itself, hence questions whether or not it is transcendent.
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What infinite regress? Is mind required for the Earth to orbit the Sun?
Of course not. Some productive rational methodology is necessary for us to understand that and how the Earth orbits the Sun, and any other empirical observation. The mind serves to terminate infinite regress in the series of possibilities in the sphere of transcendental imaginables. Because the sphere of possible experience is immeasurable, requires us to set limits in our methods somewhere, otherwise we have no apodeictic ground for our knowledge. No matter the arbitrariness of what the kind or form the limit has, the setting of one is necessary.
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It's not so simple since "race/racing" can have different senses depending on the context.
Which gets pretty close to the whole point: looking at it top down, if it is true there are many different senses of a thing, wouldn’t we seek a common ground for all of them? On the other hand, bottom up, wouldn’t we already have a common ground, in order to see the difference in senses of things? And because we can look at things either way, or rather, some things present themselves in one way or the other, wouldn’t we already have the capacity to understand them however they present themselves?
How that all happens seems to be of much more importance than the non-duality of objects, and we shouldn’t allow our disinterest to be enable by mere unverifiables.
What was Kant's answer? That Alice automatically knows the logical conditions because they are a priori?
Kant’s answer is that Alice doesn’t know a damn thing about logical conditions, as they are insinuated in Ryle. Alice’s entire cognitive faculty is absolutely predicated on them, of which she has not the slightest conscious notion.
Idle musings:
Odd, isn’t it? That Ryle goes to such great lengths to deny the ghost, but allows for the “silent ghostiness”?
“...the technical trick of conducting our thinking in auditory word-images, instead of spoken words, does indeed secure secrecy for our thinking…”(1).......
..........although auditory word/images I would be disinclined to call a technical trick. It is, instead, exactly how the human system operates. And aligning secrecy with a ghost, or occult, that is to say, otherwise inaccessible internality, is far too pejorative a conclusion. Not to mention, the “ghost” disappears immediately upon profitable argument contra substance dualism, re: Ryle’s “category mistake”, while allowing property dualism to remain relatively unaffected. At least til them ordinary language folks latch aholta vit.
If we grant that the supremacy of the human aptitude is for knowledge acquisition, and by that if we arrive at knowledge, we should wish our knowledge to be as certain as possible and we should wish to understand what our knowledge actually entails. The best way to arrive at knowledge certainty, and to best way to understand what our knowledge certainty means, is to base the acquisition system for it on the only conditions which grant lawful authority, which is always certain in itself......logic.
From here it is clear that logical conditions, of which Alice has not the slightest notion, are the methodological processes of human thought, that follow a logical series. She has no notion because they all occur in the steps of the process that Ryle calls “occult”, and you have called unverifiable. While this may all be the case, nothing is taken away from the those conditions being logical, even if we are unaware of them.
“....But modelling thinking on processes (...) which can be broken down into ingredient processes which have been coordinated in a certain way is a mistake…. “(2).
Not sure why not. If we start with this for a fact, and if we end up with that for a fact, we have every right to suppose the excluded middle that supports the end in keeping with the beginning.
“..."there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate" (3)
The third choice I'm suggesting assigns agency to the human being, not to an idealist mind nor to a materialist brain.
— Andrew M
And if agency, that is, rationality, morality, consciousness, intellect, are all predicated on either mind or brain, how is agency accounted for if not by those?
They are literally predicated on human beings. It is human beings that are rational, moral, etc., not minds or brains. A brain is a part of a human being, not the whole; a mind is an abstraction over a human being, and not concrete. Whereas a human being is a concrete particular that is the locus of agency.
The modern subject/object dualism does not concern itself with the dual nature of real objects in the world. In transcendental philosophy, and perhaps post-medieval systems in general, the subject is he who considers the relationship between himself and those objects. In Aristotle, subject is what is being talked about, in which case the real physical object is the subject of discussion, and he talks about object as subject in at least two different ways, one in “Categories” and the other in “Physics”. All well and good, but not the same kind of subject/object dualism of the moderns.
That specific subject/object language usage is modern, yes. But the same essential dualism is found in Plato (as ideal Forms/natural world).
Aristotle rejected that dualism and while he had his own conception of subjects and objects, they were not as duals. Instead, for Aristotle, objects were the subjects of predication (Categories) and, in the case of particulars, the subjects of change (Physics).
For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's knowledge of them. So, for example, the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago, well before life emerged to know about it. Thus there were particulars (objects) at that time, but no subjects.
— Andrew M
This puts the particular right back into the purview of the the moderns, insofar as particulars are real objects, whether known from experience or not, and further allocates subject as a knowing being instead of the object of discussion.
OK. So if we were just discussing a synonym for "knowing being" (in the ordinary sense of human beings as distinguished from rocks or trees, say) then there would be no philosophical issue. But the problem is that it also brings with it the Cartesian sense of subject/object, internal/external, rational/empirical and so on.
To reiterate, dualism maintains a separation between subject and object. Whereas with hylomorphism, form and matter are inseparable aspects of every object.
— Andrew M
Ok, no problem. Where is the subject in hylomorphism? If it is true Aristotle speaks of object as subject, and attributes both form and matter to the subjects he’s speaking about......where is the speaker? You said before he was treated as any other object, so it appears all those human agency predicates are merely particulars of some certain substance. Even if that gives us what they are, it does nothing to tell us how they work, and how they relate to each other in order to work together such that “agency” has any meaning.
In that instance, Aristotle is the speaker - a person that is a subject of predication, change and agency.
To find out and investigate the nature of hylomorphic particulars - whether human beings, trees or rocks - is the role of the natural sciences.
Just when I thought we were going to agree, Kant adds an "on the other hand"! (...) Contra both the Reductionist and the Transcendentalist, Bob winning the race is on the roster of observables.
— Andrew M
Yes, absolutely. That isn’t the “other hand”, however, which resides in what does winning the race mean, over and above the merely empirical observation of it?
Winning the race doesn't mean anything over and above what is entailed by the observation of it. Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. Instead observation, for human beings, includes the rational. Alice sees that Bob won the race. An eagle flying overhead does not, despite having sharper eyes. Alice sees more because she is rational.
That is what I mean by holistic. Instead of a dualistic "physical" seeing + "transcendent" rationality, it's instead just a richer form of seeing.
I meant to speak is to use language, and the use of language does not necessarily include verbalizing. I should have said “we don’t use language when we think....”, which was implied by the CPR quote “thought is cognition by means of concepts”. As such, I reject that thinking is the utilization of language, while granting that thinking has a governing purpose, re: proper relations of concepts in order for cognitions not to contradict themselves. And even if that is an unverifiable in itself, it can manifest as an observable when we get around to actually verbalizing.
English-speakers use the word "snow" to talk about snow. German-speakers use the word "schnee" to talk about snow. So we can abstract away the language-specific words and simply talk about the (abstract) concept of snow.
So concepts have a natural grounding in language use. Which is to say, we have the concept of snow when we are able to employ the word "snow" (or "schnee").
On that understanding, I agree with the CPR quote.
Yeah, he got a lot of mileage out of that ghost thing, didn’t he? Sure we may observe that he is thinking. Doesn’t matter, though, really; observation of the manifestation of thought is not the thought process itself. We are still entitled to ask “why did you do that?” after observing what he did.
I fully agree. We should also expect that the answer is open to natural investigation, not dependent on a radical privacy.
I’m having trouble understanding how it is at all possible to deny the private subject of human rationality.
OK. It's a different way of allocating the facts that has no use for a private subject. Analogous to how a heliocentrist has no use for a geocentric center, even though it seems essential under that theory.
I picked the wavefunction because it is mathematically real, albeit unobservable in itself, hence questions whether or not it is transcendent.
As it happens, wavefunction collapse isn't mathematically well-defined. It's more of the nature of, well, we observed this electron spin here which is described by that bit of the wavefunction there, so let's just throw away those other bits of the wavefunction that don't seem to fit anymore. Except we reserve the right to put them back again if we're doing a Wigner-style experiment. You get the idea.
So transcendent (i.e., not naturally grounded)? It would seem so.
What infinite regress? Is mind required for the Earth to orbit the Sun?
— Andrew M
Of course not. Some productive rational methodology is necessary for us to understand that and how the Earth orbits the Sun, and any other empirical observation. The mind serves to terminate infinite regress in the series of possibilities in the sphere of transcendental imaginables. Because the sphere of possible experience is immeasurable, requires us to set limits in our methods somewhere, otherwise we have no apodeictic ground for our knowledge. No matter the arbitrariness of what the kind or form the limit has, the setting of one is necessary.
I think we start with the particulars that we ordinarily observe. We develop rules and processes as we go along. If we discover a wrong claim, we fix it and move on. If there seems to be something wrong with the rules or processes themselves, then we fix them and move on. It starts with practical concerns and builds theory around that, not the other way around - namely, building an arbitrary theory and shoehorning experience into that. The practical approach is not apodeictic (it's instead provisional), but neither is it arbitrary.
Which gets pretty close to the whole point: looking at it top down, if it is true there are many different senses of a thing, wouldn’t we seek a common ground for all of them? On the other hand, bottom up, wouldn’t we already have a common ground, in order to see the difference in senses of things? And because we can look at things either way, or rather, some things present themselves in one way or the other, wouldn’t we already have the capacity to understand them however they present themselves?
Sure, but that common ground might be more subtle than it first appears. There might be a family resemblance between uses of a term rather than necessary and sufficient conditions. I see this as an empirical endeavor - we can have hypotheses about how language terms function and relate to other terms, and we can test those hypotheses and revise if need be. So to have the capacity to understand something doesn't mean that it will be understood the first time - it may require a lot of investigation.
But we do know what it means, just as much as we know what any category means. The usual objection
is that we don't know what it "really" means, whatever that means.
I agree that we 'don't know what we really mean' when we use the phrase 'don't know what we really mean.' The assumption I am questioning here is that 'physical' and 'mental' refer to clear concepts. That we can offer imperfect definitions is clear, but I suggest that improvising definitions is quite secondary to the use of these words in ten million contexts.
Science only deals with it insofar as it is believed to manifest as observable behavior or neural process, though, and that is not what we seem, by default as it were, to imagine the mental to be. We actually don't have any positive conception of the mental; it is usually defined merely apophatically (emptily) as "not physical".
I like to understand science as the theory of technology that works whether one believes in it or not.
And then science depends on ordinary language, so science deals with the mental in a quotidian way at the sub-scientific level so that the scientific level is possible. Bohr saw this. Husserl focused on it.
I don't think that the mental is defined as you say except perhaps by certain philosophers in a metaphysical mode. Let's check the dictionary.
mental : relating to the mind.
mind : the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
physical :relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
So it's actually physical that's defined as the negative here, perhaps because human conversation prioritizes the social.
If you mean that although spirituality (faith) is a matter for the individual, nonetheless forms of spirituality, spiritual life, are never "private' but socially evolved, then I'd agree.
I agree that faith is a matter for the individual, but I'm stressing that that principle itself involves a faith that does not understand itself as a private issue. People with many different faiths can share this faith that religion is a private matter and go to war to keep it that way (against a tyranny of this or that religion imposed as a public religion.)
It's easy to overlook that the faith in faith being a private matter is itself a dominant public matter, which is to say a kind of meta-religion that is enforced by the government of a 'free' people. For instance, I expect the state to defend me against religious fanatics who violate my rights for should-be-private religious reasons. As a rough approximation, I'm suggesting that living religion is potentially violent. That religion is something we shouldn't fight about is a meta-religion that we have fought and will continue to fight about.
This blends with your second point. This meta-religion of religious freedom has evolved socially, just like all the traditional religions that it dominates in certain places and times.
What was Kant's answer? That Alice automatically knows the logical conditions because they are a priori?
— Andrew M
Kant’s answer is that Alice doesn’t know a damn thing about logical conditions, as they are insinuated in Ryle. Alice’s entire cognitive faculty is absolutely predicated on them, of which she has not the slightest conscious notion.
Odd, isn’t it? That Ryle goes to such great lengths to deny the ghost, but allows for the “silent ghostiness”?
“...the technical trick of conducting our thinking in auditory word-images, instead of spoken words, does indeed secure secrecy for our thinking…”(1).......
Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation. The ghost only makes an appearance when that privacy is separated out from the natural world (whether in a transcendent realm per Plato or in a substantial mind per Descartes).
..........although auditory word/images I would be disinclined to call a technical trick. It is, instead, exactly how the human system operates. And aligning secrecy with a ghost, or occult, that is to say, otherwise inaccessible internality, is far too pejorative a conclusion. Not to mention, the “ghost” disappears immediately upon profitable argument contra substance dualism, re: Ryle’s “category mistake”, while allowing property dualism to remain relatively unaffected. At least til them ordinary language folks latch aholta vit.
Property dualism still retains mental phenomena, mental causation, and radical privacy. So it's subject to the same criticisms made by Ryle and others.
If we grant that the supremacy of the human aptitude is for knowledge acquisition, and by that if we arrive at knowledge, we should wish our knowledge to be as certain as possible and we should wish to understand what our knowledge actually entails. The best way to arrive at knowledge certainty, and to best way to understand what our knowledge certainty means, is to base the acquisition system for it on the only conditions which grant lawful authority, which is always certain in itself......logic.
It's worth noting that Aristotle purposed logic in a different manner to modern logic. For Aristotle, logic concerns entities (onta) that are the subject of predication, not simply formal sentences. Since the most fundamental entitities for Aristotle were observable concrete particulars such as human beings or trees (those things that aren't predicated of anything else), and those things are also subjects of change, contingency is unavoidably present from the beginning.
From here it is clear that logical conditions, of which Alice has not the slightest notion, are the methodological processes of human thought, that follow a logical series. She has no notion because they all occur in the steps of the process that Ryle calls “occult”, and you have called unverifiable. While this may all be the case, nothing is taken away from the those conditions being logical, even if we are unaware of them.
So as suggested above, that is also contested since Aristotle applied logic on the basis of observable distinctions, not idealizations. My outline of concepts in my previous post would be an example of that approach (which starts from what is observed - in this instance, people using language).
“....But modelling thinking on processes (...) which can be broken down into ingredient processes which have been coordinated in a certain way is a mistake…. “(2).
Not sure why not. If we start with this for a fact, and if we end up with that for a fact, we have every right to suppose the excluded middle that supports the end in keeping with the beginning.
“..."there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate" (3)
So as I see it, that would be shoehorning what is observed into what is theorized - in effect, it's the template or mold. That is, if one defines what thought or rationality is up front and in an idealized/transcendent sense, then that frames the way that everything else is understood. So substance or property dualism is the "necessary" consequence. No surprises there.
Whereas Aristotle starts from what is observed and develops logical principles and theory around that (including the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle that you appeal to).
I like to understand science as the theory of technology that works whether one believes in it or not.
And then science depends on ordinary language, so science deals with the mental in a quotidian way at the sub-scientific level so that the scientific level is possible. Bohr saw this. Husserl focused on it.
I think science is much more than that. I think it is the best method for understanding how things work and are.
Science doesn't deal directly with the mental, as I see it, (unless you count psychoanalysis and phenomenology as sciences).
mind : the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
physical :relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
So it's actually physical that's defined as the negative here, perhaps because human conversation prioritizes the social.
Yes, but what is the mind? According to science the mind is a function of the brain; so we are back to physical investigations in order to understand anything definite about the mind. This is not to say we cannot have, for example, metaphorical or poetic understandings of the mind (or even the brain) but they do not yeild the same kind of knowledge as physical investigations can.
I agree that, in the context of so-called "folk" understandings of the mind, the physical is "defined in the negative" or more accurately as derivative of the mind; insofar as it is defined as "what can be sensed and measured" and it is understood under that paradigm that it is always a mind which measures. But we can equally say that it is the body/brain which measures; that it is something physical which measures something physical, and there is no contradiction in that. If it were really something non-physical doing the measuring then that would be dualism.
I agree that faith is a matter for the individual, but I'm stressing that that principle itself involves a faith that does not understand itself as a private issue. People with many different faiths can share this faith that religion is a private matter and go to war to keep it that way (against a tyranny of this or that religion imposed as a public religion.)
I agree that the emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual is a relatively modern phenomenon, and as such it is a public, socially mediated phenomenon. But there is also no purely rational justification for any institution's right to enforce, or even coerce, individual's beliefs and allegiances when it comes to matters of faith.
Thanks for the thoughtful, and interesting, reply. I look forward to them, even while voicing opposition where I find it. As you are welcome to do as well.
And if agency, that is, rationality, morality, consciousness, intellect, are all predicated on either mind or brain, how is agency accounted for if not by those?
— Mww
They are literally predicated on human beings. It is human beings that are rational, moral, etc., not minds or brains.
Yeah, but Abbooootttt!!! You can’t have agency without the human, true enough, but you can have the human without agency, so one is different than the other. Besides, we were asking after the necessary accountability of agency, under the assumption of its presence, not the merely sufficient conditions in the form of a physical vessel in which its presence is not absolutely given.
“...Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul. The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed...”(1)
We don’t really care that a human is rational or moral, insofar as those are reasonable expectations pursuant to his kind of creature; we want to know how he got that way. Or better yet....how he didn’t.
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OK. So if we were just discussing a synonym for "knowing being" (in the ordinary sense of human beings as distinguished from rocks or trees, say) then there would be no philosophical issue. But the problem is that it also brings with it the Cartesian sense of subject/object, internal/external, rational/empirical and so on.
But Aristotle doesn’t seem to differentiate “knowing being” from plain ol’ objects, in that he treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates. Re: the same, e.g., category “substance” of things being the same “substance” of soul, along with “movement” and “essence”. So there wouldn’t be a philosophical issue under those conditions. Problem is, we have the capacity to ask why we are actually NOT exactly like all other objects, which is the issue Descartes brought to the table....
“....The absolute distinction of mind and body is, besides, confirmed in this Second Meditation, by showing that we cannot conceive body unless as divisible; while, on the other hand, mind cannot be conceived unless as indivisible....”(2)
....and is best exemplified in Kant....
“...This relation, then, does not exist because I accompany every representation with consciousness, but because I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations....”(3)
....where “this relation” is intended, within the context of the entire section therein, as the absolute and altogether necessary distinction between the subject (conscious that) and object (conscious of), which is the ground of the difference between us and other objects. In effect, Aristotle denies a distinction, Descartes warrants the distinction, Kant identifies the distinction.
Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. (...) Alice sees more because she is rational.
Do you see the contradiction? If there is no observational/rational divide, how does Alice see more than she merely observes?
It’s not difficult, actually. The proposition “Bob is running in a race” is a synthetic judgement, insofar as the conception of running and racing does not contain the conception of winning, for, as you have already noted, the race may not end or all the racers may be disqualified, ad infinitum. Therefore, there absolutely is an observational/rational divide, as soon as it is recognized that additional conceptions are required for additional understandings of any given empirical occasion. In order to understand winning, one must have already understood the race to be over. Therefore, the former is conditioned by the latter, which is an a priori rational judgement of an empirical occassion.
Think of it this way: in principle you cannot get to 10, when all you have is a 4 on one hand and a 6 on the other, with nothing else given whatsoever.
That is what I mean by holistic. Instead of a dualistic "physical" seeing + "transcendent" rationality, it's instead just a richer form of seeing.
Which I understand, but at the same time consider to be a categorical error, in that a richer form of seeing is better known as understanding. And understanding is certainly not seeing in any sense, regardless of how convention wishes upon us the less philosophically taxing.
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So concepts have a natural grounding in language use. Which is to say, we have the concept of snow when we are able to employ the word "snow" (or "schnee").
Yes, but that natural ground is properly called understanding, in which the conception is already given. I understand what you mean when you pick up a handful of schnee because I already know what snow is, and you are showing me exactly the same thing in your hand. But I don’t understand schnee because of the word “schnee”; I understand it from the extant conception that schnee represents.
I would rather think language use has its natural ground in the commonality of conceptions. Conceptions are always antecedent to talk of them. Right? I mean......how can we talk of that which we have not yet conceived?
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I think we start with the particulars that we ordinarily observe. We develop rules and processes as we go along. If we discover a wrong claim, we fix it and move on.
The practical approach is not apodeictic (it's instead provisional), but neither is it arbitrary.
Yep. No objections there. There are, however, things that are not provisional, that are apodeictic. Because there are two of those kinds of knowing things, the provisional and the certain.....how do we assure ourselves we aren’t confusing one of them for the other? If the answer to that is to start over, first we have to realize a manifest false knowledge, then we have to determine where to start over from. Then we have to determine why starting over from here is more or better justified then starting over from there. How do we stop this potential infinite regress? Because we are certain we know some things, the infinite regress must have its termination.
In addition, you said the observational approach is provisional, which is irrefutably correct given the principle of induction for empirical conditions, then it follows that the apodeictic cannot be empirical given the principle of contradiction, re: that which is provisional cannot be at the same time be certain.
That which is not empirical is necessarily rational or transcendent. That which is transcendent can have no empirical proofs, but that which is rational, may be susceptible to empirical proofs, depending on its content.
The empirical/rational duality is inescapable with respect to the human cognitive system.
(1) On The Soul, I,4 in Smith, Oxford, 1931
(2) Meditations, Synopsis, in Veitch, St. Andrews, ca. 1854 (MIT, 1901)
(3) CPR B133 in Kemp Smith, 1929
“...the technical trick of conducting our thinking in auditory word-images, instead of spoken words, does indeed secure secrecy for our thinking…”(1).......
— Mww
Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation.
I am not aware of any natural investigation, or, which is the same thing, investigation using natural means, that has any chance of showing our private thinking. That our experimental equipment cannot show the word-images used for our thought, and our word-images are never given in terms of elementary particles, suggests natural investigation is very far removed from internal privacy.
I suppose philosophy is a natural investigation, and our private thinking is certain open to that. As long as we expect no empirical proofs from such philosophy, we should be ok.
The ghost only makes an appearance when that privacy is separated out from the natural world (whether in a transcendent realm per Plato or in a substantial mind per Descartes).
Cool. So I don’t have to worry about it; I make no attempt to isolate my private thinking from the natural world. I understand there are, or at least were, a multitude of those holding with subjectivity as sufficient causality for the world. I say...a viral POX on them!!!
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So as I see it, that would be shoehorning what is observed into what is theorized - in effect, it's the template or mold. That is, if one defines what thought or rationality is up front and in an idealized/transcendent sense, then that frames the way that everything else is understood.
That would be the case, except that’s not quite the system I advocate. I start with the observed up front, then theorize to an end in which the observed is understood. The theory includes definitions of thought and rationality and all that, but it isn’t up front. It isn’t the starting point. If anything, I’d be shoehorning the theory between the observation and its end. Still, the theory would be a template, I’ll give you that, and it certainly attempts to frame everything in relation to the observation itself, and at the same time serves as warrant for property dualism, not as a consequence, but as a necessary antecedent condition.
Reply to Mww We know from experience that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time. Although even that fact is conceptually and/or linguistically mediated. For example you might say that we could have a configuration of particles, a configuration of cells and a human being all in the same place at the same time. Of course those can also be said to be different descriptions of the one thing.
We know from experience that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time.
Actually, all I know from experience, is that if I try to put some A and some B in the same place at the same time, either A will displace B or B will displace A. The apodeictic certainty of an intrinsic impossibility, within the existential confines of the induction principle, such that no A and no B can ever be in the same place at the same time, is only given a priori, hence sans linguistic appeal.
I grant conceptual appeal, or mediation if you wish, for human thought is impossible without it, even if such conceptual appeal is merely to the pure categories. I don’t need appeal to the conception of particular objects for the conception of a supposed universal principle, even if I do need appeal to particular conceptions to prove it.
Harry HinduFebruary 12, 2020 at 13:00#3817250 likes
If Alice says, "My tooth hurts" (first-person) and Bob says, "Alice's tooth hurts" (third-person), then both are describing exactly the same thing - Alice's toothache. However neither Alice's nor Bob's description of her pain is the pain itself.
Is Bob really speaking in the "third-person"? Isn't Bob speaking from his own perspective ("Alice" instead of "I" as having the toothache)? Is Bob talking about his perspective or about Alice's tooth? Is Bob and Alice's perspectives an objective state of affairs (they are real and exist in the world) that we can talk about just like we can talk about apples and trees? Both Alice and Bob are saying the same thing (objective) "subjectively". How about the "subjective" experience of hearing the sounds from Alice's mouth, "My tooth hurts."?
How can Bob acquire objective information subjectively?
Does "Alice's tooth hurts" exhaust the pain Alice feels? If we know that Alice's tooth hurts, what new information would the experience of the pain Alice experiences provide someone else about Alice's state that Alice couldn't just state with words?
When Alice falls asleep does her tooth still hurt? Why or why not? Where does the pain go if the problem is still there and we can predict that Alice will experience her tooth hurting when she wakes up?
Harry HinduFebruary 12, 2020 at 13:04#3817260 likes
The problem isn't trying to think how mind can arise from matter. The problem is thinking of the world as two different things - matter and mind. Everything is information. There is no need to explain how information arises from information. If you think that matter is something that exists and is directly opposed to mind and it's nature, then that is the problem. In all of these explanations, I have yet to see anyone explain how two opposing properties - matter and mind - interact.
The apodeictic certainty of an intrinsic impossibility, within the existential confines of the induction principle, such that no A and no B can ever be in the same place at the same time, is only given a priori, hence sans linguistic appeal.
But what if space were "layered" such that two or more things could be superimposed over one another at the same place and time. That would not seem to be a priori impossible, only impossible in the kind of space and time which we experience and understand.
So, I take your point that this intuition of the impossibility of two things being in the same place at the same time could be independent of language, but I would argue that it is a habit of thought developed a posteriori from experience, no given a priori.
We both know how easy it is to fulfill our possibilities merely from our imagination. Reminds me of my all time favorite truism:
“....I can think what I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself...”
(footnote Bxxvii)
Thus, if space is layered, it contradicts the standing hypothesis of cosmic isomorphism, and all standing empirical science lands in the circular file.
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habit of thought developed a posteriori from experience, not given a priori.
How Hume-ian of you!! Nothing wrong with that, don’t get me wrong; it does seem that way to us nowadays, because everybody comes by that knowledge by being taught the principle, rather than originating it for themselves. But somebody, somewhere, got the ball rolling, which serves as proof of the possibility of a priori cognitions. And proved Hume wrong.
Compromise: mediation by linguistic appeal upon the condition of being taught; mediation by conceptual appeal alone, absent language appeal, upon the condition of original thought.
Ok, so everything is information. What does that do for us? What are we to do with that information? Is it sufficient from the fact everything is information, that no metaphysical arguments remain?
Thus, if space is layered, it contradicts the standing hypothesis of cosmic isomorphism, and all standing empirical science lands in the circular file.
My point was more that space could have been layered, and that our so-called a priori intuitions are based on prior experience. In other words, they would different if we happened to be experiencing a layered world.
But somebody, somewhere, got the ball rolling, which serves as proof of the possibility of a priori cognitions.
Someone first made explicit what we all know from experience. If that is all there is to "a priori cognition", then I would agree. But I would tend to call it an a posteriori cognition, because it relies on experience and on the kind of experience, that is it relies on what is experienced.
Compromise: mediation by linguistic appeal upon the condition of being taught; mediation by conceptual appeal alone, absent language appeal, upon the condition of original thought.
I am not sure what you mean by "original thought". If you mean merely that a thought is original if it is the first occurrence of that thought, then I agree. But if you are suggesting some unfathomable inspiration due to the nature of a transcendental ego or something like that, then no.
Yes, but what is the mind? According to science the mind is a function of the brain; so we are back to physical investigations in order to understand anything definite about the mind.
I agree that it's useful in some contexts to think of the mind as a function of the brain. At the same time, note that you are arguing this point in language, in the mental realm. I've been stressing that the linguistic realm is a social realm. Let us consider sociology and political science. And then of course psychology explicitly deals with consciousness in its own right (excepting behaviorists who attempt a fascinating kind of ideological purity.)
I agree that, in the context of so-called "folk" understandings of the mind, the physical is "defined in the negative" or more accurately as derivative of the mind; insofar as it is defined as "what can be sensed and measured" and it is understood under that paradigm that it is always a mind which measures. But we can equally say that it is the body/brain which measures; that it is something physical which measures something physical, and there is no contradiction in that. If it were really something non-physical doing the measuring then that would be dualism.
Roughly I think we agree that the physical is category of especially uncontroversial phenomena, if we forget how difficult modern science is. It takes years of training to understand it, so most people just trust those associated with technology they can't deny. (No one has seen a quark. If memory serves, their discoverer/inventor was an instrumentalist about them at first but slow became more of a realist as the instrument performed well.)
We can say that the body/brain measures, but this seems like a contortion in the name of an unnecessary physicalism. I'm questioning the project of declaring 'X is what is really there.' I do this from a position of a (necessarily) vague structural holism. I'm not against reductionism in particular contexts, but I think metaphysical reductionism doesn't serve much of a purpose now. Except maybe as a cultural marker. I'm in the awkward position of being pro-science and anti-woo and at the same time finding anti-realist arguments (as presented, for instance, in A Thing of This World) convincing.
The idea seems to be that physics is a kind of root or ground science, and it's not an absurd idea. But physics is a historical socio-linguistic practice, an evolved system of technology ( including techniques of theory-editing and calculation) While the success of physics tempts philosophers toward a monism of the physical, physics itself is 'non-physical.' It's a realm of ghosts like 'energy' and 'force' that command our respect. Its intelligibility depends on a life-world that exceeds and includes it as one human practice among others in a complicated system. One can say that society is made of the 'physical,' but one can equally emphasize that 'physical' is one sign among others within a social system. We don't need to promote one explanatory practice to a position of ontological authority --thought perhaps 'philosophy' points better than 'physics' to our itch and attempt to do so.
On science: my approach is a substitute for falsifiability, which sounds good at first. But one can always tweak the structure as a whole or doubt the experiment. That's why I suggest understanding science as technology works independently of one's belief in it. This excludes religion, which works only if one believes in it. It also focuses on power, which IMV more accurately captures the prestige of science as 'magic' that actually works and allows me to post this message and communicate almost instantly to many potential if not actual readers.
I agree that the emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual is a relatively modern phenomenon, and as such it is a public, socially mediated phenomenon. But there is also no purely rational justification for any institution's right to enforce, or even coerce, individual's beliefs and allegiances when it comes to matters of faith.
I agree. At the same time I'd include the notion of the 'purely rational' as itself quasi-spiritual.
The problem isn't trying to think how mind can arise from matter. The problem is thinking of the world as two different things - matter and mind. Everything is information. There is no need to explain how information arises from information. If you think that matter is something that exists and is directly opposed to mind and it's nature, then that is the problem. In all of these explanations, I have yet to see anyone explain how two opposing properties - matter and mind - interact.
I agree with your critique of strict dualism. I suggest that some philosophers have tried to transform a casual, loose distinction into a sharp, absolute distinction. If I dream that a lion is chasing me, that is 'mind' for practical reasons. Once I wake up, I don't need to organize my life to defend against lions. But the cancer diagnosed as the doctor's office is 'matter' because it's (practically speaking) killing me whether I am thinking of it or not.
The problems arise when we understand this (and other distinctions) as more than just historically evolved 'instruments.'
The 'information' approach is still a little vague. If you could define what you mean by it, that would help me. If it's the stuff of information theory, then your theory sounds like a mathematical ontology.
Harry HinduFebruary 14, 2020 at 13:23#3826090 likes
Ok, so everything is information. What does that do for us? What are we to do with that information? Is it sufficient from the fact everything is information, that no metaphysical arguments remain?
What does saying everything is "matter", or everything is "mind" do for us? It gives us a name to use to refer to the substance of reality so that we may communicate the idea of the substance of reality. It solves the problems of dualism - primarily the problem where dualists are unable to answer the question of how matter and mind interact.
To say that everything is "matter" is to say that consciousness is just an arrangement of matter, but there seems to be a difference in what matter is (at least the way we perceive matter) and what mind is. How do we really know what matter is like independent of perceiving it? For example, we perceive matter as solid, but are told by scientists that it is mostly empty space.
To say that everything is "mind" is to engage in anthropomorphic projections. Saying that reality is "mind-like" is a little better, but still hints at anthropomorphism. "Information" seems to be a better term to use to refer to the substance of reality.
The 'information' approach is still a little vague. If you could define what you mean by it, that would help me. If it's the stuff of information theory, then your theory sounds like a mathematical ontology.
I'm talking about your mind - it's substance and arrangement. Your mind is an arrangement of information. Now, how does matter (if matter is not an arrangement of information, but of atoms) interact with that?
Irrespective of dualism, it isn't clear in any case what is meant by physical interaction, due to conflicting opinions as to the metaphysics and existence of causality. If one goes so far as to deny the literal existence of counterfactuals then interaction isn't even a substantive concept. Therefore ontological dualism and more generally, ontological pluralism, don't necessarily imply interaction problems, but only that different descriptions of the world cannot be inter-translated.
If you mean merely that a thought is original if it is the first occurrence of that thought, then I agree.
Yes, and from which is given, that because circumferences and diameters were already objects of experience, the relationship between them being pi does not immediately follow from them alone.
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some unfathomable inspiration due to the nature of a transcendental ego or something like that
Nahhh....not going there. The transcendental ego doesn’t have a nature and it doesn’t inspire. It is merely the means to identify consciousness.....make the case that we are in possession of the means to even cognize it. You are quite correct, and even more metaphysically astute, in recognizing the transcendental ego gives no manifold of representations, which makes explicit no content of thought is at all possible from it.
I agree. At the same time I'd include the notion of the 'purely rational' as itself quasi-spiritual.
You could say the notion is quasi-spiritual; but the salient point is that only the purely rational is (in principle at least) free of prejudice or bias. And to be free of prejudice and bias in dealing with other humans would seem to be the highest ideal commonly aspired to cross-culturally.
Yes, and from which is given, that because circumferences and diameters were already objects of experience, the relationship between them being pi does not immediately follow from them alone.
That's true.It seems to follow from their nature coupled with the nature of our relationship with them, and also, obviously, the general nature of us humans.
Does anybody these days still think everything is matter or everything is mind? Doesn’t seem all that logical to me. That is not to say dualists don’t still walk the Earth, but I rather think they are of the mind and matter kind, not one or the other.
And the metaphysician is at no more loss to explain the interaction between mind and matter than the hard scientist, so as long as they are equal in their ignorance, no harm is done in theorizing about it. Which has been done for millennia, and even if nothing substantial has come from it, nothing particularly detrimental has either.
Is there a reference-able standing theory in support of the notion that information is everything?
You could say the notion is quasi-spiritual; but the salient point is that only the purely rational is (in principle at least) is free of prejudice or bias. And to be free of prejudice and bias in dealing with other humans would seem to be the highest ideal commonly aspired to cross-culturally.
To me the 'purely rational' just is the cross-cultural. This is the God's eye perspective, contingently (and accurately, perhaps) associated with Western philosophy and science. This is the 'transcendental pretense.' This is humanism. Husserl wrote some powerful passages on this.
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html
I quote a passage that connects more with our mind and matter discussion, but the first part of the essay discusses the birth of what I call the transcendental pretense (God's eye view or idealized objective or transcultural view.) The 'transcultural' perspective is (strangely) a particular kind of culture, a piece that would dominate the whole.
[quote=Husserl]
How, then, did the intoxicating success of this discovery of physical infinity affect the scientific mastery of the realm of spirit? In the focus on the environing world, a constantly objective attitude, everything spiritual appeared to be based on physical corporeality. Thus an application of the mode of thought proper to natural science was obvious. For this reason we already find in the early stages Democritean materialism and determinism.47 However, the greatest minds recoiled from this and also from any newer style of psychophysics (Psychophysik). Since Socrates, man is made thematic precisely as human, man with his spiritual life in society. Man retains an orientation to the objective world, but with the advent of Plato and Aristotle this world becomes the great theme of investigations. At this point a remarkable cleavage makes itself felt: the human belongs to the universe of objective facts, but as persons, as egos, men have goals, aims. They have norms for tradition, truth norms - eternal norms. Though the development proceeded haltingly in ancient times, still it was not lost. Let us make the leap to so-called 'modern' times. With glowing enthusiasm the infinite task of a mathematical knowledge of nature and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinary successes of natural knowledge are now to be extended to knowledge of the spirit. Reason had proved its power in nature. 'As the sun is one all-illuminating and warming sun, so too is reason one' (Descartes).48 The method of natural science must also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spirit is real49 and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. With this the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantly dualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality -only split in two- embraces the one world; the sense of rational explanation is everywhere the same, but in such a way that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in which it can be universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-contained search for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychology or theory of spirit beginning with the ego in psychical self-experience and extending to the other psyche.50 The way that must be traveled is the external one, the path of physics and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, of the common will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like, are romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of concepts that have a proper sense only in the individual personal sphere. Spiritual being is fragmentary. To the question regarding the source of all these difficulties the following answer is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysical interpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naïve one-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of the spirit as reality (Realitat), presumably a real (realen) annex to bodies and having its supposedly spatiotemporal being within nature, is an absurdity.
At this point, however, it is important for our problem of the crisis to show how it is that the 'modern age', that has for centuries been so proud of its successes in theory and practice, has itself finally fallen into a growing dissatisfaction and must even look upon its own situation as distressful. Want has invaded all the sciences, most recently as a want of method. Moreover, the want that grips us Europeans, even though it is not understood, involves very many persons.51
There are all sorts of problems that stem from naïveté, according to which objectivistic science holds what it calls the objective world to be the totality of what is, without paying any attention to the fact that no objective science can do justice to the subjectivity that achieves science. One who has been trained in the natural sciences finds it self-evident that whatever is merely subjective must be eliminated and that the method of natural science, formulated according to a subjective mode of representation, is objectively determined. In the same manner he seeks what is objectively true for the psychic too. By the same token, it is taken for granted that the subjective, eliminated by the physical scientist, is, precisely as psychic, to be investigated in psychology and of course in psychophysical psychology. The investigator of nature, however, does not make it clear to himself that the constant foundation of his admittedly subjective thinking activity is the environing world of life. This latter is constantly presupposed as the basic working area, in which alone his questions and his methodology make sense. Where, at the present time, is that powerful bit of method that leads from the intuitive environing world to the idealizing of mathematics and its interpretation as objective being, subjected to criticism and clarification? Einstein's revolutionary changes concern the formulas wherein idealized and naïvely objectivized nature (physis) is treated. But regarding the question of how formulas or mathematical objectification in general are given a sense based on life and the intuitive environing world, of this we hear nothing. Thus Einstein does nothing to reformulate the space and time in which our actual life takes place.
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Harry HinduFebruary 15, 2020 at 14:35#3830380 likes
Reply to Mww
You're not paying attention to what I'm saying and you post is incoherent. Let's slow down a bit and start from scratch. Quoting Mww
Does anybody these days still think everything is matter or everything is mind? Doesn’t seem all that logical to me. That is not to say dualists don’t still walk the Earth, but I rather think they are of the mind and matter kind, not one or the other.
Anyone who thinks that everything is matter, mind or information would be a monist.
If you think there is both matter and mind, then you'd be a dualist.
If you think that there is both matter and mind, then you have to explain how matter and mind interact.
If you think that that everything is matter or mind, or information then you don't have to explain how different substances interact. The same substance interacts through causation. If you are a dualist, then you have a problem explaining causation.
So, if they are of the mind AND matter kind, then they are a dualist. If they are of the mind OR matter OR information kind, then they are a monist - get it?
And the metaphysician is at no more loss to explain the interaction between mind and matter than the hard scientist, so as long as they are equal in their ignorance, no harm is done in theorizing about it. Which has been done for millennia, and even if nothing substantial has come from it, nothing particularly detrimental has either.
Well sure, if the hard scientist and the metaphysician is a dualist, then they are at a loss to explan the interaction between matter and mind. Ignorance is the harm. Socrates said that knowledge is the greatest good and ignorance is the greatest evil. It basically comes down to whether or not you believe that reality is composed of one substance or more than one. Then you need to explain how different substances interact.
Take visual depth as an example. What is your visual depth composed of - neurons, atoms, mind, information, etc.? When I experience visual depth, I don't experience matter (neurons, atoms). I experience a feeling of being informed. Visual depth informs me of how the world is arranged relative to the location of my eyes.
Does visual depth exist outside of minds? Does a tree have visual depth? Probably not because it doesn't have eyes, but is there a mind-like state-of-affairs that is what it is to be the tree? Or is the tree made of matter and there is no mind-like substance of the tree? If the latter, then how does the matter of the tree interact with the matter of the mind for you to claim that you experience a tree? When we say that we "experience" are we not really saying that we are informed?
Is there a reference-able standing theory in support of the notion that information is everything?
Why do so many people on this forum plead to some authority? Was there a reference-able standing theory when Darwin proposed his theory of natural selection? No, his theory was the basis of a new idea that had no reference-able prior theories. It was based on his own observations of nature over several years. Instead of worrying about what some other human (who is in no better a situation than you or I in figuring out the relationship between mind and matter) thinks, focus on what I am saying.
Thanks for the thoughtful, and interesting, reply. I look forward to them, even while voicing opposition where I find it. As you are welcome to do as well.
Thanks! I'm likewise enjoying the exchange of ideas.
We don’t really care that a human is rational or moral, insofar as those are reasonable expectations pursuant to his kind of creature; we want to know how he got that way. Or better yet....how he didn’t.
So a general account would presumably be a question for the natural sciences. For example, an explanation of the evolution of (rational) human beings from earlier non-rational animals.
But it seems you're instead asking the conditions under which a person is rational, or moral, etc., since a human need not always act in those ways. Which brings us to the Aristotle quote...
“...Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul. The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed...” [On The Soul, I,4 in Smith, Oxford, 1931]
So an initial observation: nous is the Greek term translated as mind there, which is also often translated as intellect. It should be understood to name an activity, not a Cartesian-style mind:
Joe Sachs, in his introduction to Aristotle's On the Soul, 33, says, negating any Cartesian notion of mind in regard to Aristotle, that 'never does Aristotle construe the noun or verb [nous and its verb noein] as naming anything but an activity[;] ... even when Aristotle speaks of the intellect as passive, indeed as pure and unmixed passivity, he is still speaking of a high level of concentrated activity; in no way compatible with any notion of a mind stored with ideas.'
The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind, but of that which has mind, so far as it has it. That is why, when this vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassible. That the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself.
Note the implied sense of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover there.
So going back to the concrete example from earlier, Alice perceiving that Bob won the race was an intelligent act - she perceived something that the sharp-eyed eagle flying overhead was incapable of perceiving. Similarly, a young child at the event may not yet have learned about competitive racing, thus would also not perceive that Bob had won. Nor, as indicated by the quote above, an old man whose eyes or intellectual apprehension had sufficiently declined.
So Alice's understanding depended on her perceptual capabilities and experience. But those specific dependencies can also be abstracted away. Anyone with eyes (or ears) and the intellectual capability could understand what Alice understood - that Bob won the race. In this way, Alice (and anyone else so situated) is thinking of things just as the Unmoved Mover would think them, i.e., as they are, eternally.
But note that there is no transcendent understanding implied here. Just the everyday kind requiring experience and observation. So Aristotle's Unmoved Mover can be understood as immanent in intelligent activity (which human beings exercise, at least sometimes), not transcendent to or separated from it.
[BTW, note that Aristotle's Unmoved Mover and its connection to the active intellect (if any) is an area of active research and controversy in Aristotelian interpretation.]
But Aristotle doesn’t seem to differentiate “knowing being” from plain ol’ objects, in that he treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates. Re: the same, e.g., category “substance” of things being the same “substance” of soul, along with “movement” and “essence”. So there wouldn’t be a philosophical issue under those conditions.
That's right. For Aristotle, a knowing being is an object or being (that can't be predicated of anything else), just as a tree is. They are not duals.
Problem is, we have the capacity to ask why we are actually NOT exactly like all other objects, which is the issue Descartes brought to the table....
“....The absolute distinction of mind and body is, besides, confirmed in this Second Meditation, by showing that we cannot conceive body unless as divisible; while, on the other hand, mind cannot be conceived unless as indivisible....”(2)
....and is best exemplified in Kant....
“...This relation, then, does not exist because I accompany every representation with consciousness, but because I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations....”(3)
....where “this relation” is intended, within the context of the entire section therein, as the absolute and altogether necessary distinction between the subject (conscious that) and object (conscious of), which is the ground of the difference between us and other objects. In effect, Aristotle denies a distinction, Descartes warrants the distinction, Kant identifies the distinction.
Done deal!!!!!
Just to clarify, Aristotle is not denying subjects as conscious objects (say). He's denying that subjects (as conscious objects) and objects are duals. For example, for Aristotle human beings are rational animals. The "rational" predicate distinguishes us from other (non-rational) animals, but we remain a kind of animal. So the way to think of it is that humans are a more developed animal, not a being with an animal aspect and a rational aspect.
So that's how Aristotle and Descartes differ here. And what Kant is following up on.
Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. (...) Alice sees more because she is rational.
— Andrew M
Do you see the contradiction? If there is no observational/rational divide, how does Alice see more than she merely observes?
She doesn't. Separating sensory perception and rationality is an abstract and after-the-fact exercise. Alice didn't observe something and then infer that Bob won the race - she simply observed that he won the race (contra both the Reductionist and Duplicationist who wrongly think the same thing has been observed regardless of whether Bob won or not).
It’s not difficult, actually. The proposition “Bob is running in a race” is a synthetic judgement, insofar as the conception of running and racing does not contain the conception of winning, for, as you have already noted, the race may not end or all the racers may be disqualified, ad infinitum. Therefore, there absolutely is an observational/rational divide, as soon as it is recognized that additional conceptions are required for additional understandings of any given empirical occasion. In order to understand winning, one must have already understood the race to be over. Therefore, the former is conditioned by the latter, which is an a priori rational judgement of an empirical occassion.
Think of it this way: in principle you cannot get to 10, when all you have is a 4 on one hand and a 6 on the other, with nothing else given whatsoever.
Racing does contain the conception of winning - it's the governing purpose. But there may be defeaters, as you note, that would preclude an event from being a race.
Running does not contain a conception of winning. But it contains other conditions whose absence would preclude the event from being a run. Or preclude the scenario from even being an event. And we could similarly go through any term used to describe the scenario and note its conditions (assuming we could do so accurately). But if Alice had to make separate judgments about all of this, as opposed to just observing things (with the option of retroactively changing her representation of things if need be), it would lead to infinite regress.
Which is to say, we can get to 10. But our hypothesis for how we got there might be a work in progress.
That is what I mean by holistic. Instead of a dualistic "physical" seeing + "transcendent" rationality, it's instead just a richer form of seeing.
— Andrew M
Which I understand, but at the same time consider to be a categorical error, in that a richer form of seeing is better known as understanding. And understanding is certainly not seeing in any sense, regardless of how convention wishes upon us the less philosophically taxing.
Language enables us to think about and understand things that we haven't directly seen. But language use itself is an acquired skill that depends on sensory perception and practical experience. There's no view from nowhere, so to speak.
Yes, but that natural ground is properly called understanding, in which the conception is already given. I understand what you mean when you pick up a handful of schnee because I already know what snow is, and you are showing me exactly the same thing in your hand. But I don’t understand schnee because of the word “schnee”; I understand it from the extant conception that schnee represents.
I would rather think language use has its natural ground in the commonality of conceptions. Conceptions are always antecedent to talk of them. Right? I mean......how can we talk of that which we have not yet conceived?
People don't always know what they're talking about. But when they do, it's normally the thing (snow) that is being talked about, not the concept (of snow). Per the anti-Duplicationist theme, a concept isn't separate from talk of the thing, although we can distinguish them in an abstract sense. Put differently, to be able to talk competently about snow just is to have the concept of snow.
The practical approach is not apodeictic (it's instead provisional), but neither is it arbitrary.
— Andrew M
Yep. No objections there. There are, however, things that are not provisional, that are apodeictic.
What would some examples be?
As far as I can tell, the apodeictic are formalisms (from math or logic, say) that we apply in specific circumstances. But whether they usefully apply or not in a given circumstance is a contingent matter.
It seems to me that what matters is not that things are apodeictic, but that they are applicable to the problems at hand.
Because there are two of those kinds of knowing things, the provisional and the certain.....how do we assure ourselves we aren’t confusing one of them for the other? If the answer to that is to start over, first we have to realize a manifest false knowledge, then we have to determine where to start over from. Then we have to determine why starting over from here is more or better justified then starting over from there. How do we stop this potential infinite regress? Because we are certain we know some things, the infinite regress must have its termination.
In addition, you said the observational approach is provisional, which is irrefutably correct given the principle of induction for empirical conditions, then it follows that the apodeictic cannot be empirical given the principle of contradiction, re: that which is provisional cannot be at the same time be certain.
That which is not empirical is necessarily rational or transcendent. That which is transcendent can have no empirical proofs, but that which is rational, may be susceptible to empirical proofs, depending on its content.
The empirical/rational duality is inescapable with respect to the human cognitive system.
As I see it, things we might call certain are themselves empirical. Even the law of non-contradiction had to be discovered/posited and used before becoming conventional (and it still is disputed in some applications, such as with paraconsistent logics, so the arguments for and against are still being made).
Also I'm not clear on why there would be an infinite regress. As I see it, we make provisional claims and hypotheses (which can include formal specifications). If there is a mismatch between hypothesis and experiment, then we have learnt something new which then feeds back into our hypotheses and experiments.
Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation.
— Andrew M
I am not aware of any natural investigation, or, which is the same thing, investigation using natural means, that has any chance of showing our private thinking. That our experimental equipment cannot show the word-images used for our thought, and our word-images are never given in terms of elementary particles, suggests natural investigation is very far removed from internal privacy.
I suppose philosophy is a natural investigation, and our private thinking is certain open to that. As long as we expect no empirical proofs from such philosophy, we should be ok.
Well we can always ask a person what they're thinking if we need to. That seems a natural approach. But we don't have to have to regard their reports as certain. People can sometimes lie, be mistaken, be inarticulate, confused or delusional, exaggerate, etc. And we can test these things.
The ghost only makes an appearance when that privacy is separated out from the natural world (whether in a transcendent realm per Plato or in a substantial mind per Descartes).
— Andrew M
Cool. So I don’t have to worry about it; I make no attempt to isolate my private thinking from the natural world. I understand there are, or at least were, a multitude of those holding with subjectivity as sufficient causality for the world. I say...a viral POX on them!!!
What is your conclusion then: there is no hard problem, there is no qualia, or what?
My proposal is that meanings are behaviors or ways of doing things. We don't need the qualia/sensations to mean. The qualia/sensations are experienced and expressed, not said. But that does not solve the object-subject relationship. It's just about relating my feelings or senses to what I do. And so I become meaningful. But I don't dissolve my problem of the relationship of my consciousness with what I signify and the world. I just transfer it to the problem of meaning.
Note: if you start with Derrida, I'm out. He's a words imbrogiatore.
But it seems you're instead asking the conditions under which a person is rational, or moral, etc., since a human need not always act in those ways.
I rather think rationality and morality are the two outstanding hallmarks of the human animal, or, the two conditions under which animals in general are reducible to the human animal. From here, however a human acts always presupposes the condition under which such act is given. In other words, because one is human, he is necessarily rational and moral, the manifestations of it being given merely from the subjectivity of the individual. It is clear from that, that irrational or immoral is nothing but a relative judgement between agent and observer of the agent. So, yes and no....I ask after the principles underlaying the executive authority these human conditions enable, but not why a human acts as he does, for a valid logical theory of the former sufficiently explains the latter.
“...It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks and ...” [On The Soul, I,4 in Smith, Oxford, 1931]
With a less antiquated substitution, in that man does this with his reason, it can still be better to avoid saying reason pities or learns or thinks, but still leaves unexplained how a man does his pitying or learning or thinking, as manifest in his rationality and morality, by means of his reason. It would seem agency is going to have to be assigned somewhere in a dedicated system, whether in soul or reason, and it seems it will necessarily either be an active faculty in itself, re: personality, or at least ground the validity of positing the notion of one, re: understanding, in order to give the very necessary human conditions we started with, any real meaning.
——————
nous is the Greek term translated as mind there, which is also often translated as intellect. It should be understood to name an activity, not a Cartesian-style mind:
The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed...” [On The Soul, I,4 in Smith, Oxford, 1931]
So here we have two things you’ve denied: assigning agency to a faculty, and using Aristotle to refute the Cartesian mind. In the first, correct me if I’m wrong, but you objected to my assertion that understanding is the named thinking faculty, yet here you seem to grant that the intellect names a mental activity. So either intellect is not a faculty or thinking is not an activity. And in the second, Aristotle himself asserts mind as substance, just as Descartes. So either Descartes is talking about mind as indivisible matter (which he isn’t) or they are employing the conception of substance differently. But substance is fundamental for both, Aristotle as a category, Descartes as a continuance, hence refutation, of Aristotle’s final cause.
Besides, it is really confusing: mind (intellect) implanted within the soul makes the soul of higher rank in the mental echelon, but it has already been said it is better not to let soul do anything important in the human animal. All this just doesn’t work at all for me, which is why I favor a metaphysics which attributes to man that which Aristotle doesn't develop for him, and that which Descartes develops, but seriously misfigures.
———————
Me: But Aristotle doesn’t seem to differentiate “knowing being” from plain ol’ objects, in that he treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates.
You: That's right. For Aristotle, a knowing being is an object or being (that can't be predicated of anything else), just as a tree is. They are not duals. Just to clarify, Aristotle is not denying subjects as conscious objects (say). He's denying that subjects (as conscious objects) and objects are duals.
Subjects as conscious objects.....
I can only get to subject as conscious object if I think an object that is then the subject of my thought. That of which I think is the subject of my thought. And the subject of which I am consciously thinking is the object I’m thinking about. Apparently, the thing of my perception is both conscious object and extant object, one mental in my head and the very same as physical in the world. If this is the case, then optical illusions are necessarily impossible, yet they are not. An irreconcilable contradiction. So...subjects as conscious objects must have some other meaning that has escaped me.
Subjects (as conscious objects).......
I suppose this to mean the current notion of knowing being, similar to the Descartes’ ”cogito”, refined by the Kantian “unity of apperception” which is represented by the equivalent of Descartes’ ”cogito”, re: the thinking subject.
Can’t be predicated of anything else......
As in the proposition, “this object is a tree”, tree cannot be a predicate of anything but object? So “this river is a tree” is false, “this dump truck is a tree” is false.....like that? OK, I can live with that. But “this pine is a tree”, “this maple is a tree”....are not false propositions, even if tree is the predicate of subjects that is not “object”. So how do we get from a universal propositional subject (“object”) to particular propositional subjects (“river”, dump truck”, “pine”, “oak”) such that “tree” can be a valid predicate of all of them? Well, ok, fine. Aristotle treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates: all objects are substance, all objects are extended....so “river”, “dump truck”, “pine”, “oak” are equal as subjects in a proposition, to which tree cannot be predicate of anything but them all alike, and then of course, with the further conceptual additions given from experience, we know some propositional subjects, re” “river”, etc., make the proposition false, while maintaining the non-dualism of tree and river both being conscious objects.
A knowing being is an object or being that cannot be predicated of anything else.......
Putting all these together, I get that the knowing being can be a subject (as conscious object), cannot be predicated of anything else, and is not in itself a dual.
“....The thought, "These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me," is accordingly just the same as, "I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them"; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious. Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuitions, as given a priori, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedes a priori all determinate thought. But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves, nor can it be, as it were, borrowed from them and taken up into the understanding by perception, but it is on the contrary an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of conjoining a priori and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition...”
(1787, B134-5)
All that being said, it doesn’t make much sense to affiliate the thinking subject with subject (as conscious object), because we, as everyday, individual, conscious humans, don’t have a notion of ourselves as an object of which we are conscious. When we think, that’s all we’re doing, meaning we don’t associate the thinking immediately with the thinker. We only do that in a post hoc discussion about what we’re doing when we think. Thus, we see it is quite reasonable to distinguish the thinking subject from the thought object: we think about something, but it isn’t ourselves, so it absolutely must be something not ourselves, which is the same as the object of our thinking. This also shows that Aristotle’s treating the thinking subject as an object, isn’t sufficient to explain the human system.
And....added bonus.....we are now capable of articulating “....(rather that) it is the man who does this with his soul...”, again, substituting reason for soul.
Disclaimer: I don’t claim intimate knowledge of Aristotle, so......patience?
Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. Alice sees more because she is rational.
— Andrew M
how does Alice see more than she merely observes?
— Mww
She doesn't. Separating sensory perception and rationality is an abstract and after-the-fact exercise.
My point was that Alice doesn’t see anything because she is rational; she sees because she has eyes. If Alice sees more because she is rational, what she sees must be other than what she observes. But then you say she doesn’t see more than she observes, which begs the question.....what more can she see just but being rational? And even if there is no empirical/rational divide, what was Ryle’s point?
Alice didn't observe something and then infer that Bob won the race - she simply observed that he won the race (contra both the Reductionist and Duplicationist who wrongly think the same thing has been observed regardless of whether Bob won or not).
So is this the point Ryle is making? That Alice makes no inference connecting winning and running? Does anyone actually hold with that? Ya know, doncha.......if Alice makes no inference, that is the same as denying Alice her rational capacity for judgement? Does anyone think Alice makes no judgements?
——————-
Racing does contain the conception of winning - it's the governing purpose.
I’d go with competition as the governing purpose, hence the conception of performance is contained in the conception of racing. In this way, one could, say, race against a clock. And in the case of a personal best, there isn’t a winner, while there is still performance.
Agreed. And whether one is running solo along the side of the road, or one happens to be running in an organized event along with other like-runners......he’s only putting one foot in front of the other.
Which is to say, we can get to 10. But our hypothesis for how we got there might be a work in progress.
Sure...a work in progress, which is what synthetic propositions indicate, but not a hypothetical. We can get to 10 by simply counting, or, we can get to ten by synthesizing the 4 and the 6 we started with. The point being, it is the same rational procedure as racing/winning. Just as 10 is not contained by a 4 and a 6, winning is not contained by racing.
———————
Put differently, to be able to talk competently about snow just is to have the concept of snow.
Agreed. Another way to put it is, the definition satisfies the validity of the conception. To talk competently about snow presupposes the conception of it, and the manner in which understanding thinks a particular phenomenon, is its definition from which the conception follows as a judgement. In this way, no matter the language, the conceptions are all identical across the human rational spectrum.
———————
Well we can always ask a person what they're thinking if we need to. That seems a natural approach. But we don't have to have to regard their reports as certain. People can sometimes lie, be mistaken, be inarticulate, confused or delusional, exaggerate, etc. And we can test these things.
Agreed, but the only way to test is to already know what the differences in the test results mean, which presupposes a set of criteria. If we want our criteria to set some standard, we need some certainty from it. Because there is no apodeictic certainty under empirical conditions, we are left with what form certainty would have if we could find it in the empirical world. And where does the form of certainty live? In pure logic. And where does pure logic live? In human judgement, which is itself the conclusion of reason.
——————-
As I see it, things we might call certain are themselves empirical.
Maybe things we might call certain are empirical, but if I’m interested in that which I know to be universally and necessarily certain, I won’t look to things that might be called certain.
There are, however, things that are not provisional, that are apodeictic.
— Mww
What would some examples be?
Different spaces are coexistent but never successive; different times are successive but never coexistent; space and time are not conceptions, but are intuitions; existence has no object; there are no empirical proofs via induction; every change must have a cause; human error is in judgement of sensations, never in the receptivity of them; moral judgement presupposes an autonomous will.
——————-
We agree philosophy is a great mental exercise, and we agree philosophy is generally as diverse as those who partake in it. I’m withholding agreement with respect to Ryle, analytic arguments and every language philosopher ever born or ever to be born.
In other words, because one is human, he is necessarily rational and moral, the manifestations of it being given merely from the subjectivity of the individual. It is clear from that, that irrational or immoral is nothing but a relative judgement between agent and observer of the agent.
That doesn't seem right. While human beings have a general capacity to be rational and moral, people can fail to act rationally or morally in some situations, even by their own standards.
So here we have two things you’ve denied: assigning agency to a faculty, and using Aristotle to refute the Cartesian mind. In the first, correct me if I’m wrong, but you objected to my assertion that understanding is the named thinking faculty, yet here you seem to grant that the intellect names a mental activity. So either intellect is not a faculty or thinking is not an activity.
Thinking is an activity. But, as with any activity, it is the human being that thinks, not a faculty.
And in the second, Aristotle himself asserts mind as substance, just as Descartes. So either Descartes is talking about mind as indivisible matter (which he isn’t) or they are employing the conception of substance differently. But substance is fundamental for both, Aristotle as a category, Descartes as a continuance, hence refutation, of Aristotle’s final cause.
They are employing the conception of substance differently. See below.
Besides, it is really confusing: mind (intellect) implanted within the soul makes the soul of higher rank in the mental echelon, but it has already been said it is better not to let soul do anything important in the human animal.
Part of the interpretive problem is that Aristotle uses language terms for thinking (and related activities) that are distinct from the modern philosophical use of the word "mind". In the context of the passage we're looking at, Aristotle distinguishes between discursive thinking (dianoia which Joe Sachs translates as "thinking things through") and contemplative thinking (noesis). As Sachs puts it:
Joe Sachs - On the Soul:This twofoldness within the meaning of thinking causes an unavoidable confusion, which can be compounded by translations that are not attentive to the difficulty. In particular, the use of the word "mind" can muddle things beyond repair. The idea of mind is an orphan left behind by the Cartesian shift in the conception of body. The mind is a kind of container, isolated and self-enclosed, in which thoughts, desires, and feelings - all the remnants unconnected with extended body - are found. The closest thing to it in classical philosophy is the birdcage in Plato's Theatetus (197A - 200D), but that image is a parody meant to expose the absurdity of considering knowledge a stock of possessions rather than a living activity.
He then goes on to say:
Joe Sachs - On the Soul:The confusion that is not a product of translation has to do with whether there is an intellect at the foundation of the world, as well as an intellect that is part of the soul. Three times Aristotle refers to "what is called intellect". Once this is in relation to the assertion in Plato's Timeaus that there is a soul of the world; Aristotle claims that the functions given there to a world-soul really belong to what is called intellect (407a 4). A second time, it is connected with Anaxagoras's positing of an intellect that rules all things; in this case Aristotle adopts the word and the argument made about it, but applies them to something within our souls (429a 22). The third time, the phrase is equated with the reasoning part of the soul (432b 26).
The twofoldness described above, of discursive and contemplative thinking, is, for Aristotle, inseparable from the distinction between an intellect and an intellect on which the world as a whole is founded. Aristotle never doubts that the discursive intellect that thinks things through belongs to the embodied soul, and decays and dies along with it (408b 25-29). But the discursive intellect is bound up with a contemplative intellect that must be in us but not of us. If it were not somehow in us, our thinking would not be what it is; if it were wholly within us and subject to our limitations, no thinking would be possible at all. This is the claim made in Book III, Chapter 5.
So, for Aristotle, one aspect of the intellect (nous) is thinking things through (dianoia). An example might be solving a jigsaw puzzle. That is an intellectual human activity that involves motion and change. Another aspect of the intellect is contemplation (noesis), which here would be thinking of the jigsaw puzzle as a completed whole. This latter aspect is the governing purpose that isn't tied to this or that contingent person or process. So the first aspect of thinking progresses in time (which Aristotle associates with the human soul or psyche), while the second aspect of thinking is restful and unchanging (which Aristotle associates with the world-soul or divinity). A point to note is that, for Aristotle, this contemplative state is something that humans can achieve at times. Whereas the Unmoved Mover is permanently in this state.
Putting all these together, I get that the knowing being can be a subject (as conscious object), cannot be predicated of anything else, and is not in itself a dual.
Just to clarify, I should have said that a particular, substantial being cannot be predicated of anything else. For example, neither Socrates nor the specific tree I'm currently pointing at. These kinds of beings were the most fundamental for Aristotle, and what he sought to explain.
I think my trying to explain this using subject/object language, given modern philosophical associations, isn't working very well. So I will instead say that both Socrates and the tree are beings. Each are inseparable form/matter composites (per hylomorphism). Now the form of Socrates is very different to the form of a tree. But in neither case should form be equated with mind nor understood in a dualist subject/object sense. Instead the nature of each being should be investigated on its own terms.
But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves, nor can it be, as it were, borrowed from them and taken up into the understanding by perception, but it is on the contrary an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of conjoining a priori and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition...”
(1787, B134-5)
So it seems to me that Kant is doing here just what Aristotle is doing with the Unmoved Mover (and active intellect). However instead of assuming a separate subject and object in a Cartesian sense, Aristotle conceptualizes a universal being that subsumes the beings we perceive (including trees and human beings). So the "conjunction of representations into a conception" describes the universal being and can, in principle, be understood by human beings (per metaphysics). The way to get to this understanding is by abstracting from perception (i.e., the universal is abstracted from the particular).
Alice didn't observe something and then infer that Bob won the race - she simply observed that he won the race (contra both the Reductionist and Duplicationist who wrongly think the same thing has been observed regardless of whether Bob won or not).
— Andrew M
So is this the point Ryle is making? That Alice makes no inference connecting winning and running? Does anyone actually hold with that? Ya know, doncha.......if Alice makes no inference, that is the same as denying Alice her rational capacity for judgement? Does anyone think Alice makes no judgements?
Yes, Alice makes judgments, but an observation need not require a further judgment. With experience, higher-level observations become automatic. It's a bit like memorizing one's times tables. You just give an answer, you don't perform a calculation every time. Similarly Alice sees that Bob wins the race, she doesn't have to think about it.
This also relates back to the twofoldness of thinking that Sachs described earlier (and even Kahneman's fast thinking/slow thinking). Instead of a process in time in which Alice thinks things through to arrive at a conclusion, she simply observes things as they are (at least in this race example). Of course, just as with the times tables recall, Alice's brain is active. But that lower-level brain description is a matter for science, Alice herself is not making an inference, even if we can construct a post hoc chain of inferences ourselves to explain Alice's behavior.
Agreed, but the only way to test is to already know what the differences in the test results mean, which presupposes a set of criteria. If we want our criteria to set some standard, we need some certainty from it. Because there is no apodeictic certainty under empirical conditions, we are left with what form certainty would have if we could find it in the empirical world. And where does the form of certainty live? In pure logic. And where does pure logic live? In human judgement, which is itself the conclusion of reason.
I agree that our tests presuppose a set of criteria. But the test criteria itself might be flawed and need changing. So deciding on test criteria is itself an empirical and experiential endeavor. For Aristotle, logic itself was an empirical matter, the rules for which emerge from our interactions and experiences in the world.
Thanks for your comments regarding apodeictic certainty, understood.
Comments (831)
Historically, this becomes especially significant since Descartes, as you note. In fact a philosopher named a condition which he says characterises a lot of human thought since Descartes, which he described as 'Cartesian anxiety':
Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.
In my analysis this marks the advent of the distinctively modern outlook, formed by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, which sought to sweep away all of the ambiguities and obscurities associated with metaphysics and view the world and its problems solely through the perspective of scientific rationalism. However as various critics of the Enlightenment have long since noted, this too embodies a kind of metaphysics, or rather, attempts to address many of the questions associated with metaphysics through the perspective of naturalism.
Or at least Ockham.
"Idea" is the great interloper, an unnecessary middle man between word and object.
Quoting Subject (grammar)
For example, consider the sentence, "Alice sees Bob". Alice is the subject, sees Bob is the predicate and Bob is the object.
In the early 20th Century, self-awareness about the use of language in philosophy was marked by the linguistic turn and, specifically, ordinary language philosophy.
Quoting Ordinary language philosophy
Chalk me up in the pro subject/object notion column, but I don’t see the world that way.
Performative contradiction? Or do you mean other people generally see the world that way, but not you?
Nahhhhh.....nothing as exotic like that. The notion of subject/object is me thinking as subject in relation to the world as object, not the world as subject/object in itself, which is how I understood the question, re: “see the world that way”.
It's like a "choose your own adventure" book. You fill in the details and then answer that. :-)
Very true.
Quoting tim wood
What's "OP"? Original Post? Anyway, yes when I'm thinking about the world I think this distinction makes sense, and I see why it's been so powerful.
Quoting bongo fury
Hmm, really? That's interesting. Never read Ockham. Where does he touch on this?
Quoting Mww
Very true. I meant it in the former way.
It's hard to see things any other way, I realize...hence why I'm wondering about others' opinions.
I normally think of them as:
Subject: A person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with.
Object: A person or thing to which a specified action or feeling is directed.
In a scenario where Alice sees Bob, Alice is the seeing subject and Bob is the seen object.
In phenomenological terms all ‘objects’, are objects, in the sense that they’re ‘intersubjective’.
I still don’t really understand what is being asked for. I get that there is some kind of stretching for some equivocation between ‘physicalism’ and ‘objectivism’ yet the terms ‘object’ and ‘subject’ are not necessarily just about that - nor primarily about that given that they have linguistic weight to them in terms of grammar and also in terms of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ (regarding reality and evidence). I mention this because scientifically speaking when we talk about being ‘objective’ we mean this in a ‘gradable’ way (gradable antonym) which does help to pull back the veil of of this false, yet convenient and useful, misappropriate antonym.
Have I slayed the dragon my quest? What page number do I turn to next?
"To see things" can imply that one has a distant vantage point on the world, as if one is separated from it, perhaps in some eternal realm. Maybe it's an intellectual space that we inhabit when we take the world apart. It's an inner sanctum where imagination is God.
This seems to be too thin for a philosophical basis. Can you elaborate? Not the specific meaning of "subject/object" (I think we have clarified that part), but how you think that forms the philosophical basis. A philosophical basis would have to be something substantive, non-trivial, something that is both consequential, and that could plausibly be constituted differently and have different consequences.
Cool. I’d add that the subject/object notion isn’t even used in the internal, everyday occupation of the brain. The image of tying a shoe is much more the case than the thought, “I am tying my shoe”. Reason creates the dualism as the means to explain itself internally in thought, or express itself externally in language, the intrinsic circularity of which tends to make reason its own worst enemy, a condition the pure physicalist/naturalist/empiricist exploits, and the speculative philosopher ameliorates.
Humans....what an odd bunch, eh?
But don't we arrive at this insight by way of reason?
The eye can't see itself.
Could be.
I think it’s a distinction without a difference. All subjects are objects.
Again, it seems to me that since Descartes epistemology has become predominant, the "problem of knowledge" -- how we know anything at all, what knowledge is, etc. This view of a conscious being (a subject) which takes in the "objective" world through means of sensibility (the "representations" of Kant) is an underlying assumption in modern science to this day. It barely gets questioned anymore, thus serving as a philosophical basis and a framework for understanding human knowledge, perception, and thus the universe.
Quoting Mww
That's a very interesting point and, incredibly, often overlooked when discussing human action.
Quoting NOS4A2
But not all objects are subjects it would seem, unless you attribute to rocks conscious awareness, which I doubt anyone would.
"Descartes was probably the first to attain the degree of reflection demanded by that fundamental truth [that the world is representation of a subject]; consequently, he made that truth the starting-point of his philosophy, although provisionally only in the form of skeptical doubt. By his taking cogito ergo sum as the only thing certain, and provisionally regarding the existence of the world as problematical, the essential and only correct starting-point, and at the same time the true point of support, of all philosophy was really found. This point, indeed, is essentially and of necessity the subjective, our own consciousness." World as Will and Representation Vol. II, p 4.
I think he's correct, and I think this idea -- as I said originally -- still dominates much of philosophy and science today, especially in epistemology.
Says who? That's a nice list, but you'll rarely find that to be the case in the sciences. The philosophical justifications that many modern scientists make (if pushed, at least in my experience) is from the philosophy of science of maybe 100 years ago or so.
Yes, that's a linguistic distinction. That's not what I was getting at, as I feel I've made clear already.
As I see it, the process of 'objectifying' is specific to the modern outlook. I am of the view that pre-moderns did not instinctively think of the world in the objective terms we now take for granted, because the world was seen in terms of an 'I - you' relationship rather than in terms of things or objects; the Universe was animated by spirit. I think that shift to the objective is a matter of historical conditioning or development of consciousness (a theme which I believe is explored in depth by Owen Barfield.)
This is why the use of the term 'objectivity' as the criterion for what is considered truly existent, is a characteristic of modern thought, generally (i.e. to determine whether something is real, we ask if it is 'objectively real'). To the extent that this sense of the 'I-you' relationship was eliminated, then what remains are individual subjects and individual objects of perception; a stance which would have appeared incoherent from the pre-modern p.o.v. (because, lacking in reason or cause.)
I understand also that this was a theme in Heidegger's philosophy:
Bolds added. I think this 'unconcealment' that he was seeking to illuminate is similar in essence to the Buddhist intuition of 'Tath?t?', thusness or suchness (see this note.)
Quoting NOS4A2
Subjects are called 'beings' for a reason; whereas objects lack being. I think this is a valid ontological distinction but one that is obfuscated in much modern thought. So it is wrong to treat beings as objects, except for technical purposes, such as demographics or epidemiology. (Interesting to note that the airline industry uses the expression 'sob' for those lost in airline crashes, where the term stands for 'souls on board'. )
Do animals "have being" according to you?
A perfect example of the problem: reason thinks it can see itself, knows it makes mistakes, so informs as to how to prevent them. It’s all a mere chimera: we in our very nature are required to use something to express what we do when we think. But when we think qua thought alone, we require nothing of the sort.
So, no, the eye cannot see itself, but the eye still needs to construct an explanation for what it does see.
You lost me here. Objects aren't beings?
The reference to Heidegger (who's fascinating to me) was very relevant indeed. I suggest "Being and Time" but more importantly, and too often ignored, his "Introduction to Metaphysics."
I understand the expression 'sentient beings' to mean creatures endowed with sense. So I would take the expression 'beings' to include all sentient creatures. I don't think it includes trees and other vegetative life-forms. But it is not as if animals 'have' being, but that they are beings, not simply objects. The behaviour of objects can be described solely in terms of physical laws, whereas animals engage in intentional actions. They are, if you like, the manifestation of subject-hood. That's why:
[quote=Thomas Nagel] The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. 1 [/quote]
Quoting Xtrix
It's true I can see other people as 'objects' in a sense. But think about the implications of that. When you refer to other persons, you use personal pronouns. You don't treat them as objects, as 'it' - at least, I hope not! - because you implicitly recognise that they are subjects themselves, and not just objects to be picked up and put down.
Of course, the whole point of materialist theories of mind is that subjects are simply the output of large numbers of objective processes which give rise to the illusion of subjective experience. In other words, denying that there is an essential distinction between objects and subjects, through reducing the latter to the former. But that is the sense in which materialism is de-humanising.
Re Heidegger - I've only picked up bits and pieces. I am loath to study him in depth and detail. But at least he wrote about 'the meaning of Being' and considered the nature of human existence, rather than regarding philosophy as elaborations on evolutionary biology or footnotes to Scientific Method.
No doubt, and is the ground for refutation of Hume’s human action by mere habit, or, which is the same thing, convention. I can tie my shoe via mere image without conscious thought because I already know all there is to know about tying shoes, that is, by habit. But that tells me nothing whatsoever about how I learned to tie my shoe in the first place.
By "being" I'm not talking about "sentient beings." By "beings" I mean to include literally any entity or "thing" whatsoever. This is where the miscommunication is coming from.
Quoting Wayfarer
I can see why. But once you give him enough effort, it's very interesting.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
These seem to contradict each other. What I thought you were talking about was habit, something in which the subject/object distinction (and even consciousness) often plays no role. That's not to reduce all of human behavior to habit, of course. Not sure how it's therefore the grounds for refuting Hume's thesis of human action by habit.
I never knew that about the souls on board. Neat.
Living creatures are objects insofar as they are finite, have a surface, move as one, and so on. I think we should treat humans as objects, not because it objectifies the human, but because it humanizes the object. We’ve already tried applying spirits, minds, souls, and other words; and these figments end up gaining prominence over the object itself, so much so that the objects—human beings—were sometimes destroyed in order to redeem them. So I think we need to learn to value the objectivity of a human being, or else we’re left to apply value through a sort of linguistic trickery.
Yes, exactly.
Quoting I like sushi
So the ordinary language distinctions seem to have been rejected. The thesis seems to involve an amalgamation of Cartesian substance dualism (and perhaps Cartesian certainty) and transcendental idealism. And an as yet unexplained connection with modern science.
Quoting I like sushi
No, you first must venture down the rabbit hole...
It seems you're asking whether others see things differently from Cartesian dualism and/or Kant's transcendental idealism. And, further, that they seem to provide the philosophical basis for modern science.
I do see things differently from that. Per your second claim, I think Descartes, Hume and Kant all left a mark on how science was subsequently practiced. But in modern times, Popper and Kuhn are probably the main influences (and Positivism before that).
But perhaps you have a specific thesis with respect to subject/object that you think is basic to (or assumed by) modern science? Perhaps you could give some examples of how it applies.
Although it may not be a conscious decision, all thought and action implicity assumes the subject-object distinction. I, the subject, think of and do to objects. I think the subject-object paradigm has proven its worth in the vast amount of accumulated knowledge we have in our libraries.
If at all there is something off about it then it must mean that the subject isn't sufficiently detachable from the object in terms which we can roughly speak of as causality. I maybe wrong about this but I believe quantum physics has phenomena that blurs the line between subject and object e.g. the double slit experiment with electrons where the act of observing by a subject changes the outcome of the experiment, the object. However, the question remains whether findings at a quantum level can be extrapolated to the world of humans - mind and body.
Also I recall that some very clever person, whose good name I forgot, once suggested that the universe is trying to understand itself which I assume is via evolving conscious thinking lifeforms like humans and, hopefully, other intelligent life elsewhere; lifeforms capable of actively investigating and discovering the inner workings of the universe. In such terms the universe is both subject and object.
Thematically, self-reflection, when the subject makes an object of itself, has its origins in philosophy. Socrates, the father of western philosophy, famously claimed that the unexamined life is not worth living. I'm sure eastern philosophy too has a similar tradition.
Presumably, philosophy, understanding the self, not only just an individual but humanity as a whole, was the first step in the journey of the universe in understanding itself.
Seems like you and everyone here in this thread is trying to argue for their own objective truth - informing readers how things truly are, and even how things were in your explanation of pre-moderns, for everyone. You're explaining how the world is independent of anyone's beliefs and perceptions.
If everything is subjective then why tell others how things are for you as if it would somehow apply to others?
When talking about pre-moderns are you talking about your history or the history of the world?
Quoting Wayfarer
The only options are de-humanization or anthropomorphism? Maybe it's something in between.
It would only be de-humanizing if you think humans are the only potential subjects. What about other apes, elephants, dolphins or pigs?
Popper and Kuhn are interesting, but themselves presuppose Descartes' ontology.
I have an interest in Husserl ... ‘Crisis’ maybe?
Its associated with sight. If thought reduces to linguistic use, then why do we say "I see" when we understand something? Why not "I hear."? Maybe language was originally mostly visual like sign language.
I was. Except consciousness, which inescapable under any conditions of human action whatsoever, depending on what one thinks consciousness to be, of course.
Tying shoes is somewhat simplistic, granted, but if it is the case that instances of imaging is the modus operandi of the mind when there is no need of a subject/object dualism, the question then arises, what is the origin of those images. Psychologically speaking, it is memory; origin, philosophically speaking, it is a priori pure reason, the very thing Hume denies as having any such power.
The reason this matters, is that habit cannot explain the first learning of what may eventually become habitual. Pure reason, on the other hand, has no problem with it. Again, depending on whether one accepts that there even is such a thing, as opposed to pure naturalistic determinism, or the myriad of relative absurdities in between.
Anyway.....didn’t mean to go so far afield.
A reasonable assumption, yes. Then came drawings, geographical markers, all sorts of visual aids. Generally though, I think conversants engaged in some dialogue has the listener recalling from his own congruent experiences, images relevant to the speaker’s words.
Not too much controversy there, right? Other than giving the rabid solipsist a gigantic soapbox.
It's is because we are visual creatures. Most of our information about the world is provided visually. Our visual field has more distinctions within it than our auditory, gustatory, olfactory and tactile fields do. We tend to think the world is at it looks, not as it sounds or smells. Dogs and dolphins will probably disagree.
I don't think so. I think the issue arises due to a philosophical conflict between dualism and naturalism, an issue that exercised pre-moderns as much as moderns. Descartes' mind/body dualism is one manifestation of that. Plato's ideal Forms (as distinct from the shadowy physical world) is an earlier manifestation of dualism.
Quoting Wayfarer
On a natural view, there is a relational symmetry between subject and object. We can notice that Bob is hit by a falling branch. Or we can notice that a falling branch hit Bob. The subject and object are interchangeable and the details of the kind of referent that Bob and the branch each are is abstracted away. That is useful for scientific modeling where one might want to consider Bob and the branch as abstract natural systems that can be represented (in language) in a myriad of different ways and for different purposes.
Whereas on a dualist view, subject and object are ontologically distinct and relationally asymmetrical. Science can properly describe objects but not subjects, which are beyond it's purview. On that framing, naturalism overreaches, objectifying subjects and purporting to provide "a view from nowhere". But that is to misunderstand naturalism, which does neither of those things.
Substance dualism? On your view, how do Popper and Kuhn presuppose it?
A crisis in philosophy perhaps, not so much in modern science. :-)
Please rephrase. This makes no sense.
Quoting Mww
I'm not sure "pure reason" really explains all habits either.
Because while they may not themselves explicitly refer to the res cogitans or the res extensa, they both discuss knowledge and theory from the subject/object formulation.
I doubt that very much. This conception is so prevalent in the west we take it as part of human nature, but there's no reason to assume it's universal.
Quoting Andrew M
In psychology, particularly in studies of perception. It permeates the philosophy of language (Quine's "Word and Object"), cognitive sciences, etc. This way of talking about the "outside world" of objects and the "inner world" of thoughts, perceptions and emotions is literally everywhere. It'd be hard not to find examples.
Well, I was using your terminology.
Quoting Wayfarer
So for you it is not Berkeley's "To be is to be perceived", but rather 'To be is to perceive'? That would be a very eccentric use of the term; do you have some philosophical justification for using the term in such a strange way; a usage that no other philosopher in the tradition has ( to my knowledge) employed?
... and Aristotle, apparently.
Hence the etymology of "idea" involving "image", as in a photographic trace. (Natural as opposed to conventional.)
And the undeniably fruitful connection of (the notion of empiricism in) philosophy of science to (the notion of empiricism in) developmental psychology. How we learn to read messages from nature.
Still, I see Goodman and Quine as reasserting convention, and rather kicking against...
Quoting Xtrix
E.g., Quine's behaviourism, and Goodman's semiotics-without-the-mentalism.
:up:
Quoting Andrew M
However, there's something that this glosses over: that if Bob is hit by the branch and injured, he's rushed to hospital and cared for, whereas the branch is put out with vegetable waste. Sure, the impact on Bob can in one sense be explained in physical terms - the branch weighed such and such, and fell such a distance - but the impact in terms of 'consequences for Bob's life' cannot.
Quoting Andrew M
And that's why!
Quoting Andrew M
I think it does exactly that. This reaches its highest (or lowest) point in materialist philosophies of mind, which seek to deny the reality of mind altogether, as we've discussed many times (and which is plainly absurd, as far as I'm concerned).
And the point of Nagel's book of that title, is precisely that science attempts to arrive at a perfectly objective point of view through quantification and scientific method, however, that in the actual world, points of view are always those of subjects, so not a 'view from nowhere' at all. I think the view of scientific realism that it arrives at a view of the cosmos as if from no perspective is a falsehood, and is the point of the 'blind spot of science' critique. Science is still a human enterprise, and looks at the cosmos through the human perspective, even if it is highly abstracted and methodologically rigourous.
I do advocate a form of dualism, with the crucial caveat that mind is not something amenable to objective analysis, meaning that it's impossible to characterise objectively. So whereas Cartesian dualism posits two distinct 'substances' (in the 17th c philosophical sense), I think this is an abstraction and simplification, even if one that nevertheless portends something fundamentally true. But the Cartesian attitude then gives rise to the insoluble problem, how can res cogitans affect res extensa if the two are wholly distinct and separate? Which in turn gives rise to the whole 'ghost-in-the-machine' argument. But both 'ghost' and 'machine' are abstractions or intellectual models; organisms are not machines, and the mind is not a ghost. But having developed that model, or is it metaphor, then scientifically-inclined philosophers sought to eliminate the ghost, leaving only the machine, which is just the kind of thing that lends itself to study and improvement.
The way I approach a definition of 'mind' is 'that which grasps meaning'. But mind itself always eludes objective analysis, as it not objectively existent. Indeed it's precisely the mysterious nature of the mind that makes materialists want to deny that it's real! They rail against 'woo woo' but deep down they realise that their own nature is fundamentally mysterious, and this infuriates them.
Quoting Harry Hindu
'Your own objective truth' is an oxymoron.
Quoting Xtrix
But I think that the fact that we can't differentiate "beings" from "things" actually conceals a very profound philosophical truth. A chair is not a being, but a cow is a being. When Heidegger talked of 'forgetfulness of being', was he talking about forgetting his car keys?
Quoting Janus
OK then - objects are not beings.
Beings are capable of perceiving, whereas inanimate objects (minerals, for instance) are not. Is it 'strange and eccentric' to say that?
Quoting Pfhorrest
God is not a God.
I think the common way of putting it would be that some beings are capable of perceiving and some are not.
Is there any good philosophical reason to depart from that common mode of parlance?
Quoting Pfhorrest
This whole issue is tied to that of the process of 'objectification'.
You agree, “Yep, God does not exist.”
“So you’re an atheist too then?” the atheist asks.
“No,” you say, “because unlike an atheist, I believe that ____________.”
Please fill in that blank, with something that no atheist is going to respond to with “But I believe that too.”
There's a book called The Case for God, Karen Armstrong, 2009. It's not a book of religious apologetics, but an essay in the history of ideas. She traces how from the early modern period, Christianity incorporated God into science, through the ideas of Newton, and others, for whom the 'regularity of the heavens bespoke God's handiwork'. But this had the unexpected consequence of more or less reducing what had been previously understood as the 'divine mystery' into simply another hypothesis; one which Simon LaPlace, and many others since, declared they 'have no need of'. But, she argues (at book length, and I can't possibly summarise it), that this omits the crucial element of religious consciousness, which is practical knowledge.
(Review here.)
As it is, 'God' has now been reduced, mainly, to an intellectual abstraction, almost a term of ridicule in secular culture ('incoherent, incredible, even absurd'). It's a consequence of many centuries of history. When much younger, I had the idea that much of this was due to the formation of Christianity itself, which overly emphasized orthodoxy at the expense of attaining insight. This I attributed to the conflict between orthodoxy and gnosticism in the early Church; the upshot was strong emphasis on correct belief - something which wars were fought over for centuries in Europe. And the reaction against this became formative for the Enlightenment - the founding documents of the Royal Society specifically eschewed consideration of any of the metaphysical disputes that were prosecuted by the Churches. But amongst all this sturm und drang, something really fundamental became lost.
(FWIW, I did learn to swim in the abstract. I distinctly remember being in the back seat of the car on the way to the pool, lamenting on how I could never figure out how to do the normal overhand crawl method of proper swimming and could only doggie paddle, thinking about it, picturing myself doing it and trying to understand how the overhand crawl thing was supposed to work, and then having a "Eureka!" moment when it all made sense in my head. We got to the pool, and I dove right in and immediately tried applying that, successfully. A decade or more later, I also figured out the three-beat weave pattern of poi spinning, which had thus far eluded me, in the same way, just thinking through the motions in slow motion in my mind, and then applying them.)
I'm only reiterating what you seem to have said. You avoided answering my questions and cherry-picked my post, so you're not clarifying.
Why? Beings are made of inanimate matter. The only difference is the complexity with which some thing is affected by the environment and then reacts to the environment.
I dont understand why people still resort to pointing to long-dead philosophers claims as if they'd say the same thing knowing what we know today. That's not interesting. What is interesting is that neuroscientists and biologists are beginning to make claims about consciousness where this used to be off limits.
Quoting Xtrix
If its everywhere, it universal. Objects appear in my visual field as an instinctive act - without any intent of objectifying anything. It isnt cultural. It is biological.
I'm not aware of any other culture that doesn't objectify something.
If there is at least one long-dead philosopher who would hold with his claims given what is known today, then if he was interesting then, he would seem to be just as interesting now. Why would such long-dead philosopher give a crap about the claims neuroscientists and biologist are beginning to make, when his philosophy is not affected by them?
Works just as well the other way around. If some guy doesn’t give a crap about what neuroscientists and biologists are beginning to claim, he Is perfectly justified in holding with the same claims long-dead philosophers put forth in their day.
Makes no difference to me personally, as a regular ol’ human being, that one part of my brain communicates with another such that I feel good or bad about something, or whatever else happens behind the curtain between my ears. Actually, I couldn’t possible care any less about it. That a certain neural pathway is triggered by a certain activation potential invokes not the slightest interest in me at all, when it occurs to me it’s time to go check the mailbox.
Just sayin’........
But we can't know if they would say something differently. It would be more interesting to know what current philosophers think.
The fundamentally religious don't give a crap what scientists say either, but they are both talking about the same thing - how the universe and humans came to be. Philosophers of mind and knowledge are talking about the same thing neurologists are talking about so that is the reason they should both concern themselves of what each other are talking about. There must be a reason why you wouldn't because you should probably be knowledgable of what people who study the brain are saying when they can make predictions about what you experience when parts of the brain are abnormal.
Quoting Mww
Of course you shouldn't be concerned about it normally. Only when discussing the mind-body relationship on a philosophy forum, or when you receive brain damage.
True enough, but irrelevant. Interest is judged by what is, not by what might not have been. It would be irrational to hold an interest in falsified theoretics of long-dead natural philosophers, but it isn’t irrational to hold an interest in theories metaphysicians create that empirical science cannot conclusively address. Don’t have to live and die by it to be interested in it.
—————
Quoting Harry Hindu
There’s really no good reason to worry about what may never be the case, so it follows that there is no good reason I should be knowledgeable on predictions. Truthfully though, I hope they find a cure for Alzheimer’s before I catch it. Otherwise, I shall deteriorate predicated on the standard process of all biological creatures.
—————
Quoting Harry Hindu
Can that really correlate to the predictions of cognitive neuroscience, if that paradigm has to with physical mechanics, but philosophy has to do only with simple human rational capabilities?
Don’t get me wrong. Science in general is both fascinating and quite useful. But I, a stand-alone thinking subject, am more concerned with what my mind does for me directly, however abstract that may be, than I am with what my brain does for my indirectly.
Interest is determined by your goals. What is interesting depends on the present goal in the mind. The only interest in knowing about the claims of long-dead philosophers is to know how far we've come since.
Quoting Mww
Is it really indirect? How would you know? This seems to assume dualism.
The first may be true, but the second does not necessarily follow from it. If I don’t know the current state of philosophy, the reading of long-dead philosophers in order to be informed of it, isn’t going to work. Parsimony suggests I might just read long-dead philosophers merely to know what they thought, regardless of their relative antiquity.
—————-
I more than assume dualism; I advocate it.
Of course a chair is a being. Heidegger's talk about forgetfulness of being is not about beings, but that on the basis of which beings "show up" for us at all -- namely, "being" (some like to capitalize this, but I don't).
Quoting Wayfarer
To say any being is not a being is meaningless. An object is a being. A chair is a being. That building is a being. That piece of sand, Bach's fugues, mineral baths, and a trombone. All beings. Literally everything in the world has being. As I said above, to reserve the term "being" for "sentient being" is an extremely narrow and specialized usage.
Neuroscientists and biologists all have philosophical beliefs guiding their research, and often follow dead-end paths because of holding bogus ones.
To wonder why we study thinkers of the past is kind of ridiculous.
No, it isn't. To say every human being has perceptions is more accurate, but to say what they perceive are "objects" -- a concept with a long history -- is to mistake the current (Western) worldview with a universal. The Greeks didn't view the world this way, nor did the Christians. That's not to say they didn't perceive things -- of course they did. But they did not refer to things as "objects" in the sense we mean. So to argue the subject/object distinction is universal is a mistake.
BTW -- no one is making claims about consciousness, because no one has told us what consciousness is. It would be like saying "neuroscientists are making claims about ectoplasm."
Oddly enough, when they even try to make a definition, they fall back on those long-dead philosophers you find so boring.
In English, the word ‘being’ applies to living creatures. Chairs and other object are artifacts, objects, tools, etc, but they’re not designated as ‘beings’. As I say, this is simple English albeit with philosophical implications.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yet there’s a fundamental difference between a living being and the corpse it leaves after dying.
Living creatures are defined as living beings. Minerals or artifacts are inanimate non-living beings and plants are usually taken to be living, but non-sentient, beings. So, you have it all wrong when it comes to common usage. When it comes to terminology it is always a semantic matter, but of course semantic distinctions do reflect ontological differences as they are conceived; between living and non-living, sentient and non-sentient, sapient and non-sapient, and so on.
Can you please stop this. No one in philosophy limits the use of 'beings' to humans. This is just your idiosyncratic rubbish that no one but you spouts. It is misleading, off-topic, and you have been told this multiple times before. You are knowingly spreading misinformation. Stop.
No, it doesn't. The word "being" in English references "existence" as well, and not simply human or living existence. It's the present participle of "be." But this completely misses the point anyway. What I was talking about was in the context of ontology, not common usage.
Wayf, we all get that there's a difference between subjective and objective, first person and third person, and so on, but "being" and "existing" just aren't the words for that difference.
Wayfarer's equation of being with the living however, is a different matter and largely unique to his own homebrewed idealism.
(I also disagree with the prevailing Analytic claim that "existence is just what the existential quantifier asserts", though that is only because I think there is sense to be made of non-descriptive sentences. For descriptive sentences, it does work out that way. I prefer to read the so-called "existential" quantifier as "for some" -- for some value of x, [some proposition regarding x] is true -- and if the proposition is describing the world, then that amounts to an existential claim, but it might be performing a different speech-act than description, in which case it might not be saying anything at all about what does or doesn't exist.)
(In my logic, the assertion of existence is instead performed by the operator that denotes a descriptive assertion, so instead of "a wise man exists" or "some man is wise", you would say something more like "there is some man being wise", where "being wise" is the idea predicated of some "man", and "there is" indicates that that idea is a description of reality, in contrast to something like "be there some man being wise", where "be there" instead is an imperative or exhortation calling for there to be a wise man, i.e. "there ought to be some wise man". And we might simply want to talk about the logical implications of the state of affairs of "some man being wise", and the relationship of that idea to others, without either describing or prescribing anything; e.g. we can talk about how "some man being wise" and "Socrates being a man" don't entail "Socrates being wise", without saying anything at all about the existence of Socrates, men, or wisdom).
I never claimed this. I have said 'being' in the noun form refers to living creatures.
Quoting Xtrix
The noun form - as in ‘a being’ - is not used in relation to insentient objects, artefacts, tools, minerals, and so on; such things are never referred to as 'beings'. If you look up the definition of the noun form of 'a being' in any dictionary, you will find it applies to living creatures (and also to immaterial beings such as angels and spirits which you will presumably not believe in).
Quoting StreetlightX
Thank you. The leading paragraph of that article is close to what I'm getting at:
But this is also related to the question of why 'God' (or the absolute however conceived) does not exist. He is customarily beyond existence, not non-existent, but super-existent, or absolutely real, in a way that individual particulars/phenomena are not.
But with the 'flattening' of ontology that has developed as a consequence of modernity, that distinction is no longer intelligible - as we can see by the responses here to the idea.
This goes back to a point I have raised in the past about the etymological derivation of the term 'ontology'. I pointed out that, according to an online etymological dictionary, the word 'ontology' (which first appears in the early modern/late medieval period) was derived from the first-person participle of the Greek 'ouisia', 'to be'. And the first-person participle is 'I am'. So in some ways, the term 'ontology' applies to the 'discipline of the study of Being' in a manner that includes, or at least implies, the first person perspective. And I think that is crucial to understanding what 'ontology' really is about.
The 'hard problem of consciousness', on the one hand, or the phenomenological tradition, on the other, are areas of philosophy that are explicitly concerned with understanding the nature of lived experience from a first-person perspective. They both say that the attempt to account for the nature of experience in third-person terms is radically flawed. And why that is significant, is because of its difference to the attitude of naturalism or 'the objective sciences', which 'bracket out' any notion of the first-person perspective but claims to be able to fully account for it in the third-person terms of the objective sciences - which is the nub of the dispute between Chalmers and Dennett.
So I don't see how this amounts to 'disinformation', and I could also do with a little less vitriol from yourself, if you can manage.
If "the attempt to account for the nature of experience in third-person terms is radically flawed", empathy (understanding the thoughts and/or emotions of another person and/or social group) does not exist (which is obviously false).
Have you never experienced empathy, or observed it in the behaviour of others?
Any argument which denies empathy as fact is unsound.
This isn't up for debate. Amateur etymology is no substitute for 2000 years of philosophical tradition because you want to push a moonshine philosophy that no one, no where holds. Stop lying to people.
"The question which was raised long ago, is still and always will be, and which always baffles us—"What is Being?"—is in other words "What is substance?"... Substance is thought to be present most obviously in bodies. Hence we call animals and plants and their parts substances, and also natural bodies, such as fire, water, earth, etc., and all things which are parts of these or composed of these, either of parts or them or of their totality; e.g. the visible universe and its parts, the stars and moon and sun" (Aristotle, Metaphysics VII).
"A few examples should help. Over there, on the other side of the street, stands a highschool building. A being. We can scour every side of the building from yhe outside, roam through the inside from basement to attic, and not everything that can be found there: hallways, stairs, classrooms and their furnishings. Everywhere we find beings... Moreover Being does not consist of our observing beings. The high school stands there even if we do not observe it". (Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics).
Kindly take your made-up, non-philosophical pseudo history and put it in the bin where it belongs. I will continue to call you out on this rubbish everytime you post it.
I'm no Wittgenstein but check out language as Andrew M suggested. All languages I know of have a subject-verb-object structure and maybe, just maybe, if there are languages that lack it we may gain some insight into the issue herein discussed.
What would it mean to say that there's no subject-object distinction? Surely we're sufficiently removed in time and space from the moon landing in 1969 to validate it as an object and us as subjects. To say otherwise is, in my opinion, to claim that there's a causal connection between any and all would be subjects and would be objects rendering the subject-object distinction moot.
You must have misunderstood what I was writing about. In no way was I 'denying empathy'. Maybe read through the previous comments in this thread to see what I was getting at.
Quoting TheMadFool
It would mean that if I asked you for a cup of tea, you wouldn't know what to do.
Same old pattern of avoidance: non-engagement with ideas that contradict your programme through obfuscation.
What about AGI in computers. Hypothetically. We can either presuppose that despite any behavioral characteristics machines are to rocks and planets different from what human beings are to them. Or otherwise, we can compare ourselves to rocks in our role of subjects by comparing them to machines first. Do we consider rocks as self-aware as ourselves? By many degrees of magnitude they lack the expressive, cognitive and reasoning parameters for that. But is the quality binary or is their sentience so insubstantial that it borders inconsequential by our usual standards. If the quality is binary, which side of the filter would AGI computers fall? And how different are computers from rocks then, fundamentally? A binary distinction I think already assumes an exosystemic component - i.e. a mind-body distinction.
P.S.: Maybe only thoughts have subject and object proper. And the human being is a vessel that serves as a locus for a collection of coherent thought processes that give rise to a sense of identity. These "thoughts" interact coherently to form the role of a "subject".
You and I are designated 'beings', and buildings are not. It's simple English.
Quoting Galuchat
You plainly misunderstood the passage you quoted from me. Would you like me to explain it further, or will you engage in the same old pattern of avoidance of ideas you find difficult?
Quoting simeonz
:up:
You're like the Trump of philosophy. Ignoring all available evidence to shore up your terrible understanding of it.
Readily accessible from the realization “existence” is a category, yet “being” is not. The first is irreducible, the second reducible to the first.
Sorta like.....”Heraclitus and Parmenides walk into a bar......”.
If those two had just sorted this nonsense out, back in The Day, we might not now have been “....strained and ruined by the nonsense of Hegelism...”
(WWR-2, Preface, 1818)
Thoughts, strictly speaking, are the one thing that does NOT have subject/object dualism proper. In pure subjective privacy, the sole constituency of which is our thoughts, there is no need to communicate, therefore there is no need to qualify a relation between the thinker and the thought; they are the same thing. Internally, the thinker is the thought.
I agree.
Social awareness (perception and cognisance) has objective (fact-based) and subjective (value-based) properties. It:
1) Requires observation.
2) Is caused by the mirror mechanism (experience of others' acts, including simultaneous exteroception and interoception, and the activation of common and/or associated mental representations).
3) Causes intersubjectivity, sociality, imitation, and empathy.
It amazes me you continue to argue about this. I’ll grant your point about the noun form in common usage —because it doesn’t make the slightest difference to what I’m talking about.
I’d consider them machines. Maybe in the future they’ll acquire “consciousness” of some kind, but we’re a long way out from that.
I’m not talking about grammar or world languages. I’m talking ontology. It’s discouraging that this has to be explained, repeatedly, in a philosophy forum.
Quoting TheMadFool
In my view it would mean that we’re not engaged with the world in a particular way (in this case, as “abstract thinking”). Heidegger would say something similar, only as a “present-at-hand” mode of being.
Once you’re in this mode, then a subject contemplating objects as a fundamental distinction can commence. But this is a “privative” mode- what human beings do for the most part does not involve subjects and objects at all.
And what would that be exactly?
The Greek sense of being was phusis and, later, ousia. Neither privileges the first person perspective. A casual glance at an online etymology site just doesn’t tell you much.
In common usage (maybe), which is completely useless to this discussion.
The subject object distinction is a metaphysical distinction; it makes sense when you have an account of souls separated from objects, or minds separated from worlds, mental separated from physical, primary separated from secondary quality and so on. To my mind, to say that the subject object distinction is part of the philosophical basis of modern science is very greedy, as scientific theories and styles of inquiry which produce them only interface with the subject object distinction as part of their intellectual heritage; and as we know, being in the intellectual heritage of a topic does not say anything about being conceptually foundational for or logically consistent with the topic.
I think it's more accurate to say that scientists will articulate justifications for scientific inquiry in the abstract in terms of something resembling the subject object distinction based on how common and pervasively applied a metaphysical intuition it is, rather than saying anything about whether the subject object distinction is really relevant to their work.
You probably mean objects incapable of being subjects. They will be machines by definition, no matter what. Or do you mean, that we are not machines, or fundamentally distinct from machines? If so, how?
Quoting Xtrix
It is not obvious to me what does it mean for something to "acquire" consciousness. Is this a behavior modification or substance change or some other metaphysical phenomenon? Because stated in this way, how does one challenge any claim that something has or hasn't acquired consciousness. Also, it isn't clear to me what consciousness denotes - a behavioral pattern, a type of experience, etc. If it is a type of experience, how can a person know that it exists outside of their own being - i.e. the solipsism style argument.
Quoting Xtrix
Is time relevant? Or do you mean that the emergence of such advanced AGI is suspect to you for some fundamental reason?
Yes and no. I agree most scientists would repeat something like this as a philosophical grounding of their work, especially in the cognitive sciences, and that it does't really matter to the particulars of their research. But on the other hand, the particulars are seen in the light of fundamental notions, even if taken for granted and completely unexamined as they usually are. Every science has an ontological basis.
I think the subject/object distinction is one such fundamental notion for science, a variation of Kant, who took up Descartes' ontology, who in turn took up the Scholastic tradition, which of course was influenced by the Greeks.
It may not seem to matter, and it's often hard to care when modern science is so successful -- especially in terms of technology -- but the philosophical underpinnings are still worth questioning. I started this thread to see how many still question this particular notion, and as you can see, not many really do -- yourself included. That's interesting.
I did not mean to say that all thoughts refer to the subject. In fact, I did not address (or honestly even think of) the distinctions between awareness, knowledge, self-awareness, etc. Indeed, only self-aware thinking incorporates the subject explicitly. Still, self-interest is present in most thought processes - even animal ones. So, although it is not formally present, the subject still emerges "organically", so to speak, from the coherent pursuit of personal advantage. Even if it is not directly expressed by the said thoughts.
Quoting Mww
Actually, this is exactly what I meant. That the subject arises in consequence from the coherent pursuit of self-centered objectives by the individual. This does not even imply self-awareness, unless the subject becomes the object of discussion itself.
Depends on what you mean by "machine," but yes I think that we're not only machines in the traditional sense. How so would require a separate thread regarding human nature, of which there's much to say. But quickly: I like Heidegger's conception of the being for which being itself is an issue.
Quoting simeonz
True, no one has pinned down what consciousness means yet as a technical notion. Hence the use of quotation marks.
Quoting simeonz
What's relevant is that we don't know what consciousness is, and computers are non-human objects. So to answer your question more clearly: no, there's no problem here.
I don't give much weight to the distinction, at least whenever I think it's relevant. I think that it generates intractable access problems (how does a mind move a body?); and the conceptual distinction between a subject and an object is still something which has to come from somewhere - why do these entities operate as if there's a subject object distinction and not others? I think it makes more sense to start from a metaphysics of events and interactions (like a process metaphysics) and build up minds and bodies (or subjects and objects and their transcendental structure) out of those than read things in terms of the subject object distinction.
Though I do think it makes sense in terms of a folk psychology construct; something like that it can be a valuable part of our manifest image but when it's treated as foundational or a given it occludes more than it helps.
Well that's slightly different. Notice I didn't put "mind/body" in the title. To equate the subject with a "mind" is a different topic. But your point is taken nonetheless. I don't give it particular weight either.
The kind of discussion that distinguishes a mind from a subject is already a more interesting idea than the usual elision of reason which joins them.
Edit: eg, subject as a universal constitution with its own phenomenological structure, a system in which conditions of possibility of experience make sense as an idea (ontological account), mind as particular concretion of that phenomenological structure which learns and experiences within the constraints of its constitution (ontic account) and thereby can discover the universal constitution through logical introspection.
Not that I buy that idea in the edit either, but at least it's got more meat to it than things like "you can't base metaethics on emotion, it's subjective!" or "physical theories are objective, anthropological theories are subjective" or "the warmth of a flame is subjective, whereas its temperature is objective". Or "materialism doesn't make sense because theories are subjective - the object is just a subject's apprehension of the object!"
You're barking up the wrong tree here.
"Meaning of being in English
being
noun [ C or U ]
UK /?bi?.??/ US /?bi?.??/
C2
a person or thing that exists:"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/being
And:
"In philosophy, being means the material or immaterial existence of a thing. Anything that exists is being. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies being. Being is a concept encompassing objective and subjective features of reality and existence."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being
D’accord.
Quoting simeonz
This escapes me.
Which is the point I'm making. We do not, in common usage, refer to inanimate things as 'beings' - buildings, tools, artefacts, minerals and so on. There is no issue that they exist, but they're not referred to as 'beings', and this is philosophically significant.
Furthermore, the fact that the Wikipedia article equates 'being' and 'existing' does not obviate the philosophical distinction between these two terms. My argument is that the loss this distinction is a characteristic of modernity, generally, and the significance of the elision is more than semantic.
How? And according to whom? The English word "being" and how it's used most of the time tells us what about the state of ontology exactly?
Quoting Wayfarer
So because most of the time, in everyday usage, we use the word "things" instead of "beings" for inanimate objects (as a matter of fact, for any object whatsoever), this is an example of the "forgetfulness of being" of modernity? Is that really what you're arguing?
"Forgetfulness of being" is indeed an interesting subject -- in Heidegger. But he's not meaning it in the way you are.
Let's say, I need to drink water from the waterhole, I like eating grass, and I am afraid of meeting lions. Who cares if I have established my identity of an antelope? I may not acknowledge that I am me (which obviously strips me of some advanced reflective mental faculties), but my agency still creates a subject's point of reference. My thought process needs to be coherent in order to induce a subject, because we mean something sustained by this concept. If I liked eating grass, but spontaneously decided to mate with a tiger I saw at the waterhole (I hate myself for this example), then my identity would be too distorted to induce a meaningful subject's point of reference. There would be no subject per se, just a collection of random ideas occurring without any rhyme and reason.
In a sense, I see the subject as the property of a collection of thoughts, of being organized to manifest some consistent agency.
What I’m arguing is that to place 'beings' on the same plane as 'objects', is to overlook their fundamental nature as beings. But if you ask what it is that is being overlooked, it’s impossible to answer, because ‘being’ is not something about which we can make objective statements. Being is always implicit, it’s not an objective reality.
Consider this paragraph from David Chalmer's original paper, Facing up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness:
From Thomas Nagel's NY Times summary of his 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos:
So I am arguing is that the very element or aspect of reality which both these passages are referring to as 'what it is like' or 'the point of view of the subject' is actually 'being', and that attribute is why living creatures are called 'beings'. In the broadest sense, 'being' is the capacity for experience, which is found in the simplest of organisms, but which reaches the plateau of self-aware, rational being in human beings.
Nagel and Chalmer's natural antagonist is Daniel Dennett. And what is Dennett's attitude to 'the hard problem of consciousness'? His attitude is that it doesn't exist. His presupposition is that the only things that exist are the elements of matter, and that through the process of evolution, which he describes in terms of an algorithm, these generate the illusions of mind and being through what he calls 'unconscious competence', the activities of billions of cells executing their genetic routines in service of the selfish gene. So in his schema, there is no subject or really any beings as such:
[quote=Daniel Dennett, Evolution and the Meanings of Life, p202-203]An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe.[/quote]
Hence your remark:
Quoting Xtrix
Consciousness or mind or rationality is that which discloses meaning, which makes it possible to define, consider, or analyse anything in the first place. Yet we don't actually know what it is, just as Nagel remarks in his OP.
Ok.
What you are arguing is irrelevant because no one but you uses the term in this way. Stop pretending that anyone does. This is terrible, bad philosophy. Stop being a bad philosopher and stop lying about things.
So consciousness (of any kind) is "being," which is why (as you claim) we only refer to sentient beings as "beings." But this (1) completely ignores the field of ontology and the Greek sense of being and (2) is simply subjectivizing the word.
"Beings" are everywhere, conscious or not. Even in English. I'm sorry you don't like that, but it's true. If you want to reserve the word "being" for conscious beings, fine -- then everything else let's call "things" or "entities." Makes no difference.
You're well within the ontological distinction of "being and thinking," which has a long tradition.
Your argument, once the smoke is cleared, is not very interesting. Citing an English dictionary does not an argument make.
Don't you think that the issue of the 'hard problem of consciousness' and Chalmer's and Nagel's arguments as to why the natural sciences can't sufficiently describe the nature of experience in principle is basically an argument about ontology? (i.e. 'the nature of being').
Quoting Xtrix
For example?
If we don't know what it is, then it isn't simply "that which discloses meaning." No one is interested in defining something out in space. It's armchair philosophy. I can choose to define consciousness as the light of Zorthar. Who cares?
Since you ask me what I think, I think it's a complete waste of time, and one would do well to skip Nagel and Dennett (who I like personally) and Chalmers altogether. And no, it's not ontology. They're discussing consciousness, not being.
Oh, I'm sorry, then. I thought this was a philosophical discussion. I will, however, be edified in my newfound knowledge that buildings are beings. So long.
The fact that you find so strange the idea of a building as a being, or a chair, or a rock, or literally anything at all, is puzzling. Unless you've managed to ignore ontology (and metaphysics) altogether.
And yes, it is a philosophical discussion - not a venue to talk nonsense, which is what you're doing.
See Heidegger, "Introduction to Metaphysics," p. 88 (in German) or p.122 (English). It's available online for free.
The very idea of a conscious entity (a conscious, "rational" being) as sui generis and the "problem of consciousness" itself are, at bottom, taking up the tradition of substance ontology and, I would argue, presuppose the subject/object distinction.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's true that people most often use the term " a being" as an abbreviated form of "a living being" or "a human being", but this is just an idiomatic (and perhaps in respect of its cognates in other languages, a predominately English usage) which does not rule out using the term to refer to any thing whatsoever in accordance with the primary common definition of 'being', as referring to anything that is.
Wouldn't disagree. But I am hoping nevertheless to probe that construction, rather than simply assume it. I am interested in the role of the observing intelligence in the constitution of being. I maintain that it is natural for us to believe that objects have intrinsic or substantial existence.
Quoting Xtrix
Buildings and office furniture are not 'beings'. If a building burns down - unfortunately this has happened more than a thousand times in my part of the world in the last few weeks - we don't say that the building and its contents 'died. But if it contains living beings - animals or people - then we say 'they died'. Is it strange to say that? Does saying that amount to 'ignoring ontology'? How is this 'ignoring metaphysics'?
What do you make of this gloss of Heidegger's work:
Note, 'our kind of Being', capitalised. What do you make of that?
I think the paragraph on the 'division of selves and world' is suggested by the quote I gave in my earlier post about 'the Cartesian anxiety'.
If you look at the encyclopedia reference which StreetlightX posted in about the distinction of 'being and existence' there is a centuries-old discussion of the distinction. It says that most modern analytical philosophy now doesn't recognize the distinction - which is the point I'm making! I'm saying, there's a real distinction which is now not recognized, and as it's not recognized, it's extraordinarily difficult to say what it is. So most people will simply shrug and say they can't understand the difference - like you are doing. Fair enough, but I'm trying to explain what I see as the issue.
Anway, I've been told I'm 'peddling nonsense' a number of times in this thread already, which I think is completely untrue, but I will go and do some more reading and contemplation and will take a time out for a while. Bye.
That’s just panpsychism, and contemporary versions of it are a lot more innocuous than it might seem, being basically what is left over after you have ruled out all the even more absurd options (like we are all p-zombies, or there’s some metaphysical magic that goes on in humans but not rocks).
It also says that ancient Greek philosophy didn’t even have separate words with which to make the distinction, which makes the whole thing seem like an oddity of theistic medieval philosophy.
Buildings and office furniture are certainly beings. No one is saying they're sentient beings. How is this hard for you to understand? Possibly because you not only ignore ontology, but you ignore me and everyone else on this thread who continually try to tell you that "being" as "conscious being" is your peculiar terminology.
You don't have to go far back in the history of ontology -- just look at Heidegger, who you quote.
Maybe someone should have been around to tell him that in English, "being" is usually used, in common interaction, to refer to "sentient things," hmm? What a profound realization he would have had.
Quoting Wayfarer
A very decent summary from someone who's clearly read Heidegger. Something I can't say about you.
Quoting Wayfarer
What do I make of what? The capitalization? In Being and Time, and in other translations, "being" is usually capitalized -- and it's unfortunate, in my view. It implies some kind of "God"-like "special" entity or something. In German, all nouns are capitalized, so it's misleading to reserve "being" for special importance.
Quoting Wayfarer
You're peddling nonsense in the case of reserving the word "being" for "conscious being," citing the English dictionary as support, and then basically saying this in turn lends proof to your belief that consciousness and being are the same thing. You've got to do better sir. This would fail as a dissertation, a master's thesis, an honors thesis, and probably as a Presidential tweet (alright, maybe not THAT bad).
Well, that’s just not so. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker? Buildings and furniture are structures and artefacts. The point is that beings are not things or objects, but are subjects of experience, which is demonstrably not the case for inanimate objects (although apparently panpsychists don’t agree.)
I didn’t say ‘consciousness’ and ‘being’ are the same - what I said was that the capacity for experience is the fundamental attribute of being, which I illustrated with reference to the ‘hard problem’. (Perhaps you’re not familiar with ‘the hard problem of consciousness’?)
I never claim any expertise of Heidegger, although I did do a Master’s thesis (on the Buddhist doctrine of Anatta.) However to be told that I have no understanding of ontology and metaphysics, because I argue for the ontological distinction of beings and objects is, at least, ironic.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The relevant passage is this:
There seems to be an understanding in Greek philosophy, that particulars or individuals are not (here is where words are difficult) ‘fully real’. They are a composite of real and unreal elements. In fact this is the case for all of the objects of the phenomenal domain; they, and the sensory domain, is real in some respects, and unreal in other respects (which is subject of traditional metaphysics) which became adapted (some would say appropriated) by the monotheistic faiths as indicated in that passage, so as to distinguish the ‘essential’ from the ‘contingent’. And I think this still contains an essential truth (whilst fully acknowledging that hardly anyone will agree with that.)
This is why I point to intelligible objects such as logical laws and natural numbers as examples of ‘objects’ which only exist in and for a rational mind. So, they don’t exist in the sense that stones and flowers do, but they’re nevertheless real, in that they’re the same for all who think; 7 is 7 for you, me, Aquinas, and Dr. Spock. The point is that they belong to a different domain to the phenomenal realm - perhaps ‘the noumenal realm’, where ‘noumenal’ means ‘objects of mind’. Not that such a domain actually exists - but it’s real, in the same sense that the ‘domain of natural numbers’ is real. Which is the point!
Yup.
We have our own experience of the world as individuals and human beings, and then we have scientific explanations of the world which are divorced from that, because how the world appears to us is not always how the world is.
This has been known since our ancestors starting making note of the difference between appearance and reality. We can use whatever terms make the most sense in modern language to describe that distinction, but yes, it's a reality of our human existence, and probably the impetus that got philosophy started.
Maybe you're utterly ignorant about anything to do with philosophy because no one but you equates being with the living, and is nothing but the idiosyncratic fabrication of a hack and a fraud?
Starting at about 3:38 in the video above, Phillip Ball, an editor at the Journal of Nature, is discussing popular notions of quantum mechanics. Here he talks about how people think that because measurement impacts the result:
[quote=Phillip Ball]So the human observer can't be extracted from the theory. It becomes unavoidably subjective.[/quote]
He's just laying out a popular conception, not arguing for it. The point about the quote is the idea that science tries to extract the human from the observation. Right here we have a subjective/objective distinction, where it seems to be a problem that one result of QM might not allow that, at least on a popular understanding, or according to one interpretation.
But the key idea is that science tries to extract our human experience from what's being studied.
I enjoy life due to actions and recognitions.
:up:
I think we reserve the term ‘being’ for the living in order to distinguish it from ‘object’, which we understand to be lifeless, and therefore static. I’ll admit that referring to a building, for instance, as a ‘being’ seems strange to me, even as I recognise it as an instance of being. But I no longer think it’s useful to make this distinction, especially if, with Rovelli, we recognise that the universe more accurately consists of interrelated ‘events’ rather than ‘objects’.
So I acknowledge that buildings and office furniture ARE beings after all - and that to distinguish them, ontologically speaking, as ‘objects’ instead fails to recognise their relative temporal existence in the universe.
Plus, I think if we’re aiming to plausibly explain the origin of life at some point in our philosophy, then it’s important to dispense with this being-object distinction that implies ‘life’ as something added to matter.
One of the reasons that thinking in terms of 'subjects' and 'objects' is so warped is that it is an utterly anachronistic way of speaking: almost no one before Kant spoke of being in terms of either objects or subjects; this was a later distinction that came nearly 1700 years after philosophers had spoke of 'being' for multiple centuries in entirely other terms, only after which it was grafted on, like a badly transplanted organ, onto talk about being by those who knew no better and had no understanding of history. You won't find it in Parmenides, you won't find it in Aristotle, you won't find it in Aquinas, you won't find it in Spinoza. At all. The essential distinctions at work in talk of being were far more likely to be between the One and the Multiple, the Accidental and the Essential, or Form and Matter, than there would be anything to do with 'subject and object'. No one pre-Kant speaks of being in terms of a subject/object distinction. Not a single soul.
(So to those who say that it's hard or impossible to think in terms other than subject and object, well, we did it for millennia, and we can not do it quite easily once again).
The debate isn't whether or not being is really 'objective' or 'subjective'. That's not even the right question; it's like asking if colourless green sheep snore or not. But because Wayfarer, who is a hack, knows nothing other, he can only try to secure the rights of the 'subjective' over the 'objective' by falsifying history and making basic, intentional mistakes that any undergraduate would be embarrassed to submit to scrutiny. Anyone who thinks that questions of being turn upon subjects or objects ought to go back to philosophy 101 or simply give up on pretending to know anything whatsoever on the subject.
Yes, it is so I'm afraid. Except in your world, where you reserve "being" for sentience, and cite the English dictionary.
The entirety of that quote:
Quoting Xtrix (Bold mine)
The fact that you only quoted the first sentence already proves my point. You're a joke.
Next up: let's go to a physics forum and explain that the way we use the term "energy" in English just doesn't line up with how physicists use it. Then cite the dictionary. Bam!
Linguistic turn? Perhaps I misunderstood. Sorry.
Quoting Xtrix
Well reminds me of driving. When traffic is flowing smoothly we're completely unconscious of the act - the car and the driver are one. The instant something unexpected happens the driver becomes aware of driving the car. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, taking into account your other thread on the problems the world is facing, it seems that the scientific bent of the human mind, albeit only expressed in a minority but widely claimed by all, which is the quintessence of the subject-object distinction, is actually an indication that the world has broken and is now present-at-hand. It makes sense since morality, something that has been on our minds for over 2000 years, is about oughts, as if to say the world is busted and needs repair.
Fair enough. I don't feel the use of "present-at-hand" makes much sense in this context, but I get your meaning.
The ancients may have used being to refer all things, but that's not how I understood the modern use of the word. A being was always something alive.
But as for the OP, the subject/object divide to is the difference between how we as animals experience the world versus how the world is.
No one cares how the word is (mostly) used in English. Least of all me. I'm talking ontology. Do we walk into a physics lecture and gripe about their "counterintuitive" use of the word "energy" or "work"?
I'm continually discouraged by the lack of any familiarity with ontology in this thread. I was hopeful in the philosophy forum, members would be somewhat educated in philosophy.
Give me an example where it does make sense.
I think we experience the world as if there is a subjective/objective divide, but the ontological situation is unclear, because we don't know the nature of consciousness. However, we're made of the same stuff as everything else, so I tend to think it's an epistemological divide.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well to say the world is "present-at-hand" simply means the theoretical, "rational" mode of being (which underlies science) where things show up as "before us"in the present moment -- as objects with properties, usually. Hubert Dreyfus often says the hammer becomes a "wooden stick with a metal blob at the end" -- a piece of equipment that has a certain weight, color, etc.
None of this is relevant when the activity of hammering is going transparently well -- or take your driving example, which is a good one. That would be ready-to-hand activity.
Given this, I think you mean to say that the current reliance on science shows how this present-at-hand mode of being is taking over the world?
Discussing words, their origins and the history of their meaning, is indeed important. That's not being done here. To resort to the dictionary is as useless here as it is in physics, as I mentioned before. No one cares about how "energy" is used in everyday discourse if you're discussing physics. Likewise, no one cares here either -- unless it somehow plays into a deeper analysis of the etymology of the word (in this case "being") in the context of the history of ontology (which is what we're concerned with). But that hasn't been done.
Quoting Marchesk
What "stuff" would that be? Atoms?
It's impossible to say whether things like 'atoms' really exist, nor does it actually matter. An 'atom' is a very simple concept, even meaningless for many elements in natural conditions, such as metals for example, because of 'electron sharing in substance 'pools' larger than 'molecules.'
But it doesn't matter, because such words refer to a scientific model to explain the observed material world, and not the material world itself.
In the model, events change an object's state (subject) to something else (object) by an action (verb). Whether the object exists or not is irrelevant to the language used to describe it, because it is only describing an abstracted model of observed phenomena.
The term "material" is meaningless. Hence also the "material world."
It's quite true that an atom makes sense in chemistry and physics. That has nothing to do with "material," which is meaningless. It used to have a meaning in science, in Newton's day, in terms of the mechanical philosophy, as "body," -- but that was abandoned long ago.
So to say Quoting ernestm
really doesn't mean anything at all.
"Physical," "material," "body," etc., are honorific terms. They used to have a technical notion within mechanical philosophy of the 16th and 17th centuries. They no longer do. Thus, "material world," "material reality," "physical world," etc., is completely meaningless. As is the mind/body "problem."
Fields, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, tissue, organs, brain activity, people, societies, cultures, ecologies, environments, planets, solar systems, galaxies, superclusters, filaments, universe, maybe multiverse. <= great chain of being
Ultimately, a bunch of quantum-gravity stuff forming complex, decohered patterns with some consciousness sprinkled in for good measure.
So literally everything? Fine. Good observation.
I would say we’re beings among other beings. “Stuff” is misleading.
I agree with you that the subject-object divide is not ontological, but epistemological. I think this is the confusion that Wayfarer describes in the ‘common language’ use of these terms - especially in relation to what is not an ‘object’. And I also agree with you that arguments about the ‘correct’ use of language are frequent here, both in ontological and epistemological discussions - particularly in discussions that bring these two together. I think when we attempt to define the ‘real world’ as it is and as we understand it - especially when we seek to deconstruct this subject-object divide - we venture onto ontological/epistemological ‘common’ ground, and are tempted to find ‘common language’ or dictionary definitions for support, despite the errors in understanding.
FWIW, I see ‘subject’ and ‘object’ as relative epistemological concepts that allow for a form of panpsychism. I certainly don’t see it ONLY in terms of human beings as subject and the world as object - that’s just where we start to understand the world. For me, there is something it is like to be a carbon atom (but not a rock), quantum information theory makes intuitive sense to me, and Ball’s variation on the twenty questions game (late in the video you posted) most beautifully describes for me the nature of our unfolding universe.
It's not misleading since science is very successful in telling us what that stuff is. Granted, it's a bit murky once you get to fundamental physics, but we know the bigger stuff is made up out of that smaller stuff physicists call particles and fields.
Science is successful at telling us that this “stuff” is galaxies, cells, brain activity? Or is “stuff” now something else?
Science is successful in telling us stuff about stuff, and by stuff we mean everything.
So science is good at telling us that everything is everything. That galaxies and brain waves etc exist.
I’m getting bored.
What is that you want from an ontological discussion? I think science helps informs us on what exists and what that stuff is made up of, at least down to a certain point. But it leaves unanswered other questions, like whether objects can have parts or whether math or information are at the bottom of it all.
Okay, then what problem do you have with my modern update of the great chain of being, from the very small to the universe? Is there a problem with how science categorizes the different "beings", since you prefer that over "objects" or "stuff"?
I don't really see what the issue is with any of those terms, other than they're sufficiently vague enough to encompass everything, if one wishes to do so.
Can you be more specific? How does falsifiability and paradigm shift, for example, imply a subject/object dualism?
Quoting Xtrix
Fair enough - I agree that dualism has had a significant influence in those areas. But my impression was that it is also commonly thought to be a mistaken view. See, for example, Dennett's Cartesian Theater criticism.
I would note that Quine opposed mind/body dualism. As did the ordinary language philosophers, particularly Gilbert Ryle (in his book The Concept of Mind).
My main area of scientific interest is physics and I'm not aware of any examples there, with the possible exception of the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics. However that interpretation is more of historical interest these days, popular misconceptions notwithstanding.
I’m not sure about mistaken, but simply one formulation which happens to be the most dominant in the west.
Quoting Andrew M
Both deal with scientific theories, and a knowing subject is thus assumed.
And again, I’m not necessarily talking about mind/body dualism. I’m talking more about Kant’s variation- that we as subjects have representations of the outside world (the phenomenon, the object).
That science is a human enterprise conducted from a human perspective is entirely consistent with naturalism. The "view from nowhere" is just how a dualist sees naturalism. The dualist thinks that if the ghost is dispensed with, then so is the human viewpoint. (I would add that one can be a materialist yet still presuppose dualism, which is the machine option you note below.)
Quoting Wayfarer
Which still presupposes the dualist framing (with one half eliminated). Naturalism, properly understood, rejects both the ghost and the machine. As an example, think of Aristotle's naturalism which included purpose, ethics, mathematics, and so on.
Quoting Wayfarer
The trick is to avoid reifying abstractions. We can wonder whether Donald Trump has lost his mind. We shouldn't also wonder whether he left it on the kitchen bench next to his car keys.
As Gilbert Ryle put it, "Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth which continues to distort the continental geography of the subject. A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them."
That’s mistaken I believe. The ‘phenomenon’ is all there is for us - as opposed to the negative sense of noumenon. He is explicit enough about that I felt? It is a little confusing as we’re stuck with imprecise wording and ‘represent’ strongly suggesting ‘representing something’ where Kant meant more or less that ‘representing IS thing, not of some unreachable something’.
How about turning to neuroscience for how the weltenschauung is formed? We have a basic neurological make-up involving Afferent and Efferent pathways (sensory and motor/input and output), and embedded within this basic structure we have interneurons communicating. In this sense if we’re to try and place the ‘quality’ of the terms ‘subject’ or ‘object’ into play then how do we do so here?
In the simplest sense we likely parcel up afferent and efferent as ‘subject’ directed and the interneurons as ‘object’ directed.
If we’re going to completely remove physicalism from play then we’re kind of adrift. In terms of ‘being’ what is thought of ‘has being’, meaning a unicorn ‘is’. Often people get confused about ‘nothing’ too, yet ‘nothing’ is more or less what Kant was pointing toward in terms of ‘positive noumenon’ - which, ironically, is immediately only ever ‘negative noumenon’ (known as a limiting factor rather than as a ‘beyond’ factor: somewhat equivalent to ‘horizons’ in the phenomenological sense).
If you’re only interested in some illusionary ‘pure’ ontological perspective, then I am at a loss as to how you expect to approach such an issue as wholly separate from the epistemic condition we’re ‘surrounded’ by. The divisions of interest regarding ‘epistemology’ and ‘ontology’ are convenient delineations (just as ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are), but if we’re to untangle the use of making an object or subject distinction then we cannot, in any reasonable sense that I can see, hold strictly to the ‘ontic’ by framing it as redundant of any sense of an epistemic question.
Personally it’s obvious enough to me that the ‘objective’ is due to ‘intersubjectivity’ - if there was a permanent universal distinction between these ‘views’ that was perceivable then I don’t see how we’d perceive them at all - simply because two universal terms that meet wholly vanish into insignificance (what matters is what changes ‘in relation to’ so if there is no change in relation there is no ‘being’)*
*As an example of this if we all viewed the world as being of various tones of ‘yellow’ then we wouldn’t have any equivalent means of referring to ‘yellow’ other than to call it ‘light’ - it wouldn’t be a ‘tone’ as its absence would equate to no visual observation whatsoever. The only possible backdoor would be by way of some analogy of the limits of the human visual spectrum by referring to something like UV or IR in this hypothetical world fo ‘yellowness’.
The view from nowhere exists because science has to abstract from human perceptual relativity to get at the way things are, and not just as they appear to us. Otherwise, we're left with ancient skepticism or some form of idealism.
Quoting Andrew M
That's nice and all, but one still has to deal with intentionality, consciousness and epistemology.
Subject is the referent of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious.
Object is what is outside the subject.
Some (few) philosophers identify it, but the distinction is clear at the analytical level.
A useful first step,
1) Avoiding linguistic meanings, as instructed by the OP.
2) Dispensing with "objectivity" and "subjectivity" as "objective" and "subjective" condition, respectively.
I have:
1) Object: perceived particular.
2) Objective: perceptive.
3) Subject: cognised particular.
4) Subjective: cognisant.
So, subject/object: a convenient epistemological distinction and ontological unity (comprising awareness).
As for ‘conscious’ it would be useful to distinguish between ‘conscious awareness’ and mere ‘consciousness’ (which ate technically different). There are many issues between/within fields of investigation that cause incredible confusion - often between/within cognitive neurosciences and psychology.
Philosophers have a terrible habit of conflating this confusion for the laymen.
Yes. So what’s “mistaken” exactly? That Kant believed in an outside world? I’m not seeing your point.
From the Kantian epistemological thesis, yes, it is a mistake: we as subjects have representations of the outside world, but they are not phenomena. The representations of objects as such are, first, appearances from sensation, and intuitions, from extant experience. Phenomena are “...undetermined objects of empirical intuition...”, thus not technically representations.
(There is a neo-Kantian, analytic argument** that phenomena indeed represent the synthesis of appearance with intuition, a systemic method Kant does use. But it is worthwhile to consider that Kant doesn’t so argue, because the phenomena to him is “undetermined”, and as such, would represent nothing. Also, Kant does not say objects represent something, but are themselves represented, so it is consistent for phenomena, as “undetermined objects”, not to represent anything.)
It is also mistaken to say “the phenomenon is all there is for us”, for such claim disallows the possibility for any and all pure a priori rational activity, or, that which occurs in us without any empirical intuition connected to it. This won’t matter to those who reject a priori knowledge, or synthetic a priori logical propositions in general***, Nevertheless, the domain here is “talking more about the Kantian variation”, so it would be better suited to follow Kant when looking at a Kantian variation.
And forget noumena; the notion of them is utterly irrelevant in discussions by humans about humans.
**Strawson, 1966
***Hume, 1748; Quine, 1951
There is only phenomenal experience as that is all the experience there can be. Everything else is ‘empty’ or ‘blind’. The concept of ‘noumenon’ is deadly important so as not to fall down and never ending reiteration of rabbit holes.
A priori there is no experience (hence ‘a priori’). The ‘phenomenon’ is all we have.
So this is incorrect:
Quoting Mww
You cannot have ‘rational activity’ without experience - if you think that then I’m intrigued what you mean by ‘rational activity’ because clearly you mean something different to what I have in mind.
This is a philosophy forum. Therefore, it is advisable to use words in the common philosophical sense. I have mentioned above the usual philosophical meanings. They are common in the history of philosophy, epistemology, anthropology, ontology, etc. I agree that in some cases further clarification may be necessary. Although this is not the same as arbitrarily creating personal meanings that only add confusion to confusion.
I would like you to clarify the distinction between "conscious awareness" and mere "consciousness" and why it is necessary. It sounds, but I do not see its direct relationship to the subject-object distinction.
Of course they are.
Quoting Mww
The phenomenal world is the world of representations. All else is noumenonal, the thing in itself. This isn't that hard.
Quoting Xtrix
Physicalist pap.
It's not physicalist. Read some Kant and get back to me.
Kant was what was being discussed. Try to keep up. Go hero-worship somewhere else.
I'm not a Kantian nor do I advocate for Kant's philosophy. But let's at least understand what he was saying.
This is correct, another way to say all experience is of phenomena. Good thing I didn’t say pure rational activity is an experience, and went so far as to say it cannot be.
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Quoting I like sushi
Also correct, which is the explanation for why phenomena are not representations. In context, intuitions will always be blind (undetermined objects) until a concept Is synthesized with them by understanding. Both together are the form of all cognitions a posteriori. It is of note that Kant doesn’t give a similar conjunction for conceptions alone, as in conceptions without something are.....something. This is because there are conceptions that have no intuition associated with them, re: space, time, the categories, which are relevant to the very possibility of human empirical cognition, or, experience.
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Quoting I like sushi
Again, from the Kantian epistemological system, with which we....you and I....are currently involved, that is categorically false because I must have something clearly different in mind. A good example is right here on this thread, where the dissension between being and existence has run amok. A human cannot even begin to cognize the being of anything whatsoever, the objective reality of a particular, which translates into an experience, without first granting the existence of it a priori. And because there is no experience of “existence” in itself, but rather the existence of something, nor is there experience of any of the other pure categories, it is quite clear it is not only possible, but absolutely necessary, to indulge in rational activity without involving experience for it.
One would do well not to confuse rational activity with conscious thought. Mental machinations antecedent to judgement are rational activities, judgement and the consequences of it are conscious thought. And THAT is the primary ground for the notion of the subject/object dualism of the Kantian variety.
In terms of "the philosophical basis for modern science" (which was also being discussed) what has Kant contributed?
Now you're diverting. There's plenty that can be said about Kant's influence on modern science. But first one needs to understand Kant. Saying it's mere "physicalist pap" shows you're not worth having that discussion with, however.
Oh. Well.......can’t argue with that logic.
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Quoting Xtrix
True, but that doesn’t say phenomena are representations. If it did, it would be tautological, re: the phenomenal world is the world of phenomena. Thus, to have meaning, either it is not the world of representations, or phenomena are not representations. Take your pick.
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Quoting Xtrix
It isn’t that hard because it isn’t that correct.
In Kant, phenomena are only experienced through our representations. What is the object "beyond" our representations? The ding an sich, the noumenon. So yes, the world and the phenomena of the world are representations. Saying phenomena is something other than or different from our representations, which is what you're arguing, is to speak about the noumenon, which is unknowable in Kant. Phenomena that isn't representation and isn't noumenal is meaningless.
It would be more useful if you cleared this up. If you really wish to know the difference between what I said you can google it easily enough.
You seem to have said something that can be interpreted in different ways. Is “consciousness and/or subconscious” a subject or object? What is “outside” of what?
To translate what you wrote ... Subject is the term referred to that is of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious (which makes said consciousness and/or subconscious the ‘object’ or another ‘subject’ - let us assume the former given what follows)
Object is what is outside the subject (meaning the ... this doesn’t work unless you meant subject means object and object means subject - thus backing up the point made in the first place, which I assume yiu didn’t intend?)
“...If we find those who are engaged in metaphysical pursuits, unable to come to an understanding as to the method which they ought to follow; if we find them, after the most elaborate preparations, invariably brought to a stand before the goal is reached, and compelled to retrace their steps and strike into fresh paths, we may then feel quite sure that they are far from having attained to the certainty of scientific progress and may rather be said to be merely groping about in the dark....”
It is quite clear Kant thought science to be the direction metaphysics should follow, which is pure reason applied to something, not that pure reason should be the direction science should follow.
Not to say you can’t forget Kant if you wish. Nobody cares one way or the other. Just don’t go along with ol’ Uncle Albert, without knowing the rest of the story.
Thanks for answering this question.
“....We cannot think any object except by means of the categories; we cannot cognize any thought except by means of intuitions corresponding to these conceptions. Now all our intuitions are sensuous, and our cognition, in so far as the object of it is given, is empirical. But empirical cognition is experience...”
A speculative system has an sequential order for its logical constituents. If the order is wrong or misappropriated, the system is falsified. If your system says phenomena are experienced through representations, so be it. Just don’t call it the Kantian system.
Real physical objects external to us, are experienced through our representations.
It's precisely the Kantian system. How else is phenomena experienced?
Quoting Mww
This is not Kant at all. Nor would he ever make any such claims. In that case the "real physical objects" would be the noumenon. If they're physical objects, or anything else whatsoever, then they're representations.
Again, this is introductory stuff. Not difficult. See the Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Aesthetic.
Or, if you like, Schopenhauer puts it clearly:
"What is extended in space, and hence the objective, material world in general, exists as such simply and solely in our representation, and that it is false and indeed absurd to attribute to it, as such, an existence outside all representation and independent of the knowing subject, and so to assume a matter positively and absolutely existing in itself."
But that assumes our representations are not based on something related existing outside and independent of the knowing subject. After-all, why do we have the representations we do have? It would be weird if time and space have no correlate outside of experience. How would the mind create them with no basis for a temporal and spatial existence?
Correct. Representations for us, re: the human cognitive system. That does not say anything whatsoever about the object itself. But they are real physical objects nonetheless.
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Quoting Xtrix
Apparently, it is, and, apparently, he did. Ironically enough, from the very Aesthetic you so kindly suggested.
“...For, otherwise, we should require to affirm an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd...”
“...The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation (...) That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation.... (...) It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us a posteriori.... (...) By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space.
I would say obvious to even the most casual observer, but apparently, it isn’t.
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Your Schopenhauer is pre-dated by:
“....Now, if it appears that when, on the one hand, we assume that our cognition conforms to its objects as things in themselves, the unconditioned cannot be thought without contradiction, and that when, on the other hand, we assume that our representation of things as they are given to us, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects, as phenomena, conform to our mode of representation, the contradiction disappears: we shall then be convinced of the truth of that which we began by assuming for the sake of experiment; we may look upon it as established that the unconditioned does not lie in things as we know them, or as they are given to us, but in things as they are in themselves, beyond the range of our cognition....”
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Quoting Xtrix
Agreed. Makes me wonder why you’re having so much trouble with it.
No. That would be the thing-in-itself which we cannot know, since everything we can know are representations (from "sensibility" in space and time). Any story you make up about what the thing-in-itself itself comes from your experience of the world. Schopenhauer claims it's the "will," for example. To say it's "physical objects" or anything like that is already missing the point -- they too are representations.
Meaning the thing-in-itself, the noumenon. Yes, of course. Representations "for us" is redundant.
Quoting Mww
What does the "they" refer to? The representations or the "object itself"?
The quotes you provide say exactly what I've said all along: phenomena and representation are the same thing, otherwise there would be no need for the idea of the thing in itself. Are you failing to grasp this or what? At this point I'm not sure what you're arguing, because you're making the case for me.
Quoting Mww
Yes, true...and?
Quoting Mww
Oh I see, it's in fact I who am having trouble. How Trumpian.
How this got started.
If not phenomena, then what is phenomena? Something "undetermined." But not an unknown thing in itself. Something between that is undifferentiated but with which we have representations of (which is the thing in itself in Kant). Then I hear something about physical objects.
Your whole thesis is confused. The onus is on you to demonstrate where Kant says there's some other realm between the known and unknown where this phenomena supposedly lies (since it's not "representation" according to you, yet we can still talk about it). Maybe the Twilight Zone?
No. Phenomena and representation are different qualifications of the same thing, that being the external object. Representations are general things known to reason a priori, phenomena are unknown particulars. Appearances and intuitions are representations of the faculty of sensibility; conceptions are the representations of the faculty of understanding. Phenomena are undetermined empirical objects of the faculty of imagination, internal to us, thus cannot be the same as the thing-in-itself, which is external to us.
And there is a need for the idea of the thing-in-itself, because our knowledge of things is predicated on their representation, or, how they appear to us, which is NOT the thing. Our method may not give a correct representation of the thing as it really is. We just don’t have any choice in the matter, so the critique is a method created to regulate reason within a certain set of criteria.
It’s all in The Book.
Different qualifications of the "external object"? What does "different qualifications" mean? So phenomena and representation are different or not? If not, which is what you seemed to be saying, then how do they differ? If they're the same, then that's exactly what I said above.
Quoting Mww
This is completely wrong. Find me one supporting sentence from Kant that states this. The phenomena being "unknown particulars" is meaningless. If it's phenomena, it's representation.
Find your own.
The forms of sensibility are time and space. These are a priori. We can't experience anything at all except through these forms. Matter, causality, phenomena or objects of any kind are experienced through these forms -- as representations. Beyond these representations is the unknown and unknowable -- the noumenon, the thing in itself.
This is Kant. To say phenomena is in some Twilight realm and "really exist" outside our representations is a complete misunderstanding. To say phenomena is just a "qualification" of an "external object" is likewise a misunderstanding -- any object whatsoever is an entity, a being, a phenomenon -- we only experience this as representation. What is the object, the phenomenon, the "external world" in itself? The noumenon.
I sometimes can't believe this is a philosophy forum.
Yeah, I figured as much.
I'm sorry you're so confused about this. Perhaps studying Kant would help.
And I don't have to "find my own" because you won't find your conception of "phenomena" in Kant anywhere.
Kant:
"Accordingly, it is only the form of sensuous intuition by which we can intuit things a priori, but by which we can know objects only as they appear to us (to our senses), not at the are in themselves[...]" Prolegomena, p. 17
The "thing-in-itself" is a crucial part of Kant's philosophy.
Thus,
Quoting Mww
Is a bit ridiculous. And probably the source of his confusion.
Hmmmm......here’s ridiculous: the claim, or even the intimation, that because noumena and the thing in itself are both unknowable to or by means of the human system, they are therefore the same thing. And the thing-in-itself is not crucial, per se, to the Kantian epistemology; it is merely given ontologically as extant, therefore inescapable and irrelevant. If it was crucial, why didn’t he talk about it, other than to say there’s nothing there to talk about? Reason has to do with what goes on in our heads, with respect to what’s outside it but not because of it.
Hell.....I can do this chit all day.
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Let the readers judge who’s confused. No one may comment, but if they judge by the content of the dialogue, they will certainly have the means to think it.
I guess Kant is ridiculous then.
The "thing in itself" and "noumenon" is essentially the same thing, yes. If you have evidence otherwise, I'd be glad to hear it. Even a simple Wikipedia search admits it's pretty open-ended:
"In Kantian philosophy, the unknowable noumenon is often linked to the unknowable "thing-in-itself" (in Kant's German, Ding an sich), although how to characterize the nature of the relationship is a question still open to some controversy."
I could be completely wrong, but to say it's ridiculous is just nonsense. I see no evidence so far that I am wrong, of course -- except for your armchair philosophy.
Quoting Mww
Oh lord. Is this a joke?
Quoting Mww
You mean talk nonsense? Yes, that's obvious.
I notice also you're trying to avoid defending your ridiculous claims about phenomena. Which is a smart move on your part, to avoid further embarrassment.
This is Locke’s representative realism, not Kant.
Brilliant analysis.
You use wiki, I use Kant.
‘Nuff said.
Oh. It is armchair philosophy, yes. It also correct.
Cool. You’re back. Your self-restraint is admirable.
No, you haven't. If you'd like to, feel free. I won't hold my breath.
And actually I've used both Kant and Schopenhauer. You've made a claim about phenomena and representations being different, refused to provide any relevant evidence to support the claim, told me to find it myself, then changed the subject. Now you want to behave as an adolescent. That's fine. Doesn't change the facts.
I refer again to https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/369165. (For anyone serious who's interested in Kant's transcendental idealism.)
Representations and phenomena are the same thing, and beyond this the thing in itself. There is no phenomena as "unknown external object" -- that's the noumenon.
And that's where it stands thus far.
Quoting Mww
Again: what "qualifications"?
Representations are not what's a priori -- the forms of intuition are.
Phenomena are not unknown particulars -- this is simply meaningless.
I really hope you don't teach.
Quoting Xtrix
What I mean is, that to say that there's a representation of, or a representation and, is suggestive of representative realism, which is more like Locke's philosophy. I think the correct description of Kant's view is that they're not representations, they're phenomena, appearance. But, Kant himself muddies the waters by using the term 'representation', which naturally leads to the question 'representation of what'? This is discussed here
I think one clue is that Kant will often say mere representations, implying that the representation is not a reference to something else, but simply part of the machinery of thought which only deals in representations. (There's a parallel in Buddhist philosophy which speaks of the play of mind being 'mere appearance' i.e. not 'appearance' as distinct from something putatively real.)
OK. This differs how from the following:
Quoting Xtrix
(Which is where this diversion started.)
If there's any "difference" at all, it's simply that phenomena usually refer to something "outside" the subject -- i.e., the object. But this, in turn, is only known as representation -- or appearance, if you prefer. Makes no difference. Now, what the phenomenon or object is in itself we can't know and can say nothing about, because our world is the world of representation (meaning nothing other than sensations in time and space, activity of the brain). If representations "of" something - apart from what they are -makes any sense, it's of something we can't fully know since our understanding and knowledge is bounded by time and space.
This is why Schopenhauer titles his book "World as Will and Representation." He identifies the thing in itself with the will, whereas Kant said there's nothing to be said about it. Was Schopenhauer way off base as well?
Not once did I bring up Locke in this discussion.
When do I say "representation of" or "representation and"? I'd like to see the context that was "suggestive" of this.
All my quotes are right out of CPR 1787. I use...if you MUST know....Miekeljohn online for C&P, backup by both Guyer, Cambridge 1998, and Kemp Smith, London, 1929, in print. Sometimes I will interchange the translations for clarity. And Palmquist,1993 for technical glossary with interpretive guidance.
All the evidence needed has been posted, except the distinction on noumena and phenomena. I don’t bother because the theory with which the critiques are concerned have to do with phenomena alone.
Yes, and say nothing about the phenomenon being different from representation. But in any case, that's not what I was referring to. I asked for citations regarding:
Quoting Xtrix
Which you then claim you gave, while I merely cite Wikipedia.
So the point stands: you haven't.
Here:
Quoting Xtrix
OK. I already referenced that sentence myself in the former post. That doesn't make it Lockean. But regardless, I'll rephrase: subjects have representations, some of which we call the outside world.
The point doesn’t stand; I specifically said I gave no quotes on the distinction. The claim I referenced has to do with the phenomena/representation distinction.
(Sigh) If I must.....this sure as hell won’t be in wiki:
“.....The conception of a noumenon, that is, of a thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a thing in itself (solely through the pure understanding), is not self-contradictory, for we are not entitled to maintain that sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition. Nay, further, this conception is necessary to restrain sensuous intuition within the bounds of phenomena, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensuous cognition; for things in themselves, which lie beyond its province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that this cognition does not extend its application to all that the understanding thinks. But, after all, the possibility of such noumena is quite incomprehensible, and beyond the sphere of phenomena, all is for us a mere void; that is to say, we possess an understanding whose province does problematically extend beyond this sphere, but we do not possess an intuition, indeed, not even the conception of a possible intuition, by means of which objects beyond the region of sensibility could be given us, and in reference to which the understanding might be employed assertorically. The conception of a noumenon is therefore merely a limitative conception and therefore only of negative use. But it is not an arbitrary or fictitious notion, but is connected with the limitation of sensibility, without, however, being capable of presenting us with any positive datum beyond this sphere....”
Cogitated as a thing-in-itself, meaning cogitate noumena the same way the thing in itself is cogitated, both solely through pure understanding, which gives us no cognitions at all.
Thing-in-itself called noumena to indicate a limit, the limit being the same for both, the limit being sensible intuitions.
Noumena is not thing-in-itself. It is merely treated like one by the understanding. Thing-in-itself is external to us, noumena are intellectual intuitions given from pure understanding, thus necessarily within us. They cannot possibly be the same thing.
The only justification for conceiving noumena is because we are not entitled to claim our form of cognition is the only kind there is.
Happy now? You told me this was all basic stuff, but you didn’t seem to understand any of it. You admit to not being a Kantian and not holding with his philosophy, which doesn’t necessarily presupposes you know it, so I guess it’s ok.
Yes, you said you gave no quotes AFTER saying you cite Kant while I cite wikipedia regarding noumenon and the thing in itself, which you initially claimed was "ridiculous." How about going back and reading.
Quoting Mww (Bold mine)
Exactly right.
Yet:
Quoting Mww
First, Kant doesn't say noumena, he says noumenon and thing-in-itself, in the passage cited. Let's at least be clear. Pluralizing one and not the other is unclear. Notice when he does mention noumena (plural), he also pluralizes "phenomenon."
Second, look at the quote. Breaking it down further: the conception of a noumenon - a thing which must be cogitated NOT as an object of sense [representation] but as a thing in itself. I don't know how much more clear that can be. And this is your citation, remember.
Quoting Mww
This is NOT what Kant says, as demonstrated by your own citation. Noumenon is no more "within us" than the thing-in-itself. There's no indication that there's a difference -- in fact Kant is literally saying they're the same thing in this passage.
What Kant is getting at in this passage is whether the thing-in-itself (the noumenon) is contradictory. Nowhere does he say the thing in itself is "external" and the noumenon "within us." Nowhere. You added that in yourself. Nor should you expect this, since the point he's making isn't even to differentiate the two -- it's justifying the use of the conception of "noumenon."
Quoting Mww
I would be embarrassed if I were in your positron. I hope others are reading this -- I'd like others' opinions of this passage. At the very least, it certainly doesn't support any notion that noumenon and thing in itself are different things - which is your claim. Quite the opposite, actually. Despite this embarrassment -- since you obviously don't see it -- you feel entitled about how little I understand? As my nephew would say: "that's cringe."
Quoting Mww
I get no joy in being proven right over and over again. I'd much rather learn something new.
Quoting Mww (My italics)
He's literally saying what I've been asserting twice in a passage you have chosen. And yet you still maintain that somehow he's saying the thing in itself is "external" and the noumenon "necessarily within us." That's telling.
I congratulate you on one true statement. This is indeed what Kant is driving at in the passage. It's also simply repeating, almost verbatim, what he stated.
Yes, it’s telling. That you don’t know he talks about the thing-in-itself in another section, describing it as the real, albeit known object of sensibility, and here, on noumena, he talks of the pure understanding cogitating noumena in the same way it cogitates the thing-in-itself. That you can’t deduce from that that one is internal (from pure understanding), the other external (from sensibility), is not my problem, is telling indeed. And that you fail to grasp they cannot be the same thing because of that alone, is just as telling.
And I congratulate you on finally getting a clue.
To establish this dichotomy, beyond that which is expressive, and of no greater function, lies in gross error, and reflects little else in its occurrence.
No, he doesn't talk about that -- because what you're saying makes absolutely no sense. Which isn't a surprise. And if what he talks about "later" is so very important to your point, then why leave it out? Especially when the point was to demonstrate how the "thing in itself" and the "noumenon" are supposedly different? Kind of a crucial missing piece there. And no, I don't have the Critique of Pure Reason memorized. If you have a point to make, the make it. So far you haven't. And you certainly haven't earned being taken on faith. Cite the passage or shut up. You're boring me.
Quoting Mww
You really have no clue.
Here's what Kant is saying, for anyone else listening: The noumenon (the thing in itself) is simply that beyond our sensations and perceptions in time and space and hence unknowable -- yet not self-contradictory. That's it. If the "thing in itself" and the "noumenon" are different in any way, it's not indicated here, never mind one being "external" and the other "internal."
Reading comprehension wasn't your strong suit I see. Pity.
The noumenon (the unknown) is "internal" because it's "cognitated" by the pure understanding. The thing in itself (the unknown) is "external" because it's an object of sensibility.
Does anyone on here take this seriously?
Maybe no one's even listening. I don't blame them, given how ridiculous the above forumlation is -- without one citation of support.
There is the obvious sense in which a human being is needed to propose a scientific theory. Also any theory will be in human language, both ordinary and technical.
So I think naturalists and dualists can agree on that.
But what a scientific theory is about doesn't require a "knowing subject". For example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before life emerged to construct a theory of heliocentrism.
I think Special Relativity provides a useful model here. Things can have different properties in different reference frames (and one can translate between reference frames). But there is no absolute reference frame for how things "really" are.
Similarly, things can have properties that depend on one's perceptual machinery (which again we can discover). But there is no perception-free perspective.
Quoting Marchesk
Yes, but it's sensible to stop using demonstrably broken frameworks. Imagine trying to model the Big Bang using the Ptolemaic model. Perhaps it can be done, but why unnecessarily handicap oneself?
“...Suppose now, on the other hand, that we have undertaken this criticism, and have learnt that an object may be taken in two senses, first, as a phenomenon, secondly, as a thing in itself...”
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not known by means of these representations...”
“...Now although phenomena are not things in themselves, and are nevertheless the only thing given to us to be cognized...”
How much more of your homework am I supposed to do? Even you should be able to deduce the thing-in-itself is eternal to us, whether or not Kant said so much in so many words.
HEY!! Use your own pejorative, dammit!!!
And don’t call me a joke. You already used that one, too
Simply put, phenomenon is sensible experience and noumenon is not, and cannot, be experienced sensibly. The experience is given to us but the thing in itself isn’t and never can be - it is, as a phenomenal conception, useful as a realisation of limit (without which limit sensibility would be nought as if everything is sensible to us in full extension there is no ‘difference’ perceivable where there is no limit of experience).
Here are direct quotes respectively:
And then ...
The cantankerous one is very much correct. That doesn’t stop them being a needless impolite and obnoxious person.
Note: It is worth stating that people still disagree in many areas regarding Kant’s work. I haven’t come across many that have bothered to read Kant cover to cover and fewer that care to agree about his points. I can certainly see how one could interpret what he says as stating a ‘subtle difference,’ but I’d feel overly generous doing so.
Not at all. the point of using them alongside each other is to show how they stand with respect to each other. Your quote is exemplary:
Things in themselves are 'called' noumena by the understanding. But a nomination is not an equivalence. And insofar as noumena mark the limit of the sensible, it is as I said: that which is defined in relation to our capacity for knowledge. The thing in itself, however, is not defined by its relation to sensibility. It's rather defined by it's total non-relation to it: it is indifferent to sensibility. Is it not the obverse of the sensible, the recto to its verso, as it were, as the noumenon is. It simply has nothing to do with it.
As for the second quote, the transcendental object is not the thing in itself, so the paragraph lends nothing to your interpretation. As Kant says, "This transcendental object cannot be separated from the sense data, for nothing is then left through which it might be thought. Consequently it is not in itself an object of knowledge, but only the representation of appearances under the concept of an object in general ... The sensibility (and its field, that of the appearances) is itself limited by the understanding in such fashion that it does not have to do with things in themselves but only with the mode in which, owing to our subjective constitution, they appear." (A251-252).
Recall that the 'object in general' is itself a conceptual form supplied by the understanding: "I conceive of the understanding as a special faculty and ascribe to it the concept of an object in general (a concept that even the clearest consciousness of our intutition would not at all disclose)." So it's no good confusing the thing-in-itself with the transcendental object.
--
It's worth connecting this to the overall theme of the thread: for Kant, subject and object are indeed correlates of each other, and one cannot think the one without the other. However, the very object-form or the form that is 'the object' is itself supplied by the subject, so 'objects' cannot be understood to mean 'things out there'. It is true that if there were no subjects, there would be no objects. But attests less to any kind of idealism ("it's all in my head") than to the fact the the world does not come pre-packed as objects to begin with. Hence the incredibly limited role that should be afforded to both by anyone who is not a Kantian.
Quoting StreetlightX
It is, and he says so. He must, necessarily, use sensibility to talk of any proposition. That’s the hard part to grasp.
I don’t think we’re going to agree here so I’ll just move on. It’s a tiring subject if we both think we’re correct.
Again, this is not true. Kant famously says that we can "think" the in itself, even as we cannot experience it - that is, even it if has no relation to the sensible: "Thus it does indeed follow that all possible speculative knowledge of reason is limited to mere objects of experience. But our further contention must also be duly borne in mind, namely, that though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in position at least to think them as things in themselves".
In a footnote to this he further notes that sensibility does not act as a constraint on thought - only conceptual consistency does: "I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought. This suffices for the possibility of the concept, even though I may not be able to answer for there being, in the sum of all possibilities, an object corresponding to it."(B xvii).
This all follows from that fact that the thing in itself is not an object of knowledge; hence, not defined in relation to sensibility; hence distinct from noumena. Not all thought is speculative - that is, knowledge oriented - in nature. Hence the critique of 'pure' reason.
It’s naive of the OP to assume everyone is going to come to agreement about Kant’s work. The reason it is still regarded today as one of the best philosophical works ever written is that it does throw up so much discussion a debate. I imagine we agree there at least :)
I can see why you think what you think. I just believe you’re wrong and I’m right. If he literally refers to a thing in itself being noumenon (on more than one occasion) I’m happy to assume he meant it. Personally I find the issue of framing the meaning of Transcendental as more problematic.
A thread on COPR would be a monster ... maybe it’s just too much to take on though (and pointless for anyone who hasn’t literally read it cover to cover and put hours of thought/study into it).
Let me be precise about what you said. Space and time are a priori forms for sensitivity. Perceptions in our common language are formed in the conditions of space and time. This is studied in the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason. Causality, on the other hand, is an a priori form of physics. It is the condition for making empirical judgements. This is studied in the second part of the CPR.
Therefore, the phenomenon is what is perceived under the a priori conditions of space and time. Causality is not a phenomenon but a category of statements. Both are not objective but subjective although they are universal and necessary. Currently we would speak of "intersubjective". Everyone captures things under these conditions, but they are not properties of things in themselves, but fixed by our reason.
Ridiculous or not, phenomenon and thing in-itself are synonymous in Kant. They are very important concepts in a negative sense. They are the unattainable horizon of human research. They provoke the metaphysical illusions of God, of the Universe, of the soul and so on.
Lmao they are opposites.
This may be absurd, but it's the opposite of what Kant said. Noumenon and the thing itself cannot be known simply because they fall outside the human (a priori) conditions of knowledge.
Both the quotes you provided didn't, but sure, perhaps somewhere so far unstated he did.
This is like men and women. A small difference. Long live the small difference!
All joking aside, the only difference you've noticed involves a lot of other big ones.
Anyway, I was just arguing against the distinction. Someone, perhaps you, had claimed that there was none.
The most spectacular reference is quantum mechanics, where the act of measuring creates the measured.
Kantian epistemology is very relevant to the current theory of science with only one important correction: what he believed were a priori conditions of any form of understanding (intellect) were in fact the conditions of Newtonian science. The same is true of Euclidean mathematics.
Quoting I like sushi
These are to ways of speak of the same thing. Ontologically and epistemologically. This is said in your quote: Thing in-itself=phenomenon
Sorry. My mistake. Noumena=things in-themselves.
"But from the fact that we call 'phenomena' what is sensed in space and time, it follows that it has to make sense to talk about what is not a phenomenon and what Kant calls the thing in-itself or 'noumena'." (My translation Spanish-English)
But even in relativity, there is still an objective truth. Space and time may distort relative to an observer, but a spacetime interval is the same for all observers. Simultaneity may be relative to an observer, but cause and effect are still the same for all observers. And the impetus behind all of that, the speed of light is the same for all observers: all the things that are relative are reasoned to be so because they must be in order to account for the speed of light being an objective, non-relative value.
For analogy think of a geometric shape that is circular in profile along the X-axis, square in profile along the Y-axis, and triangular in profile along the Z-axis (so a cylinder with two very slanty ends). Three observers looking at it along those three axes would "disagree about its shape", and they would each be correct so far as the 2D profile of its shape goes, but nevertheless it still has one single objective 3D shape, of which each 2D view shows only part. Relativity is like that, but 3D-to-4D instead.
From CPR:
"it also follows naturally from the concept of an appearance in general that something must correspond to it which is not in itself appearance, for appearance can be nothing for itself and outside of our kind of representation; thus, if there is not to be a constant circle, the word "appearance" must already indicate a relation to something the immediate representation of which is, to be sure, sensible, but which in itself, without this constitution of our sensibility (on which the form of our intuition is grounded), must be something, i.e., an object independent of sensibility. Now from this arises the concept of a noumenon, which, however, is not at all positive and does not signify a determinate cognition of something in general, in which I abstract from all form of sensible intuition". (A251–2)
Where is the opposition? In itself and noumenon are the same: out of any form of sensibility or cognition.
And in any case, the quote you provided in this post says nothing about the in itself.
The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible (it belongs to the order of the intelligible).
The thing in itself marks the limit of the conditions of possibility of knowledge.
The conditions of possibility of knowledge are not exhausted by sensibility ("intuitions without concepts are blind"!).
The noumenon =/= the thing in itself.
The issue seems to be if we’re to only apply the term ‘noumenon’ in a negative sense (because it’s tangible), but at the heart of it the use of ‘noumenon’ is equivalent to ‘the thing in itself’ as neither are ‘objects of sensibility’ they’re only limiting factors of understanding (and necessarily limited).
The thing in itself is ‘positive noumenon’ - noumenon serves only in a negative sense, which is obvious enough given that we cannot know of anything beyond our sensible limits.
If we ask ourslves what is meant by ‘the thing in itself’ in a positive sense and in a negative (limiting sense) perhaps the similarity will become clear.
The subtler problem is addressing the concept of ‘noumenon’ as essentially unknowable as a known concept - that is where the seeming contrariness comes into play alongside the meaning of ‘transcendental’.
@Xtrix What does the OP have to say? Where are we to go from here? I still don’t quite grasp the intent of the OP regarding the direction this thread is meant to go?
Which is exactly what Kant says must happen:
"That, therefore, which we entitle 'noumenon' must be understood as being such only in a negative sense ... The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment ... It is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility". (B309/B311)
[quote=Wikipedia] 'In metaphysics, the noumenon (/?nu?m?n?n/, UK also /?na?-/; from Greek: ????????) is a posited object or event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception. The term noumenon is generally used when contrasted with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to anything that can be apprehended by or is an object of the senses. ...
The Greek word ???????o? nooúmenon (plural ???????? nooúmena) is the neuter middle-passive present participle of ????? noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word ???? noûs, an Attic contracted form of ???? nóos[a] "perception, understanding, mind." A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought". ...
In Kant's Critique, our minds may attempt to correlate in useful ways, perhaps even closely accurate ways, with the structure and order of the various aspects of the universe, but cannot know these "things-in-themselves" (noumena) directly. Rather, we must infer the extent to which the human rational faculties can reach the object of "things-in-themselves" by our observations of the manifestations of those things that can be perceived via the physical senses, that is, of phenomena, and by ordering these perceptions in the mind infer the validity of our perceptions to the rational categories used to understand them in a rational system, this rational system (transcendental analytic), being the categories of the understanding as free from empirical contingency.
According to Kant, objects of which we are cognizant via the physical senses are merely representations of unknown somethings—what Kant refers to as the transcendental object—as interpreted through the a priori or categories of the understanding. These unknown somethings are manifested within the noumenon—although we can never know how or why as our perceptions of these unknown somethings via our physical senses are bound by the limitations of the categories of the understanding and we are therefore never able to fully know the "thing-in-itself".[/quote]
I actually think Kant's use of the term is rather confused. Early in his career he wrote a thesis on Plato's forms, but then later rejected the existence of forms. But it seems to me from the derivation of 'noumenal' as an 'object of thought' that it is rather close to the 'form' of the thing - that which makes a thing intelligible.
This is where I find hylomorphic dualism more credible. It sees matter as being basically unintelligible until it is 'impressed' with form (the analogy is, like a seal forms the wax.) But it's the form of a thing that makes it intelligible. So we sense the particular through the material senses, but we know the form intellectually:
from here.
I suspect that the resolution to this might be found in the writings of the analytical Thomists - who sought to reconcile Aquinas and Kant - but it's rather arcane and not especially accessible without knowledge of languages (especially French). Nevertheless I'm going to persist with it, I think perhaps via Karl Rahner and John Haldane.
In any case, I agree with the remark above, in that 'the thing in itself' is beyond our cognitive horizons, as our knowledge is limited to how it appears to us (which is the meaning of phenomena). I think a lot of trouble is caused by trying to second guess what this mysterious 'in itself' is, as if trying to peek behind the curtain. But that misses the point; knowledge is inherently limited or perspectival in some basic sense (although that doesn't mean that it's not empirically valid.)
Right. I've already rectified it.
Isn't calling the pruychos "bolontes" relating the pruychos to bolontes? Hmm. One of us has a problem with English and I'm afraid it's not me this time.
The same can, and probably should, be said of other major philosophical works. In my experience many students of philosophy (who’ve actually attended university) tend to have to rely mostly on secondhand accounts as tackling the works in and of themselves - in completion - is simply not viable within a few given years of youth (and generally speaking most students of philosophy attending university tend to be too inexperienced in life to grasp the broader implications posed by people who’ve lived a full life).
Wiki and stanford or britannica ency. are all decent ways of finding items of interest though.
As an example I remember someone expressing their opinion about Nietzsche to me many years ago. I was very interested and asked what they would recommend I read first ... then they admitted they’d never actually read anything of his other than a couple of wiki entries and heard him mentioned here and there in other historical references.
The reason I read Kant was because someone online kept harping on about him saying I had no idea what I was talking about (not that I was talking about Kant), so I read COPR and then confronted his views about Kant and questioned them ... he then admitted he’d never actually read it at university and only covered it via other philosophical commentaries that summed up his ideas.
Such is realm of academic philosophy. A great deal of it is merely parroting what the tutor says, or doing scholarly work (the latter has value the former just distances the actual work from the reader).
The world stands' as mere appearance within the faculties of the subject, one for whom thought is an active exercise in reflection, and despite being rendered perceptible with an almost faultless clarity, there is much of substance that remains absent within its whole, as we perceive it to be. This, is an unassailable truth of which we are ever-aware, that takes primacy in all matters of the experiential. That which persists beyond the farthest reach of all that can be apprehended, by means of the preceding instruments of cognition, may nonetheless reside within the mind in the form of its object, as it is truly, amongst itself, for no sake but its own, and that may furthermore be conceived in much the same way as described before, without facilitating any transition within the understanding of those in question, the subject(s), to a state at which there is exceeded all ability of the mind to attain clearness therefore, in regard to the object as appearance of whatsoever is considered.
Herein, one is forced to confront the difficulty in imparting richness to its form, to what is known only insofar as one speaks of it in the sense of the intangible; an idealized notion that can be held as existent, only to the extent that it conforms to one's chosen intuitions of the object to which it pertains, yet is itself wholly detached from the intuitive. When one provides even the faintest reference to the 'Noumenal', one is left only with the impression of it being hollow; a contrived husk that defies all aspects of the sensible; contrary to all that can be found, as predicated by experience, though a necessary element, through which thought must be granted on account of the faculties deriving their object, from a broad conception thereof, which manifests only by virtue of the immaterial. The Noumenal.
For those whose preference is conciseness, see the following;
1. The world is made intelligible by the faculties of the mind, wherefore phenomena contained within it are represented as mirrored object(s), which in each case, is based upon the particular correlate of that to which it relates, and corresponds, distinctly.
2. The truth of which, as it is independent of observance, remains a necessary unknown. Yet, this isn't to preclude the freedom bore by the subject, to conceive of such objects of the world, as they are, with respect to the prior constraint. One might therefore, draw upon the force of reason alone, to cogitate, as to the sight of the world, how it would otherwise appear, in a manner that isn't merely bound by our own portrayal thereof. The latter notion however, denotes the maximal degree to which sensuous impressions can prove worthwhile, or at all be deemed fundamental to one's analysis.
3. Noumena thus confer a depth of substance, and form, to what appears in the case of one's judgement, as object; providing a mould of the universal, which the particular is allowed to occupy, and within which it need only dwell, to at last become wholesome.
“Noumena in a positive sense are simply noumena as Kant originally defined that notion in the A edition: objects of an intellectual (non-sensible) intuition. The negative concept of noumena, however, is simply the concept of objects that are not spatiotemporal (not objects of our sensible intuition, namely space and time). But then it follows that things in themselves are noumena in the negative sense, retrospectively clarifying the passage from the A edition quoted immediately above, where Kant seems to draw from the “Transcendental Aesthetic” the conclusion that there are noumena: the concept of appearance requires that something appears, and this must be a negative noumena”.
Stang, Nicholas F., "Kant’s Transcendental Idealism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
If there is one object affecting the sensibility of two similar rational agencies, all else being equal, each will cognize “table”, iff each have experience of tables such that their respective systems intuit, understand, and judge the object each one senses, such that each arrive at “table” without contradicting each other. So, yes, there will be two instances of “table” being cognized from one real physical object external to, and in common with, two people.
Tables are not that hard to cognize equally, but e.g., cloud shapes, a loud bang from around the corner, the meaning of the words to “Lucy In The Sky”.....not so easy. The reason the system is so complicated is to account for how it may be the case such agencies disagree on their judgements.
Surely the subject is what is touched/touched on, by the mind.
The object is what is touched/encounted by the body.
My body encounters numerous things which my mind has no knowledge of.
The problem is that people attribute to noumena some reality it doesn’t have, and the thing-in-itself is given no reality when it is actual quite real. We call the second planet from Sol “Venus”, but the second planet from the sun is only that because we think it that way. Just because we name things in accordance to the way our own nature requires that we think about them, gives us no right whatsoever to then claim the object absolutely cannot be anything else. The thing-in-itself is nothing but the allowance for our own error in reason. It allows for the perception by rationalities other than our own, who may not cognize “Venus” such that we would even know what they’re talking about.
We know dolphins communicate with each other, but we will never know if they see via phenomena or noumena.....because we only perceive via the former and never the latter. I think it quite absurd to think dolphins will cognize “fish” as an object with fins, lays eggs, has scales. The thing-in-itself, known to us as fish, will be a thing-in-itself known to dolphins as.....something else.
No. They are used in conjunction with each other to show they should be treated the same way. Treating them the same way does not make them the same thing.
The final reduction concerning both of them, is the fact we attribute no schema whatsoever to either of them, the thing-in-itself because we don’t know what they would even be, the noumena because our rational apparatus simply won’t allow it.
Remember...all this arises from a speculative epistemological theory. The theory falsifies itself if it is claimed that phenomena perform a certain task, then noumena are incorporated, as some unknown something, to do the some unknown task. The theory destroys its own credibility.
Logically, also remember the human system, no matter what theory is used to describe it, operates on the principle of complementarity, insofar as for every up, there is a down, for every left there is a right, ad infinitum. Therefore, logically, for phenomena, it is logically possible for there to be conceived its complement. I mean, c’mon...the title of the chapter is “The Ground of the Distinction of all Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena”, and the ground is....logic!!!
Which may be the biggest stumbling block in Kantian metaphysics: not so much what noumena are supposed to be, but why did The Esteemed Professor even put those damn things in there in the first place!?!?!? They don’t do anything, they aren’t part of anything, and most of all, in a theory concerned with knowledge.....we don’t and can’t know a damned thing about them. Personally, because Kant knew Greek philosophy quite well....all academics did in those days......and had the utmost respect for Aristotle, obvious because all three Critiques are treatises in logic, he incorporated them as sort of a nod to him, because the Greeks gave great response to the notion of them. Same with the categories.
Don’t know how he could say so, given it would seem pretty hard to define a thing when we know absolutely nothing about it. The thing-in-itself is not defined by its relation to sensibility because it doesn’t relate to sensibility at all. The “thing” does, the “thing-in-itself” does not.
In addition to what X said, CPR was written in response to Hume’s strict empiricism, which requires sensibility to talk about any proposition, which is the same as saying there is no such thing as a priori propositions, or that such things are silly and useless......slave of the passions and all that. Kant proved such things are indeed possible and very far from silly, thus permitting the notion that sensibility is necessarily required to talk of any proposition, to be false.
You quoted me talking about noumena/thing-in-itself, but here you’re talking about phenomena and thing-in-itself.
Be that as it may, phenomena, while indeed very important, actually quite necessary, are in no way in any negative sense. Without phenomena, cognition is impossible. Without phenomena presented to understanding, there is nothing to cognize. There is no such thing as a negative phenomenon.
He does put them side by side, at first glance, a confusing manner, such that it appears they are meant to be the same:
“....An undetermined perception signifies here merely something real that has been given, only, however, to thought in general—but not as a phenomenon, nor as a thing in itself (noumenon), but only as something that really exists...”
That, taken by itself, sends the pro-noumena folk into a epistemological frenzy, But the context, which is rather long and involved, puts “...thing-in-itself (noumena)...” on the equally footing of being not subjected to the categories. In effect, Kant is saying the thing-in-itself is not subjected to the categories...oh, and by the way...neither are noumena.
Again, they are not the same. Just treated by understanding the same way, meaning the categories cannot be thought as governing them as they necessarily must for all empirical cognitions, or, which is the same thing, experience.
This is correct. But one can see what Kant really meant to get across if we merely read it as, “...what Kant calls the thing-in-itself, or, what Kant calls the noumena...”. Then we see it does make sense to talk about either of them as distinguished from phenomena without saying they are therefore equal.
1.) Good;
2,) Better;
3.) Hmmmm.....maybe. Not sure.
Well-thought post. Thanks.
When you modify "object" with "physical" aren't you talking about a thing that is known apriori to have spacial extension? And if not, how do you distinguish between real physical objects and phenomenal physical objects (in language)?
Yes, as opposed to objects of reason. Objects of reason are, for example, the categories, numbers, geometric figures. Things not naturally residing in Nature but are put there as products of human reason. Existence, causality, plurality.....pure, non-empirical conceptions like that.
Within the confines of the present discussion, there is no such thing as a phenomenal physical object. A physical object is in space and time, has objective reality; a phenomenon is in a specific theoretical speculation, residing in the mind and having only objective validity. In the former, it is actual, in the latter it is merely justified.
Unless I'm mistaking you, I think this viewpoint is more indirect realism than it is Kant. Specifically, it's John Locke. For Kant, we need to give up on spacial and temporal extension for things-in-themselves. The things we call "physical" are representations, and it doesn't really mean much to say representations aren't real since anytime we talk about reality, that's what we're talking about: the earth, the moon, electromagnetic fields, black holes, etc. For Kant, these things are all representations.
I really don't want to get into an argument about "what Kant said" because that's not really as interesting discussing philosophy. So it may be that we'll end up saying we have two different impressions of what Kant said?
Yes, give up for things-in-themselves out there (waves at the world), but not for how we think about them in here (taps his forehead).
———————-
Quoting frank
Yes, representations for us. Couldn’t be any representations without something to represent.
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I can leave Kant out of it. Everything I think will still be predicated on transcendental idealism nonetheless. With a smattering of Copenhagen and healthy contribution from relativity, of course.
I'm not sure what you mean. Could you say more?
Quoting Mww
Per Kant, we don't represent black holes with an image of black holes. The black hole part is a representation. Are we on the same page?
I don't think that's advisable. If you want to get an exact idea of what Kant thinks, go to the Cambridge University Press edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (available online in pdf format). In the section "The Transcendental Doctrine of the Power of Judgment (Analytic of Principles); Third Chapter:
On the ground of the distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and noumena" (p. 354ss)
Here you will find a clear explanation of what a noumeon is, its identity with the thing in itself and its inaccessibility to human understanding.
I would say that here are some obviously wrong interpretations of Kant. Go to the section on CPR that I recommended in my previous commentary and you will see why.
That’s called naive realism. I’m not one of those.
It’s a tricky topic that deserves its own thread.
Quoting Mww
This is a another confusing point. The matter of the fact is Kant refers to some ‘thing in itself’ only because of pure intuition. Remove intuition and there is nothing to say, yet to refer to some item, any item - be it of thought or knowledge - must necessarily mean there is an attachment to sensibility and intuition (space and time). The number one is only given as a concept via sensibility, without sensible experience of a multitude of differentiated items of experience there would be no ground for the number one; or rather numbers in general.
The leap is identical from the referent of ‘thing’ which we view as ‘phenomenon’ and delineate between said phenomenon as ‘cat’ rather than ‘dog’ or ‘table’ rather than ‘chair’. There is no ‘chair in and of itself’ and there is no ‘thing in and of itself’, there is phenomenon that is given through sensible experience due to limitation.
Kant went back and rewrote an entire section to help elucidate what he meant - although by doing so he likely fell prey to his previous warning of ‘in trying to be too precise the writer can fall into ambiguity’ (to roughly paraphrase!)
My point about the bit in bold is hard to grasp as we’re immediately doing precisely what Kant warns against - claiming there is a ‘unknown’ we can refer to sensibly. The point here is that we can set up this logical illusion of referring to some ‘unknowable’ and believe we have it nailed down and sewn up neat and tidy. The thrust of the point is we’re limited.
Noumenon is ONLY ever applicable in the negative sense and to talk of noumenon in the ‘positive’ sense (the thing in itself) is an illusion only which Kant willingly partakes in to reveal that the most obvious statement there could be, along the lines of ‘What we can in no way ever know never exists for us no matter how many times removed or distant - such a ‘thing’ is not a ‘thing’ at all. It is, in its nonsense, a concept that is pointing out a limitation,’ or simpler still, ‘We cannot know what we cannot know.’
The positive sense of noumenon (as uttered) is necessarily negative. By revealing nothing Kant reveals the lay of the land not some striving across empty oceans for lands that don’t exist (as he put in his rare analogy).
The relevance to the thread here is likely the miscasting of what can reasonably be called ‘outer’ that isn’t a merely anything but ‘inner’. The phenomenon is all, what more is expected of being other than felt experience? It appears we’re prone to projecting ourselves bidirectionally through time.
Again though, getting to grips with what is meant by ‘transcendent’ and ‘transcendental’ is a matter for discussion I’m willing to partake in in a separate thread.
This subject matter often turns into a big old mess as there is often a lack of willingness to appreciate different interpretations of Kant regardless of agreement. His work has remained fresh because of the divides in opinions about several areas of his work.
Which section? Schopenhauer believed Kant intentionally obscured his message to avoid being harassed by christians. I know Schopenhauer much more thoroughly than Kant, and I'm afraid I probably use his interpretation (right or wrong).
The source is always best, and even better if read without someone telling you what to think the first time round.
Editted: Sorry, it was wayfarer not you. Still, bizarre given that what I wrote ...
Oh hell, I can always say more. A-hem......
There are basketballs out there, there are no basketballs in my head. Therefore it is absolutely impossible that the basketball I know, in whatever way, shape or form I know it, can be the basketball out there.
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Quoting frank
Sure we do; in no other way can we cognize them, in order to talk about them. The images are indirect representations, therefore possibly false, but images nonetheless.
Quoting frank
Yes, a representation of what mathematics predicts, and cosmology has shown evidence, comprised of the extant conceptions of black, hole, and all those swirling lights and stuff. But I get your point: we do not have a representation of black holes as physical objects given from appearance directly.
I don't know what Schopenhauer was exactly referring to. But some basic things are clear and distinct. For example:
"'The transcendental use of a concept in any sort of principle consists in its being related to things in general and in themselves; its empirical use, however, in its being related merely to appearances, i.e., objects of a possible experience". (Op. Cit. p. 356).
It is clear, it is not?
NOTE: Kant is sometimes difficult to read, but we don't need exaggerate.
I am sorry. I believed this advice was yours.
"Wiki and stanford or britannica ency. are all decent ways of finding items of interest though."
Then you will agree that the reference to Kant's work that I have given is the right one for engage a serious discussion:
"On the ground of the distinction of all objects in general into phenomena and noumena".
Do you agree?
Again, this is simply not true. Thought and knowledge are not the same for Kant. If there were, there could not be a critique of pure reason. There could not be transcendental illusions, and the whole point of the critique would be lost.
I may start something up elsewhere regarding what is meant by ‘transcendental’ one day.
Quoting StreetlightX
I don't understand "belongs to the order of the intelligible." Is this saying it's intelligible in some other way than the thing-in-itself?
Quoting StreetlightX
What possible good is it to say that noumena are "for us"? In what way are they for us? Something unknown, whether in reference to our "understanding" or our "sensibilities" or our "capacities for knowledge" are still unknowns and unknowable. They're "intelligible" in the same way, therefore: as unknowns. But that seems to be the extent of it.
Maybe you're right and there's a subtle difference here, but I'm not seeing it. And "cantankerous" as I'm accused of being, I'm actually really trying to see the point -- I have no stock in being right or wrong about this side discussion.
"Real" in what sense exactly? That aliens could see it differently from our perceptions?
That's such a misreading of Kant. But have it your way.
In CoPR the noumenon's aligned with what we can experience. But what we can experience isn't coextensive with what is. The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible; the sensibility being a human faculty (or more precisely a faculty of the transcendental subject). The noumenon is the name for that which blocks the co-extension of our faculties (specifically sensible intiution) and being; it's generated through our faculties' limits, as a concept it's about our faculties (a for us). The thing-in-itself is the name for being insofar as it is not conditioned by our faculties; it is that which exceeds the limitations of our faculties. As a concept it's about that which exceeds the limitation of our faculties (it's not a for-us).
So does the thing-in-itself. Anything beyond space and time, the forms of sensibility, is unknown.
Quoting fdrake
As is the thing-in-itself.
Quoting fdrake
So the noumenon doesn't exceed our faculties? But the thing-in-itself does.
Both are unknowable, yet both are somehow different unknowable things.
One is a limit of sensibility and for us, the other is a limit of our faculties and outside us.
I just see no evidence for these positions whatsoever. I realize now it is held by quite a few people, but in my view it's a mistake. But at this point whatever the supposed difference is between noumenon and thing-in-itself, we can't say a word about either because they're beyond time and space, which is the basis for knowing anything at all. So, I guess, who cares?
I mean exactly what Kant says:
"Appearances, insofar as they are thought as objects according to the unity of the categories, are called phenomena. But if I assume things that are objects merely of the understanding and that, as such, can nonetheless be given to an intuition--even if not to sensible intuition - then such things would be called noumena (intelligibilia)" (A249)
"If, on the other hand, by merely intelligible objects we mean merely objects of a nonsensible intuition-objects for which, to be sure, our categories do not hold and of which therefore we can never have any cognition at all (neither intuition nor concept) - then noumena in this merely negative signification must indeed be admitted". (A286/B343)
Noumena are intelligible objects: they belong to intelligibility (as distinct from sensibility), and thus to the understanding. More specifically, noumena are intelligible objects that are not sensible, hence why the mark the limit of the sensible, and hence why so-called 'positive noumena' would be the same as objects of intellectual intuition.
--
One way I like to think of it is as the difference between not-X (noumena) and not X (thing-in-itself). Not-X is determinate: if you draw a Venn diagram of X and not-X, not-X is everything X is not. They are mutually exhaustive. This is the case with phenomena and noumena. All that is phenomena is not noumena and vice versa. On the other hand, not X (thing-in-itself) is simply something else: Not X is not defined by it's relation to X: the only thing you know of it is that it isn't X. The TII is like this: it is not defined in relation to the phenomenal.
In simple language, if I ask you what you are looking for and you tell me 'not that' (and point to something), it could be anything ("whatever it is, it isn't that"). But if you tell me 'not-that', you mean something quite specific: you mean every other thing that isn't that thing you just pointed to. tTII and noumena relate negatively to the transcendental in just these ways, respectively.
If this is true, we have no account for justice, beauty, mathematics, or anything that does not have an object strictly of its own. We think justice only by means of things being relatively just, those things being in space and time. But the thing said to be just isn’t justice itself, justice being merely a judgement.
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Quoting I like sushi
True enough, but we could never conceive the number one if not first having the concept of quantity. We only use numbers because, e.g, we look at our hands and see there are many little thingys sticking out of them. In the same way, we see a snowflake melt, and iff we ask....how did that happen, we’ve already presupposed there was a reason. Which gives us the principle of cause and effect a priori in understanding. Even if we don’t know why, we know there must be a why....because we watched something happen.
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Quoting I like sushi
Do you see that you’ve named something in the former, but not in the latter? If you name a thing a chair, you’ve cognized what was once a mere thing of sense, into an object known as a specific thing. So there is a chair in and of itself, because you said so. Before you named it, before you did all the mind stuff, when it was nothing but some thing you perceived, it was merely a thing-in-itself with no name.
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Quoting I like sushi
Well said.
Good post.
I'm pretty sure you're interpreting Kant as an indirect realist.
OK. Examples of such intelligible objects would be what exactly? And whatever is given as an example, is this not therefore phenomenal (as objects)? I see the difference being made between understanding and sensibility, but my point is that it's completely irrelevant. Why? Because both the noumenon and the thing in itself are unknowns -- in any way other than that they're unknown. If you're arguing one is known in some other way, then it's no longer unknown.
It exists. It must, or we would have no perception of it.
Quoting Xtrix
Dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. depends on how alien they are.
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Quoting Xtrix
Thanks. I think I will, doncha know.
“...as to other thinking beings, we cannot judge whether they are or are not bound by the same conditions which limit our own intuition...”
The thing in itself isn't generated by our faculties limits, or anything to do with us, rather it's that which generates whatever appears to us; in order for us to grasp something with a sensible intuition, there has to be a certain movement in the thing in itself that facilitates the generation of appearances in us. The thing in itself being necessary but not sufficient for our appearances.
Moreover, it's helpful to mark the boundary between the capacities of our representation and the objects represented. We can have this as a concept without there being any sensible intuition associated with it.
So the noumenon functions as the name of the limit of applicability of sensible intuition; it's about the limit of our subject's faculties; the thing-in-itself is about things conceptualised apart from how they embed in sensible intuition. The distinction between boundary (noumenon) and what lays outside the boundary (thing in itself), what lays within the boundary are phenomena and appearances.
Kant is an indirect realist, if such be synonymous with being a representationalist. His entire academic catalog is dedicated to a representational human epistemological and moral system.
He calls himself a transcendental realist, in order to grant Hume his empiricism, but also to add the faculty of pure reason to it, as a supplementary, but no less necessary, human condition.
If, on the other hand, the TII were merely 'for us' in the way that noumena are (noumena are 'faculty-relative' - not-X, rather than not X), then Kant cannot in good conscience call himself a realist. It would simply be the limit of a faculty (which already belongs to the transcendental subject), that would itself make the subject finite, and not the universe 'out there' which outruns any conditions of possibility of knowledge. The distinction has bearing on the status of the transcendental subject: it tells us something about its (our) place in the cosmos, as it were. @fdrake's explanation is, I believe, pretty much along the same lines.
God, soul, Universe as Totality... It can be thought, but not known. It is thought as a mere boundary of what I cannot know. My intelect push me to it, but knowledge fails because only phenomena can be known.
"The concept of a noumenon, i.e., of a thing that is not to be thought of as an object of the senses but rather as a thing in itself (solely through a pure understanding), is not at all contradictory; for one cannot assert of sensibility that it is the only possible kind of intuition. Further, this concept [noumenon] is necessary in order not to extend sensible intuition to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible cognition(...) . In the end, however, we have no insight into the possibility of such noumena, and the domain outside of the sphere of appearances is empty (for us)(...)The concept of a noumenonf is therefore merely a boundary concept, in order to limit the pretension of sensibility, and therefore only of negative use". (Kant, Op. cit. p. 362)
I think Kant is clear here.
I feel things gearing up toward a conflict about "what Kant really meant."
I'll just leave it at this; what Xtrix has been saying is a common interpretation which has the benefit of solving the problem of induction, which is something indirect realism can't do.
Whatever you may think of this interpretation, it deserves a nod for its prevalence and effectiveness.
Then in this sense both thing-in-itself and noumenon exists, otherwise we wouldn't say anything about either. Although to use "perception" is misleading -- we don't strictly perceive either.
Quoting fdrake
So the thing in itself is what's represented, though we don't know what it is "in itself." Fine. Either the same is true of noumena, or else noumena are representations of some kind, which would make them phenomena. If noumena are something in between, it's not been demonstrated here.
Quoting fdrake
"Distinction between the boundary" is meaningless to me. There's phenomena and noumena, in my reading. In yours, there's phenomena, noumena, and the thing in itself. Fine. But I'm not seeing it in anything that's been quoted from Kant so far.
Sure. What I'm failing to see is where noumena play a role if they're not representations and not the thing-in-itself. If noumenon is used as word for the "boundary" between phenomena and the thing-in-itself, I'm just not yet convinced by that. Kant, in many passages, also clearly links both the noumenon and the thing in itself -- one passage was already cited earlier. It would be hard to square the two interpretations.
Maybe I'm just hopeless, but I'm still not understanding exactly where noumena are supposed to fit in your (and others') readings.
Quoting David Mo
Things we think aren't phenomena? "God" and "soul" and the "Universe" are not phenomena or knowledge? Than how can you speak about them at all?
If you're not including thoughts as phenomena, I don't agree with that at all. If Kant says that somewhere I missed, I think it's just a mistake.
I read the exact quotation and yet I don't see your point. Kant is discussing the limits of what we can know and is equating the thing-in-itself with the noumenon in that passage, in my reading. It's actually a little baffling that you you interpret it as supporting you, but so it goes.
"The concept of a noumenon, i.e., of a thing that is not to be thought of as an object of the senses but rather as a thing in itself[...]"
Seems pretty clear here.
[i]Many accounts of Kant's philosophy treat "noumenon" and "thing-in-itself" as synonymous, and there is textual evidence for this relationship.[14] However, Stephen Palmquist holds that "noumenon" and "thing-in-itself" are only loosely synonymous, inasmuch as they represent the same concept viewed from two different perspectives,[15][16] and other scholars also argue that they are not identical.[17] Schopenhauer criticised Kant for changing the meaning of "noumenon". However, this opinion is far from unanimous.[18] Kant's writings show points of difference between noumena and things-in-themselves. For instance, he regards things-in-themselves as existing:
...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.[19]
He is much more doubtful about noumena:
But in that case a noumenon is not for our understanding a special [kind of] object, namely, an intelligible object; the [sort of] understanding to which it might belong is itself a problem. For we cannot in the least represent to ourselves the possibility of an understanding which should know its object, not discursively through categories, but intuitively in a non-sensible intuition.[20]
A crucial difference between the noumenon and the thing-in-itself is that to call something a noumenon is to claim a kind of knowledge, whereas Kant insisted that the thing-in-itself is unknowable. Interpreters have debated whether the latter claim makes sense: it seems to imply that we know at least one thing about the thing-in-itself (i.e., that it is unknowable). But Stephen Palmquist explains that this is part of Kant's definition of the term, to the extent that anyone who claims to have found a way of making the thing-in-itself knowable must be adopting a non-Kantian position.[21][/i]
So, again, it's more controversial than I thought. But I'm still not seeing much textual evidence to support many of the claims being made here.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things. Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived. That which is merely perceived is unknown to us. Things-in-themselves are unknown to us.
That which is conceived can be talked about. To be conceived does not require existence.
We perceive the thing-in itself. We don’t perceive noumena because there is nothing in the human faculty of representation that allows for it.
Ok, sure.
(2) Quoting Mww
Of course.
Here's where you make the jump I just am not seeing:
Quoting Mww
Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. What we perceive -- our representations, our sensations in time and space -- are phenomena. You grant this.
If something is perceived, it's phenomena. To say the thing in itself is perceived is therefore saying it's a phenomenon or representation of some kind. It's not. Kant's postulating something that may be "outside" our representations, apart from spatial and temporal forms. This is what "in itself" means -- in itself as opposed to the forms of our knowing anything (in space and time). Sensations, and hence perceptions, are spatial and temporal, and hence representation, and hence phenomena. So we can't "sense" the thing-in-itself, we can't "perceive" it, we can't "know" it. This is why the concept of thing-in-itself has been so controversial for so long.
Human beings have scope and limits, and the thing in itself has always appeared to me to mean simply whatever there is outside this scope.
Quoting Mww
You just said perception is an affect of our sensations, of our senses. Some sensations and perceptions are "unknown"? I still don't see your point I'm afraid.
Quoting Mww
Sure.
Quoting Mww
In my reading we don't strictly perceive either. Our perceptions, our representations on the occasion of sense, are phenomena. What's represented apart from our spatial-temporal "cognoscitive powers" is noumenon, the thing-in-itself. We don't perceive it, because we have no knowledge of it -- what we perceive is whatever shows up for us in time and space: representations. You see what I'm saying?
If you're just using "perception" in the same way I'm using "representation," then sure, representations of something makes sense -- but we have no idea what that something is, and as soon as we try to attribute to it any property whatsoever we're assigning to it something spatial-temporal -- that's the whole point of bringing in the "in itself."
Again, I think your own passage says it nicely:
Quoting Mww
(1) Outward objects = representations of our sensibilities.
(2) Objects in themselves = quite unknown. (Notice he doesn't say they're "unknown, yet we perceive them." That would make them representations of our sensibilities [1].)
Now what about "inner objects" like thoughts and the like? Maybe this is what you're getting at. I would argue they're phenomena as well, but perhaps that's off topic.
“...But there is one advantage in such transcendental inquiries which can be made comprehensible to the dullest and most reluctant learner—this, namely, that the understanding which is occupied merely with empirical exercise, and does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may exercise its functions very well and very successfully, but 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....”
Yadda yadda yadda...transcedentally generated, empirically employed, this and that....
“...But we are met at the very commencement with an ambiguity, which may easily occasion great misapprehension. The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects. Now as the understanding possesses no other fundamental conceptions besides the categories, it takes for granted that an object considered as a thing in itself must be capable of being thought by means of these pure conceptions, and is thereby led to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible existence (noumenon), a something out of the sphere of our sensibility, for a determinate conception of an existence which we can cognize in some way or other by means of the understanding....”
Phenomena are the only “input” to understanding, to which are synthesized concepts and from which cognitions are the “output”. Understanding thinks....
(“...understanding cannot intuit and intuition cannot think, neither of these can be exchanged....”)
......of phenomena as an object in the same way imagination treats an appearance. Imagination synthesizes appearance with intuition to give phenomena....
(“....undetermined object of empirical intuition...”)
.......understanding says....hey I can do that. I’m just gonna synthesize phenomena, the object in a certain relation I think of as an object in itself, with conceptions and get me, not the undetermined object of empirical intuition, but rather, the undetermined conception of an intelligible existence, thereby cognizable in some way.
Whoa, hoss. Two things, yo.
1.) The only concepts understanding can use in its synthesizing are the categories, which are already claimed in the synthesis with empirical real objects, in order to get cognitions. Therefore, the categories won’t fit and the intelligible existence is illegitimate, and,
2.) You can’t go changing a phenomenon into an object in itself. You have no ground to do that, And just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
No...you whoa hoss. If I can think it, it must be conceivable.
(Yeah, conceivable, but nothing can be done with. No cognition, no experience, no knowledge....zip, nada.)
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So you see, boys and girls, what happens when a big-shot faculty gets too big for his britches.
( I made all that up. Made perfect sense at the time.)
You quoted me in this post, but don't address noumena at all -- which is what I was questioning. I appreciate the attempt, and don't want to be accused of "cantankerousness," but I still fail to see what role the noumenon plays if it's not representations and not the thing-in-itself.
I don't think this characterization of me is altogether just, but I guess that's neither here nor there.
Quoting David Mo (My italics)
Exactly right.
No, I do not grant that what we perceive are representations. Or, if I said something to that effect, then I shall go beat myself up.
One needs to keep in mind perception actually is nothing but reception of incoming empirical data. If incoming data, not in but incoming, are representations, how were they created? We can say how representations are created on the backside of sense organs, but we cannot use the equipment from the inside of us to create representation on the outside of us. Inside, everything relates to something, on the outside, what would data relate to except other data, which tells us nothing.
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Quoting Xtrix
An affect on our senses, not of. It isn’t that perceptions are unknown, as in we don’t know we have been affected. We don’t know what we’ve been affected by.
Try this: incoming data is information in certain forms of energy. The output of the sense organs is still energy, but a different form. The translation from one to the other is unknown to us, but it must have happened, because we did perceive something. What we perceived needs more equipment doing different things, just as e.g., the optic nerves are different than the rods and cones.
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Quoting Xtrix
Thing is...to say we have no knowledge is to say we have no experience. But we often perceive things of which we have no experience, every time we learn something new. Or just a loud bang from around the corner caused by something not known. So the lack of knowledge, or, experience, cannot be the reason we don’t perceive noumena. Either noumena just aren’t there to be perceived, or there is no such thing as noumena to be perceived.
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Quoting Xtrix
Not yet. If something is perceived, it will be a phenomenon. It isn’t phenomenon merely by being an affect on the senses. That is sensation and tells us something has appeared to the faculty of representation.
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Quoting Xtrix
Correct. It’s not. See above. The thing-in-itself perceived is just another something perceived. Same-o, same-o. See waaaayyyy above: object in itself equals thing-in-itself, and we certainly perceive objects, so.......
Don’t forget. We cognize representations, not things. There’s no contradiction in allowing things-in-themselves to be the objects of perception, because they have nothing to do with the system, other than to kick-start it.
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Quoting Xtrix
We can’t have an empty object affect us. How would we know we’d been affected? We have no knowledge of a thing as it is in itself. That doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the thing that affected us. We are given an object, that object must have characteristics of some kind which show up in its appearance.
Then the fun begins!!!
Imagination pulls intuitions out of consciousness, throws them at the appearance, finds out what sticks. Experience helps by telling imagination it can pull a narrower range of intuitions. Whenever imagination is all happy, it gives understanding...the faculty that thinks....a phenomenon. Understanding thinks whether its conceptions match the intuitions experience says belongs to the phenomenon......
( yep....wood, paint, wheels....all cool.)
....then thinks the pure conceptions, the ones understanding possesses regardless of phenomenon, and thinks a phenomenon must have regardless of any of its empirical properties......
(Does the phenomenon have shape? Can the phenomenon be a cause or an effect? Is the phenomenon even possible? Oh oh. No, the phenomenon has been imagined as having wings. In light of the manifold of intuitions imagined, that contradicts experience, this object is not possible. Scratch the wings)
......and if the phenomenon meets the criteria, it is judged as a proper cognizable object with a name, and “soapbox racer” becomes knowledge.
So you see, we don’t bring in the “in-itself”; we only bring in the thing. The in-itself is determined by its own nature, not ours. What we don’t know, and is impossible to ever know, is whether the nature of the thing-in-itself attributes to the thing, the same properties we think the thing has.
And this says nothing about a priori cognitions. Well....lemme tell ya all about....wha? No? Too much?
That's an interesting statement in the context of this thread. The relevant question is whether it points to a subject/object duality or to an underlying symmetry. That is the measurement problem.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes. So I'd just like to note the symmetry here with respect to observers. The train has a velocity relative to the platform or, symmetrically, the platform has a velocity relative to the train. No subject/object duality is implied.
This is baffling to me, but OK...
Quoting Mww
The incoming stimuli, our sensations, are data, yes. The second they hit the sense organs, they become representations to us, unless you argue that what effects us from "outside" corresponds exactly to what we sense, perceive, etc. That's fine, but it's not Kant. So how are representations created? By the brain and nervous system on the "occasion of sense," through our cognitive faculty. Whatever our representations are representations of, outside of our cognitions, is the thing in itself. Things in themselves are what is represented to us, but because we are bounded by space and time, there's nothing whatever to say about them (or it).
Saying we can't create representations "outside of us" is not true -- there's all kinds of things outside me: trees, books, rivers, anything at all. Who said representations are limited to "internal" things like feelings or thoughts? If that's not what you're saying, OK, but then surely you admit trees aren't "internal" -- and if you do, then everything we can know or talk about is technically "internal", bounded by our skin so to speak, and so the "internal/external" or "inside/outside" distinction is useless.
Quoting Mww
We don't know what we've been affected by in themselves, you mean? We certainly know what we've been affected by otherwise -- as objects in space and time; our representations. I already granted we don't know what our sensations or representations are of in themselves, apart from our spatial-temporal boundedness.
Quoting Mww
This is saying the same basic thing, yes. And I agree. But the "different form" is our representations -- how we experience the world, bounded by our brain and nervous system.
Quoting Mww
You're right. We don't experience the thing-in-itself either. Experience is bounded by space and time.
Quoting Mww
That's not using experience the way I'm using it here, of course. I mean human experience in general, not, say, an "experienced doctor." The forms of any experience whatsoever is space and time. Anything we experience at all will be experienced in this way. Thus, to say we have experience of the thing in itself isn't correct.
Quoting Mww
Ok, you're using the term in a different way from me. I consider sensations to be phenomena. What would it be prior to "becoming" phenomena, exactly? How do we know we even have sensations at all "before" they become phenomena. Either something is experienced (as phenomena of experience) or it isn't. I don't understand these extra steps you seem to put in. Doesn't make much sense to me.
Quoting Mww
Yes, we perceive objects. We don't perceive objects in themselves. I don't know what that would mean. How can we perceive an object that isn't spatial or temporal? What would it look like? What properties does it have? We don't know, because we can't say a thing about it. We can certainly say plenty about objects -- as objects of our sensations and perceptions, and thus representations.
I think this stems from the above and not using sensation and perception in the same way I am. Again, I consider them phenomena, and by phenomena I mean literally anything experienceable. Out experiences are bounded, again, by space and time. Thus, whatever else sensations, perceptions, phenomena, etc. are outside of these forms we really cannot experience or perceive in any way. That would be the thing-in-itself. it's almost a matter of logic.
Quoting Mww
That's exactly what I think, yes -- it's a contradiction. I don't see how "things" and "representations" are different. Things-in-themselves (thus outside our spatial-temporal modes of experience) is a different story.
Quoting Mww
Of course it has characteristics -- in space and in time. A weight, a mass, color, shape, a quality of feeling, etc. We know we're affected because we experience things, as representations -- not in themselves. So whatever affects us certainly isn't empty to us -- it's any object at all, and not just trees and books but feelings, emotions, pains, thoughts, etc. Anything else whatever is the thing in itself, which you admit is not knowable. There isn't a third realm between knowable and unknowable, in my view -- or between experience and nothing, or between life and death. There's one or the other.
You almost seem to be saying there's an object out there affecting us that isn't yet a phenomenon but isn't empty, and that we can still know something about. I still have no idea what this means.
Quoting Mww
Imagining a pink unicorn is still an idea, yes? Imagination is an experience as well, bounded by our human limits. That's still part of phenomenology.
Please explain why he gets it right, by all means.
"The concept of a noumenon, i.e., of a thing that is not to be thought of as an object of the senses but rather as a thing in itself[...]
This shit is all very hard to speak coherently about: hence the disagreements and misunderstandings.
So they're both "ideas"? This seems so riddled with confusion I really don't know how to respond. But if it makes sense to you, you're a smarter guy than me.
Quoting Janus
I certainly agree.
Key point! It is not really worth claiming this or that is ‘correct’ when it comes to interpreting Kant. The great value is in understanding why and how different interpretations exist.
The reason I always recommend this work to anyone with any serious regard for philosophy is precisely for this reason - it forces you to question your own position and come to understand other positions.
Complete agreement about what Kant meant is not necessary. Taking onboard different views surrounding Kant is an extremely fruitful and intriguing exploration.
The Picture painted only exists due to Paint and Canvas. We cannot see the Picture if only one or the other is present. We need both to acquire ‘knowledge’ - the question is more or less about the limit of inference.
I'm not sure how else to explain it that hasn't already: noumena mark a limit of sensibility.
Perhaps one source of confusion is the asymmetry between noumena and the things-in-themselves: it's true that noumena are thing-in-themselves, but the converse does not hold. One might say: noumena are things-in-themselves under the aspect of the transcendental subject. However, get rid of the transcendental subject, and one similarly 'gets rid' of noumena - but not things-in-themselves, which are subject-independant.
So noumena are subject-dependent, unlike things in themselves -- and they mark the limit of sensibility.
So the limit of sensibility is what exactly? Not phenomena or representations, and not really the thing-in-itself. It's just another word for the boundary between what can be known and what can't?
It's clear that we have limits. We're limited by space and time. Something in itself isn't part of that. Are noumena part of space and time or not? If not, and yet they differ from things in themselves, then what are they (is it)? Saying noumena "mark the limit" just isn't clear to me.
Or put it this way: what exactly is "gotten rid of" when the subject goes away? In that case, why not just say the thing in itself goes away too? Who's to say?
Insofar as noumena as quite literally defined by their being non-sensible intuitions, no, they are not subject to the forms of space and time. And if the fact that noumena mark the limit of the sensible is unclear, perhaps your beef is with with Kant:
"The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is no arbitrary invention; it is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility." (B311)
Quoting Xtrix
The transcendental constitution of reality goes away - at least, in its human form (Kant leaves it an open as to whether there are other forms of (non-human?) intuition: "our kind of intuition does not extend to all things, but only to objects of our senses, that consequently its objective validity is limited, and that a place therefore remains open for some other kind of intuition, and so for things as its objects" (B342)). As for who's to say - Kant's to say:
"Understanding accordingly limits sensibility [via the noumenon - SX], but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances" (A288, my bolding). There could hardly be a clearer distinction between the remit of noumena and the thing-in-itself than in this passage.
Yes, a limiting concept. Just as the thing in itself is a limiting concept. He's not saying noumena ARE the limit, as you stated, he's saying it's a limiting concept. You could just as easily replace "noumenon" here with "thing-in-itself" and Kant would be make exactly the same point. I still see no grounds for a distinction, or at least the one being made here on this thread.
Quoting StreetlightX
Our understanding limits sensibility, and can claim applicability to appearances only, not to things in themselves. This is what he says. If this is the clearest distinction, then I'm truly unconvinced and don't see how anyone can arrive at the conclusion that noumena are somehow different from things-in-themselves.
If both are not subjected to space and time, then what's the difference? Nothing. In my view these passages cited certainly don't support any such differentiation, and in fact at least one has been cited that clearly states they're the same thing.
I think it's unmotivatable to make this move, and really don't see what it adds, but to each his own.
Your argument in general is somewhat odd: it's true that both share a certain 'quality' (that of not being subject to space and time), but this alone cannot say anything as to their idenity. Two apples may be green, but that does not make them the same apple.
I probably didn't explain it that simply after all. The way I understand it is that 'noumenon' is an idea of a limit beyond which sensory experience cannot go. A limit is itself an idea or at least a conceptual 'object' so 'noumenon' is in that sense an idea of an idea.
'Thing in itself' is an idea of an actuality which is totally independent of (and not merely a limit to) sensory experience and any and all human knowledge and understanding.
It's a subtle and, on some interpretations, perhaps a barely coherent, distinction, so....
What is the thing in itself "independent of"? The subject. You said so yourself. Yet it's not defined in relation to the subject?
Quoting StreetlightX
True, but if both noumenon and thing in itself are beyond space and time (green), what ELSE makes them different? You say the relation to the subject, that noumena is the limit or the mark of the limit. I say both can be applied to things in themselves as well.
If both are unknowable, how can we differentiate? It's like saying there are numberless, timeless, spaceless apples -- but there are two, and they're different somehow, but both are also unknowable. It makes no sense to me. Better to just say that human beings have scope and limits -- a scope bounded by space and time. Beyond this limit (of space and time), whatever there is we can't know -- because what we know is, again, bounded, and thus if we could know something about it it wouldn't be noumenal, it'd be phenomenal. What's the point of saying, "From the subjects point of view, the word for our limit is noumenon, which would disappear if we disappeared -- but from the point of view of nowhere, there's a thing in itself which lives on regardless"?
It frustrating to me. If there's something I'm truly missing, I want to know. Obviously it's convincing to a lot of people here -- more than I realized -- so I don't disparage it, but I still think my reading is more accurate.
Similarly we talk about rivers of honey or flying horses. Mixing concepts or using meaningful words in wrong contexts where they mean nothing.
Quoting Janus
Ok, I follow you here a little more. If noumenon is a word for (or idea of) the limit of our understanding, fine. That's, I believe, what Streetlight and Mmw are saying as well. But I don't see any need for it. Why not just say "the limit of our understanding"? Why the idea of an idea, to use your phrase? It sounds to me like "noumenon" now becomes a word for "boundary," like being on the fence -- not a thing in itself, but not appearance/representation ("phenomenal"). I suppose you could read some passages this way (and only some), but I don't really see what it adds or why it's important.
OK, but that's all phenomena as well, in my view. It's all experience -- the experience of imagination, of creative use of words, metaphor, etc. Again, thinking is an activity and thus phenomenal.
Kant distinguishes between knowing and thinking. We can think about infinity, but not know it. Knowing implies defining and grasping its existence.
And both are phenomena.
Your argument is wrong. To think that an undetermined "something" has caused A is not the same as knowing the cause of A. Moreover, Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR.
I have not understand what symmetry you refer.
Anyway, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg et alia thought that quantum mechanics posed a problem of subjectivity to science. Bernard d'Espagnat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_d%27Espagnat) devoted an article to the importance of Kant to understand quantum mechanics.
It's the same thing even if you call it by different names. "Noumena" is another way of saying "thing in-itself". If the subject disappears, the name disappears, not the named thing.
By their respective relation to the subject! I keep repeating this - in fact it was the first thing I said here: noumena are the limit of sensibility. They are only defined in relation to our capacity for knowledge. Things-in-themselves, by contrast, are defined by having no relation to our capacity for knowledge. The difference between not-X and not X.
@fdrake made the same point in a different way: "The noumenon marks the limit of the sensible; the sensibility being a human faculty ... The thing-in-itself is the name for being insofar as it is not conditioned by our faculties; it is that which exceeds the limitations of our faculties."
I've run out of ways of saying the same thing.
This is your way of saying it, not Kant's. Besides, there's a difference between imagination and the world of noumena in Kant. In the imagination, sensitive objects are mixed up in the wrong context. The fantastic entity could be perceived in strange circumstances, outside of normal life. This is not the case with noumena because they are outside of any perceptible circumstance: outside of space and time.
And when Kant says that the thing itself cannot be known, does he not put it in relation to our knowledge? To say that it marks the limit of our knowledge is the same as saying that it is outside our knowledge.
It's not true that numena are "only defined" by their relationship to knowledge. Noumenon is defined as "the way we call things in themselves". Two ways of calling the same thing!
Incorrect. Here is Kant: "The concept of a noumenon is thus a merely limiting concept, the function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is no arbitrary invention; it is bound up with the limitation of sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the field of sensibility." (B311) No sensibility, no noumena. The two are inextricable concepts.
As for the thing-in-itself, it has a relation with our capacity for knowledge, but is not defined by it, unlike the noumenon. I may be a brother to my sister, but my sister is not nothing other than a sibling to me. The noumenon, however, is nothing other than the insensible - non-sensible intuition (intelligible entity). Difference between not-X and not X. Again.
Here you see:
"Now the doctrine of sensibility is at the same time the doctrine of the
noumenon in the negative sense, i.e., of things that the understanding
must think without this relation to our kind of intuition, thus not
merely as appearances but as things in themselves, but about which,
however, it also understands that in this abstraction it cannot consider
making any use of its categories, since they have significance only in re-
lation to the unity of intuitions in space and time, and can even deter-
mine this unity a priori." (CP308) [Emphasis mine]
If the sensitivity disappears, the concept of the thing itself also disappears, because it is defined in contrast to the phenomena, which Kant also calls appearances. You see that in this text Kant opposes the thing itself to the phenomenon (appearances). That is, the thing itself is the same as the noumenon: that which is opposed to the phenomenon.
I think you are confusing Kant's words: He says that noumenon in the negative sense is nothing more than the concept that specifies the limits of knowledge, as opposed to noúmeno in the positive sense, which seeks to go beyond them (classical metaphysics). It does not say that the only being of the noumenon is in the understanding.
He says that the concept of noumenon "only" is limiting. Not that noumenon is just a concept.
This makes of Kant an idealist in the Berkeleyian sense, which he militates against throughout the CoPR. As I said, noumena are indeed things-in-themselves, but the converse does not hold.
Either way you need to make up your mind: either the noumena are defined only in relation to the understanding, or they are not. You can't have it both ways.
If the concept of imbecility disappeared, imbeciles wouldn't disappear. Unfortunately. You keep confusing the concept of noumenon or thing in itself with the existence of things.
You keep stringing the two together without argument.
Does this one work?
"The concept of a noumenon, (...) as a thing in itself" (B310)
Not only I, but other participants in the forum have already given you several texts in which Kant identifies noumenon and thing in itself in the same way: what falls outside the conditions of understanding, but you ignore them.
Not at all. I've repeatedly acknowledged that noumena can be understood as things-in-themselves. Only that the converse does not hold in all cases. There is an asymmetry.
Can you quote Kant to demonstrate that distinction?
"...a way in which the object exists in itself (noumenon), without regard to the intuition to which our sensibility is limited". (B346)
I already did!: "Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances". (A288)
That is: the limitation set by the understanding on sensibility does not apply to things-in-themselves. Noumena are 'appearence-relative', and only appearence-relative. Things-in-themselves are not.
Further down: "If we want to call this object a noumenon because the representation of it is nothing sensible, we are free to do so. But since we cannot apply any of our concepts of the understanding to it, this representation still remains empty for us, and serves for nothing but to designate the boundaries of our sensible cognition" (B346, my emphasis)
It should be noted to that your partial quote (B346), in context, comes at the end of a discussion in which the idea that limitations of understanding extends beyond sensibility, is a mistake. So the start of Kant's sentence, which you conveniently cut off, reads:
"We therefore think something in general, and on the one side determine it sensibly, only we also distinguish the object represented in general and in abstracto from this way of intuiting it; thus there remains to us a way of determining it merely through thinking that is, to be sure, a merely logical form without content, but that nevertheless seems to us to be a way in which the object exists in itself (noumenon), without regard to the intuition to which our sensibility is limited".
But this 'seems' is precisely, a mistake. To regard the noumenon as that 'without regard to which the intuition to which our sensibility is limited' is an error: the whole section is a 'critique of pure understanding': a critique which posits that to think noumena as abstracted from sensibility is a total mistake. What you quote in defence of your position is for Kant paradigmatic of a transcendental exercise of the understanding which must be avoided at all costs!
It's really very simple as Wayfarer pointed out in the first reply. The distinction between subject and object is a function of the mind body duality of humans.
So subject is that perceived, understood, inferred and discussed by the mind.
The object is what is sensed, or encountered by the body.
Simples.
Yes, what effects us from outside corresponds exactly to what we sense. That which effects our eyes exactly corresponds to what we see; that which effects our ears corresponds exactly to what we hear, etc. We have to have consistency between incoming data and what the cognitive system works with.
The stimuli become sensation (rods and cones, eardrum, pressure...), that which becomes an appearance (optic nerve, those little tiny bones....I forget the name, skin), from a sensation is a representation of it.
——————
Quoting Xtrix
The brain and nervous system have nothing to do with a speculative epistemological system. Just as intuition, conceptions and representations have nothing to do with cognitive neuroscience. Two different domains of investigation. When it comes right down to life and living, all our mental mechanics are done by the brain, but that is soooooo boring for the philosopher.
As to how representations are created: “....we have not here anything to do....”. We don’t know., and it really doesn’t matter, in a purely speculative epistemological theory.
——————
Quoting Xtrix
All kinds of things are outside us, but they are not representations, they are real, physical objects of experience, because they have particular names in accordance with the conceptions understood as belonging to them, thus cognized as a certain thing.
——————
Quoting Xtrix
I just quoted Kant as saying that’s exactly what we do.
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
Object are quite unknown to us in themselves says exactly the same as objects in themselves are quite unknown to us.
——————-
Quoting Xtrix
Fine. Go right ahead. That’s the easy way out of digging the subtleties from the theory. Literally anything experienceable is a possible experience. No merely possible experience can be a phenomenon. A merely possible experience will have a merely possible phenomenon as it condition. I can think swimming the English Channel, and it is experienceable, but the perception, the sensation and indeed the very phenomenon, are entirely absent.
——————-
Quoting Xtrix
“....The capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is called sensibility....”
This tells you representations are a consequence of objects, or, of things, and if they are a consequence, they cannot be antecedent to or simultaneous with, that which is their cause. And don’t be confused by “receiving representations” such that they appear with the object. When conditioned by “the mode in which we are affected” makes clear all representations are generated after they are perceived.
——————
Quoting Xtrix
Again, a common misunderstanding. Books, trees, yes. Feelings, emotions, pain, thought.....no. None of those are given representations by sensibility, even if the object which causes them, may be, thus can never be empirical cognitions. Feelings are relative subjective conditions alone, and have no object of their own. You cannot draw a feeling on a piece of paper as you can draw a tree; you can only draw that which you think is responsible for that feeling.
—————-
Quoting Xtrix
We don't care about the phenomenology. Just because Kant gave a very specific task to a relatively small part of his system doesn’t make him one. Besides, phenomena are not even used in pure reason, in which the faculty of sensibility is not in play.
Imagination is not an experience. Empirical cognition is. Imagination is at the beginning of the thought process and is below our attention, while experience is the culmination of the thought process and is quite apparent to us. While we certainly think the object of imagination, in this case the pink unicorn, such is not an experience, because it is not an empirical cognition given from an object of sense.
A pink unicorn is an idea, yes, Imagining a pink unicorn is not an idea, it is a rational activity of the thinking subject. So called because imagination is supposed to synthesize appearance with intuition, but with e.g., pink unicorns, nothing appears, which means imagination is creating a phenomenon from intuition alone without synthesizing anything, but rather, is merely combining like content. This is why we can imagine weird stuff, because understanding can find no contradictions in an object comprised of just one kind of content.
And the band played on.........
And as I said before, they're both related to the subject. If you argue the thing in itself somehow sticks around with no subject, yet the noumenon disappears with the subject gone, then the noumenon is either subject-dependent and thus phenomenal, or there's no difference between it and the thing in itself, which (at least as a concept) disappears with no subject as well. I see no difference, and the point was to differentiate the two.
Quoting StreetlightX
Fair enough. And I've heard you, but still think it's a mistake.
Per symmetry, a measurement is simply an interaction between two quantum systems (with no implication of consciousness or subjectivity in either system).
Quoting David Mo
They didn't. Heisenberg, for example, said:
--
Quoting David Mo
I'm not familiar with his writings. Can you, or anyone else, explain why Kant should be considered important for understanding QM or science generally?
Clear enough. I just cannot for the life of me understand the justification for this. They can be understood as things in themselves, but they're NOT things in themselves? What's added or subtracted? You claim it's in relation to the subject, but I have said repeatedly you can make the exact same argument by substituting "thing-in-itself" for "noumenon" in that case, and it still works.
But even if your point is granted, and there is a difference -- it doesn't seem to illuminate Kant's argument in any way, it doesn't give us insight into human understanding, sensation, perception, our scope or limits...who cares? Earlier you said it's important to insist about this "subtle" distinction. Why?
This is a classic misunderstanding of thing-in-itself. “In-itself” is a knowledge claim, not a claim of condition. We label objects as thing-in-themselves only to tell us we have no way to prove that what we know about objects is what they actually are. Things, without respect to whatever they are in themselves, absolutely must conform to our necessary conditions of space and time, otherwise, we would never be affected by them. Therefore, “things-in-themselves (thus outside our spatial-temporal mode of experience)”, is a false conditional. Things and things-in-themselves are equal as objects, just not as knowledgeable objects. Things as they are in themselves are still spatial-temporal things.
All of mine you quoted above is assembled from my quote below:
“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
(B45)
Simple substitution, object in itself for thing in itself. It is done by the author repeatedly. Please show how my argument is wrong.
Thanks, and a tip of the pointy hat in your general direction. (Grin)
The quote does not demonstrate this at all. In fact it does not MENTION noumena, it mentions things in themselves as apart from our (limited) understanding. Of COURSE the things-in-themselves are appearance-relative. How could it be otherwise?
Quoting StreetlightX
Again, substitute "thing-in-itself" in this and see if it works. I think it does, without any contradiction whatsoever.
Quoting Mww
Then the stimuli would be the thing in itself, not representation.
Quoting Mww
Saying they're real physical objects and representation is the same thing. Of course they're representations. If not, you're arguing some kind of correspondence theory of truth. Again, that's not Kant.
Quoting Mww
I'm utterly baffled. I say we don't perceive objects in themselves (which is obvious), then you disagree and quote Kant and the first thing he says is "objects are quite unknown to us in themselves" and "mere representations of our sensibility," which is exactly what I said. What's the deal here?
Quoting Mww
Sure. So you agree?
Quoting Mww
Fair enough. Like I said earlier, I do consider thought to be phenomenal. It is true that Kant isn't the exemplar of clarity on this.
Quoting Mww
I just don't see this as true at all. Imagination is, of course, an experience. Reducing experience to "empirical" experience is pretty limiting, and not very clear. But I see now how you define the terms, and the source of misunderstanding in this conversation. So be it.
Quoting Mww
Yeah, I think we're getting into the weeds. The last thing I wanted to do was defend Kant in some way or other. I don't really care! The initial response was about my saying the subject/object variation I was thinking of was Kant's. But at this point, I'll concede it's not Kant's -- it's my interpretation of Kant. And could be completely wrong.
Maybe that'll stop the band?
Your (...) leaves out the most important part, that act having its own special name.
“.....giving the name of noumena to things, not considered as phenomena, but as things in themselves...” (B310, 1985)
“....the concept of noumena, not to be thought as objects of the senses, but as a thing-in-itself...” (B310, 1929)
Your comment says what a noumenon is like, the author says how it should be treated. The two iterations are very far from being consistent with each other,
Quoting Mww
Sure.
Quoting Mww
This doesn't make any sense I'm afraid. The thing-in-itself is exactly what Kant, repeatedly, says is what cannot be known. Why? Because we're bound by space and time. You seem to keep wanting to bring the thing-in-itself back into the spatial-temporal world somehow.
Quoting Mww
"Actually are" apart from our way of knowing them, which is spatial-temporal. There's nothing left over, hence why we cannot say anything about it.
I asked a similar question here.
This is the closest anyone has come to providing an answer:
Quoting Mww
I've not read anything in this thread since that comment which convinces me that Kant has anything to do with Science generally. But there has been alot of entertaining chest thumping and ass covering.
Taking Kant's advice (per @Mww, above), let Metaphysics be informed by modern Psychology regarding the subject/object distinction/complementarity.
Correct. We can shorten thing-in-itself to just object or thing, without changing anything but the words.
—————-
Quoting Xtrix
No. Things outside us are real physical objects that become represented in and by the system. They cannot be representations antecedent to the system that causes them.
Now, if you wish to call representations and objects the same thing, you certainly can. But can you say how the representations are determined, if they reside outside the mind, as objects reside outside the body? If you use the Kantian system, you end up with representations of representations, which is catastrophic to the system itself.
—————
Quoting Xtrix
I wouldn’t know, and really don’t care. Kant is concerned with knowledge, and says very little about truth qua truth in his knowledge thesis.
—————
Quoting Xtrix
That was supposed to show perception of objects in themselves is actually true where you say it is false, and it is actually the case that knowledge of objects in themselves that is false.
Quoting Xtrix
Of course; I wrote it. You’re talking about perception of, I’m talking about knowledge of. You’re saying it’s obvious objects-in-themselves are not perceived when they actually are. Perception, and the faculty of sensibility cannot tell the difference between a thing and a thing in itself. There is no difference in the data received from a thing and the data received from that very same thing in itself. Which is probably why we just call it an object. Reconciles the whole mess.
——————
Quoting Xtrix
The theory is touted by its author as being “...complete and self-contained, with nothing not of account...”. Best way to do that is keep everything in a place exactly created for it, so nothing overlaps and gets in the way. Commonly called self-contradiction. Experience is called one thing, in order to prevent it from being something the conditions for that one thing, simply won’t allow. So, yes, it is limited, intentionally.
—————
Quoting Xtrix
It is. Or, it can be. Kant goes to great length to give a dissertation on logic and how logic is the form of all a priori cognitions of pure reason. And of course, all logical propositions are constructed on the subject/object dualism. We got side-tracked by the present discussion on different topics that don’t require a subject/object dualism for understanding them, but they would come into play when discussing what the subject himself is actually doing when he thinks, without getting as far as knowledge and experience, which is what phenomena/noumena and things in themselves are all about.
I’ll love weeds. Metaphysical weeds, not common garden variety weeds.
Let's take it one step at a time:
Your first quotation says nothing of distinction noumenon- thing in itself. Only says that intellect is not appliable out of world of senses (phenomena-appearances).
"Noumena are 'appearence-relative', and only appearence-relative" is an invention of yours. Noumena is not even mentioned.
Second step
Quoting StreetlightX
According with your first quote, Kant says that intellect cannot understand the world from beyond phenomena. Therefore the attempts to give a content to this world (noumena) are empty. Nothing can be said of things in themselves other than they might exist.
Once again nothing is said of the difference between noumena and thing in itself.
Your comment has no sense: "limitations of understanding" es exactly what impede it to go beyond phenomena. What should not extend beyond sensitivity is not limits, but understanding. "Does not" is singular: it refers to understanding; not "the limits", plural. I'm sorry, but you misread that.
Third step.
Quoting StreetlightX
Whether it is a mistake or not, what this sentence does is to equate the thing that exists in itself with the noumenon The error does not consist in this equality (expressed with the use of a parenthesis, which the parenthesis gives for a fact), but in the idea that the object of understanding, the thing in itself or noumenon can be considered without taking into account the kind of intuition that makes it accessible or not.
Summarizing: Your quotes have nothing to do with matching noumena-thing in itself. Only one mentions both like they are the same. Besides, they contain some reading mistakes.
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting David Mo
A quick response - anyone familiar with the subject would know immediately that the limitation set by the understanding is the noumenon, as is made clear by the preceding passage:
"The concept of the noumenon is, therefore, not the concept of an object, but is a problem unavoidably bound up with the limitation of our sensibility ... Understanding accordingly limits sensibility" (my bolding). This is obvious for anyone who understands that understanding = intelligibility = that to which the noumenal belongs = non-sensible intuition. As I already spelt out previously. Hence the 'accordingly' which refers to nothing else but the noumenon.
Edit:
Quoting David Mo
This is easy enough to deal with too: the 'of' in 'limitations of understanding' is an objective, not subjective genitive: as in, the limitations set by understanding for the sensibility, i.e. noumena. Not 'limitations on the understanding'. You made the grammatical mistake, not me.
Edit2: actually why not the whole thing:
Quoting David Mo
It does - in order to dispel this equation as exactly the wrong thing to do.
I said that the problem of subjectivity in measurements was raised, not that everyone had the same answer. And subjectivity does not only mean consciousness, but also relativity with respect to measurement, something that nobody or almost nobody denies in quantum mechanics: the collapse of the wave function.
Heisenberg deals with the subject especially in chapters 8 and 10 of the book you quote. His conclusion is not as emphatic as you seem to indicate with your quotation. Here is another one (the translation is mine):
"But atoms or elementary particles themselves are not
so real; they constitute a world of potentialities or
possibilities rather than one of things or facts". (Final lines of chapter 10).
You continue to confuse, or equate, the knowledge of a thing with the existence of it. A thing to be known must exist, but a thing that exists may not be known. Things existing before knowing beings, are the very same things existing and known by humans. Merely adding thinking subjects to the total of reality makes no difference to the thing. The thing doesn’t give a hoot about humans, it will remain always just itself.
————
Quoting Xtrix
The subtlety is.....our knowledge of a thing may be exactly what it is in itself. But without proof, which we don’t have and can’t get, because we have nothing with which to compare, we can’t know with apodeictic certainty. And we don’t have and can’t get proof because we don't know things, in themselves or otherwise, because we only know representations of things. It follows that our representations may perfectly exemplify things as they actually are in themselves, but once again, we can’t prove it.
All human empirical knowledge is grounded in the principle of induction. The more we know about a thing, the more conceptions we can logically understand as belonging to it, the closer we are to total knowledge of it, knowing exactly what that thing is. We cannot possibly have complete knowledge of some things (the quantum, the cosmological, because we have no idea what conceptions might even apply), which makes explicit the difference between what we do know and what there is to know, is exactly the same difference between the thing known and the thing in itself unknown.
That seems to be the case if you have not grasped the concept of problematic, which is essential to the understanding of the paragraph.
FYI, and of no particular import, Kant demonstrated the refutation of Newtonian absolute space and time (1786), advanced the first iteration of the nebula theory of star-generation (1755), the first iteration of plate tectonics (1756), the first to use “quantum” in its current meaning as “minimally discrete”. The absolute space thesis was metaphysical, having no mathematical proofs so not really science, the nebula essay inspired LaPlace and is still the core principle, the plate tectonics was way off-base, the point being he was the first to think what would eventually become current science.
Yeah.....just think of how many meanings can be changed merely by gutting a quotation.
Cheers.
These semantic games are tiresome. The thing in itself is beyond our knowledge, as I said before. The rest is irrelevant to me.
I’m unconvinced by your arguments- my reading is clearer, and every quote given so far either clearly agrees or can very easily be interpreted as much. Yours makes sense after much a linguistic gymnastic. Regardless, I’m sure you’ll simply claim the opposite- so be it. There’s no sense prolonging this discussion. I appreciate the effort.
Very clear. Almost my thoughts exactly.
Both noumena and things in themselves insofar as they are both considered as being thoughts are obviously "appearance relative". But in terms of what they refer to, noumena (or better the noumenal) is thought as being appearance relative (insofar as it is the "limit" of appearance) whereas things in themselves are thought as being utterly independent of all appearance (and human thought, understanding and knowledge). This is not a distinction without a difference, but a fundamental ontological distinction.
"limit of appearance" is meaningless at this point. It can be repeated again and again, sure, but until it's explained it's just nonsense. I'm tired of pointing this out. Might as well say the noumenon is the limit in the Twilight Zone between appearance and thing-in-itself. Whatever the case may be, if there is a distinction it's so trivial it's a wonder we've spent so much time on it. According to Wikipedia there is debate about what it is in serious scholarship, so I suppose it doesn't make one dim to struggle with it. But I fail to see it. Simply declaring "it's the limit" or "the boundary" isn't saying anything at all. Nor has there been any definitive, clear textual evidence presented of anything remotely like this being said.
So far you just said:
Thing in itself = independent of appearance.
Noumenon = relative to appearance.
So both are at least contrasted with appearances in some way. Regardless, neither can be known, neither have properties of any kind, etc., but yet they're different. In what other way are they different than what's stated above? Can you give me anything else whatsoever?
You remove the subject, you remove both. Or you can say if you remove the subject, both still exist. But to say removing the subject and one stays around due to it's independence, but the other disappears because it's defined as the limit is just unnecessary. Just call the damn thing the limit of understanding in that case. Calling it a different word is an extra step.
Blahhh
In terms of Kant's philosophy, that's my conclusion as well (his specifically scientific contributions notwithstanding as Mww mentions).
OK, but per consciousness, almost everybody in quantum mechanics denies that consciousness causes collapse.
Here are the definitions of subject and object that seem to best fit the OP's meaning:
Quoting Subject (philosophy)
I've been arguing in this thread that relativity with respect to measurement is the natural framework here (I earlier mentioned Einstein's special theory of relativity). But that rejects subject/object dualism per the above definitions.
Can someone explain to me what "OP" stands for? Thanks.
There are many devils in the details.
And also a lot of nonsense.
Thank you!
I've always found this to be a far more interesting take on the subject/object dichotomy than the usual reading which substantializes the object (or ontologizes it) as something 'out there' and for which it is the role of the 'subject' to grasp or engage with.
Kant is not always clear, but this paragraph (B310) is.
In the first sentence he defines what he means by a problematic concept.
A concept is problematic when it is not contradictory, but pretends to refer to a reality that is not cognizable.
In the second sentence defines noumenon: the concept of a thing in itself that is not contradictory but escapes the unique intuition possible: sensible intuition. That is to say, noumena are problematic. [You may think here there is a difference: noumena are the concepts and things in themselves are its reference. In reality Kant uses the name noumenon in both senses. In the twelfth line he speaks of "phenomena" as objects outside of the appearances, that is the same way he speaks of things in themselves.]
In the subsequent lines to the end he reinforces the idea of emptiness of noumena (according to the Kantian principle that concepts without intuitions are empty) and concludes that, even being empty, they have a double utility. They show that they cannot been get by sensibility [against English empiricism -Hume] and so they mark the limits of intellect that cannot be overstepped.
I think the seeming contradiction you have marked is due to the two different uses of the word "noumenon" that Kant envisages here. Problematicity summarizes it and its utility.
Anyway, Kant only say in these sentences that noumena cannot be explained by sensibility because they point to an impossible-pure knowledge of metaphysical entities.
Noumenon is just the opposite of appearance in the sense that appearance is the phenomenon. We can see houses (phenomenon). We cannot see God (noumenon). In this case appearance is known by sight. If "relative" means the opposite, well, but it is a strange way to say it.
The concept of limit is not trivial. It is the battlefield of any philosophy: What can I know?
Yes. But in quantum mechanics (not philosophy) the subjective means the problem of measurement, that is to say, the fact that some objects cannot be known -or even exist- independently of the fact to be measured. May be "intersubjective" would be more accurate, but usually they are called "subjective". In any case not "objective".
Welcome, Tim.
I agree. The fathers of 20th' Scientific Revolution were obsessed with Mach, Hume or Plato and let in oblivion Kant (with d'Espagnat exception, but he was not a father, just an older brother). Maybe Kant was too attached to Newtonian science that they were trying to overcome. But if this was the case, they got muddled with Kantian details and overlooked Kantian principles.
What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking.
See previous comments, please.
Agree. Really glad to see someone here who appreciates this. Are you familiar with philosopher of science Michel Bitbol? He has some very interesting things to say about this.
In this paragraph Kant is criticizing the "ordinary" representation of things in themselves, purely empirical. His criticism begins from "But if we consider..." The idea is that the in thing itself cannot be reached through the generalization of the senses.
Sorry, no. Can you point me to a link on the Internet? I read in French.
Etymologically, yes. But that compromises us with Greek philosophy, which is what Kant wants to criticize.
From the poscast:
Sounds like it would interest you. I’m just 15mins in up to now.
* Kant actually refers to "pure understanding" here
I suspect it is rather because he wanted to distance himself from scholasticism, as all the early moderns were obliged to do.
But if you unpack the notion of 'noumenal', it means 'an object of mind'. And what Aristotle meant by that, as I understand it, is close to what the Platonic tradition calls an 'intelligible object'. What intelligible objects are, are concepts, as distinct from mental images and sensations. An example is given in Descartes' sixth meditation, that being the chiliagon, a thousand-sided polygon. 'Descartes says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, the philosopher does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination.' And even though it might be impossible to validate whether the chiliagon is genuine by mere sensory inspection, because one has grasped the concept, one could validate the model by the painstaking task of counting the sides. But one can only do this because one understands the concept.
You see, nowadays, the whole nature of 'concepts' has become rather indefinite and vague, whereas for the rationalist tradition, it was really rather rigorous. But as we nowadays operate within a consensus view which sees the intelligent subject representing images of the external reality in ideas, then the rationalist understanding is no longer intelligible at all (which is ironic, considering.)
In any case, the point for this discussion is that intelligible objects possess a reality which actual objects rarely do, in that they're perfect and imperishable - after all, a chiliagon will be thus in all possible worlds. But nowadays, with our inclination to validate everything empirically, we want to know if it's something that exists 'out there somewhere' - and, if not, then of course we're inclined to doubt its reality. It is, we say, something that only exists in the mind.
And this is a point which I don't think Kant fully appreciated, although I would be more than happy to be shown to be wrong.
"It is implied in this distinction [between noumena and phenomena] ... possible things, which are not objects of our senses but are thought as objects merely through the understanding, in opposition to the former, and that in so doing we entitle them intelligible entities (noumena)." (B306).
"The Transcendental Aesthetic, already of itself establishes the objective reality of noumena and justifies the division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and so of the world into a world of the senses and a world of the understanding (mundus sensibilis et intelligibilis)" (A249)
And of course, the understanding is what furnishes us with the concepts necessary for the cognition of objects. Kant is very much drawing on a modified classical vocabulary and grammar in his use of these terms.
Agree. That is a subject I would like to read more about. As I said in an earlier post, it seems to have many points of convergence with hylomorphism, but this is not something that I've often seen commented on.
https://www.amazon.com/Kants-Theory-Normativity-Exploring-Reason/dp/1107127807
This is what you want, if you can afford it!
[quote=Immanuel Kant]Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason. [/quote]
Cool!! :up: :up: :up:
This has no sense for me. Could you quote Kant's exact sentence, please?
Understood, and all well and good. Some groundwork, if I may:
Thought. A thought. Full stop. No ways and means, no object, no terminology. Just a split-second instance of what a human does as a private rational agency. A form of something as yet without content. Then, consider its spontaneity. The proverbial, “it just popped into my head” kinda thing. Granting this actual occasion is sufficient reason for Kant to speculate this, as the second theoretical tenet:
“....Our knowledge springs from two main sources, the first (receptivity for impressions); the second is the (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is thought....”
And because of that tenet, these consequences are justified as following from it:
“....we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, understanding.....”
“.....Conceptions, then, are based on the spontaneity of thought...”
Thus is given that concepts are representations, and as such, arise spontaneously from the faculty of understanding, which makes explicit understanding is the faculty of thought itself. In other words, it is meant to justify that understanding thinks. From that, and with various support found within the theory, thought is cognition by means of conceptions.
———————-
Now, that being what the understanding is, it remains to be said what the understanding does.
“.....But the conjunction of a manifold in intuition never can be given us by the senses, for it is a spontaneous act of the faculty of representation. And as we must, to distinguish it from sensibility, entitle this faculty understanding; so all conjunction (...) is an act of the understanding. To this act we shall give the general appellation of synthesis, thereby to indicate, at the same time, that we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves....”
Thus is given that understanding is the faculty that thinks, and in empirical thought, thinks a synthesis of conjoining representations of its own spontaneous creation to the representations of a manifold in intuition. Or, conceptions to intuitions, hence the adage, “...Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind....”
Sidebar: This......we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves......is the oft-abused, but fundamentally critical “Copernican Revolution”.
———————
The onset of the noumenal problem arises here:
“....understanding which is occupied merely with empirical exercise, and does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may exercise its functions very well and very successfully, but 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....”
The entire foray into noumena is justified by this one thing:
one may see a piece of toast, but one may also see a piece of toast with a face in it.
All this is, is the faculty of understanding turning itself into the faculty of imagination, insofar as there is created a phenomenon from that which no such phenomenon should be contained.
And the problem is caused by the understanding itself:
“......The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects....” (B306)
Without the direct references, it shall be given that the conceptions understanding thinks as belonging to a mere notion of an object in itself already established as a phenomenon from the faculty of sensibility, it calls a noumenon, thus nothing but an intelligible concoction dreamed up by understanding simply because it has voluntarily exceeded its empirical mandate in the employment of its spontaneity.
In effect, understanding represents to itself, on its own accord, the notion of a thing, terms it noumenon, but stops right there, without also thinking schema that would then be synthesized to it in order for such notion to have reality.
Understanding here thinking to or within itself, not with respect to sensibility thus without empirical content, therefore it is the pure understanding. The only conceptions belonging to pure understanding are the categories. The categories can only apply in empirical thought having to do with objects of sensibility, and the notion of an object in itself understanding thinks for itself, is no such thing. The only concepts with which pure understanding has to synthesize......which is its job after all.....are the categories, but synthesis of pure conceptions with mere notions cannot give a cognition. Therefore, noumena are nothing but logically possible, pure thoughts of the understanding, and most certainly not a thing in itself.
It now should be clear that.....
“.....giving the name of noumena to things, not considered as phenomena, but as things in themselves, hence is compelled to cogitate them merely as an unknown something....” (B310, 1985)
“....the concept of noumena, not to be thought as objects of the senses, but as a thing-in-itself, solely through a pure understanding....” (B310, 1929)
.......is simply an elaboration of B306, in which the original thought of the pure understanding as “object in itself”, is thoroughly interchangeable with the thing in itself of B310, and only is meant to advocate noumena have no possibility of ever being a cognized empirically just as the actual, real physical ding an sich outside us has no possibility, and not that they should ever be thought as being the same thing. The difference in consideration as to why they cannot, lays in the consequences of noumena being the off-shoot of a mere notion, but the ding an sich stands as an unknowable, albeit a real, physical object. The former is objectively valid as a thought, the latter is objectively real as an object.
——————
In the case where it is said noumena are the limit on appearance, or sensibility, derives from the following:
Phenomena are the result of the synthesis of appearance to intuition by the imagination. Understanding synthesizes phenomena with conception. Pure understanding attempts to synthesize a notion of an object in itself already given as phenomenon, which already has an appearance as its predicate. The notion of an object in itself deletes phenomenon proper......
(When the face in the toast is the focus of attention, the toast itself fades to background)
.......thus the appearance used in the synthesis of them, is likewise deleted. Keeping in mind understanding unites intuition with conception, it follows the deletion must be appearance, because if understanding thinks to delete intuition, it doesn’t work at all, a contradiction. The limit on sensibility is then, that upon the thought of noumena, the faculty of sensibility ceases to function as the source of empirical knowledge. It is the toast that is real, not the face.
The devil for some, and the nonsense for others, is in the details.
This really ought to be the end of the conversation. The noumenal is of the order of the intelligible and thus belongs to the understanding. Anyone who similarly thinks that the thing-in-itself is also intelligible and is a posit of the understanding simply ought to give up reading Kant forever.
YES!!! And get several translations. Sometimes comparing them helps with one’s comprehension.
YES!!! I mean....the guy’s tough, sure. Sometimes confusing, absolutely. But it’s all in the book, if a guy wants to dig it out bad enough.
True enough, actually. But, man......those paragraph-long sentences.....I have to start over by the time I get to the end of some of them, I swear.
But you are right, all in all. He lays a very basic set of pre-conditions, in the introductions, to be sure.
"The division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and of the world into a world of sense and a world of understanding, can therefore not be permitted at all, although concepts certainly permit of division into sensible and intellectual ones; for one cannot determine any object for the latter, and therefore also cannot pass them off as objectively valid. If one abandons the senses, how will one make comprehensible that our categories (which would be the only remaining concepts for noumena) still signify anything at all, since for their relation to any object something more than merely the unity of thinking must be given, namely a possible intuition, to which they can be applied?" (B311, A256)
Kant is actually referring here negatively to intellectual concepts or "pure understanding" (?). Categories as concepts for noumena would refer only to unity of thinking. - Little later Kant refers to noumenon not as an intelligible object but as a problematic understanding which contains this object.
Or: categories are originally noumena which are phenomenalized through schemes. This is a movement from rationalism to empiricism. However, there remains a strong rational or intellectual moment in Kant's system.
Obviously not an easy subject, so many distinctions to keep in mind. :)
—————-
Quoting David Mo
——————
I still don’t see how my argument, that paragraph ending in things-in-themselves are unknown to us, is wrong. Your “But if we consider....” is in B63, which has to do with transcendental objects. B45 isn’t treating objects of perception as transcendental objects.
I understand “objects are quite unknown to us in themselves” (B45), but I don’t think that is meant to imply objects unknown to us in themselves, are not the objects of perception. If such should be the case, we must have two distinct and locally separate objects...the one we perceive, and the exact same singular entity left behind because it is unknown to us. That would be like.....if we don’t know what they are, we can’t see them, which is logically absurd. Or, which is just as silly.....we can’t see them because we don’t know what they are.
I would appreciate a reference for your “...Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR....”. I would agree we cannot perceive any transcendental object, and if the thing-in-itself is considered as one, we wouldn’t be able to perceive it with our representational system. But that does not say spacetime objects are only considered transcendentally.
What happens is students go to university and their professors tell them the ‘true meaning’ of Kant. Then they meet other students who’ve been told something different by a different professor OR their professor was astute enough to let them know that COPR has been a contentious text since its inception.
Thank you, I'll check it out.
An interpretation-neutral term that captures that is counterfactual definiteness (i.e., the ability to speak "meaningfully" of the definiteness of the results of measurements that have not been performed). Almost all quantum interpretations reject counterfactual definiteness (the notable exception being the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation).
See also below, which echoes Heisenberg's concern that I quoted earlier:
Quoting Copenhagen interpretation - Metaphysics of the wave function
Quoting David Mo
So the issue is that there doesn't seem to be a use in physics (or philosophy of physics) for notions like "things in themselves" and "a priori conditions of knowledge".
To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?
Exactly correct. So you're right, why bicker about whether noumenon means the same thing or something else -- it doesn't negate the above, which is all I'm really concerned with in this thread.
Nevertheless, if anyone has bothered I'd like their interpretation.
Thanks again - I wasn't familiar with his podcast, but I like the podcaster as an interviewer. I know Dan, we live in the same town, and although I don't particularly agree with him much he's a very kind man and deserving of his success.
I like Heidegger, especially the lectures that made him famous among students well before Being and Time. Have you read any of the early stuff or perhaps The Young Heidegger by Van Buren? Having looked at the early stuff, it's clear to me that Blattner's Heidegger's Temporal Idealism gets 'death' wrong. It's nothing so complicated. It's just the possibility of our own death, certain but indeterminate. Memento mori!
To answer your question, what I take from Heidegger is that the subject/object paradigm is artificial, which is to say founded on something primary that just 'worlds' or 'events.' I am the there itself, caught up in time or even as time that runs out, having started without my permission in the middle of situations and habits I did not choose. Theory's subject-object device is part of an epistemological project that neglects our primary, non-theoretical kind of existence --the same experience of sharing a world of tools and words that makes such a theory possible in the first place.
At the same time, the subject-object device is used well by the empiricists (including Kant).
[quote=Kant]
Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.
Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay,
All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.
The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.
[/quote]
Kant just radicalizes Locke, and yet, as others have noted, he goes so far that we no longer have a plurality of things, for this imposes too much structure on whatever [s]causes[/s] sensation. Small wonder that Kant is so controversial; he's on the edge of absurdity.
I think you know Kant better than me, so perhaps you can clear this up. Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there? Isn't our division of experience into a system of 'law'-obeying objects the work of our minds? As I understand it, what is 'really' out there (according to Kant) is utterly unknowable, and not even in space or time or the causal nexus. So we can't even say that our intuitions/sensations are 'caused' by it. My rough understanding of Kant (I'm willing to be schooled) is that ordinary reality is a kind of intersubjective representation of a represented that only exist theoretically as a '?.' Kant is fascinating for taking such an extreme position. Even space and time are just modes of representation. (!?)
[quote=Kant]
In the same way, if I consider all the representations of the senses, together with their form, space and time, to be nothing but appearances, and space and time to be a mere form of the sensibility, which is not to be met with in objects out of it, and if I make use of these representations in reference to possible experience only, there is nothing in my regarding them as appearances that can lead astray or cause illusion. For all that they can correctly cohere according to rules of truth in experience. Thus all the propositions of geometry hold good of space as well as of all the objects of the senses, consequently of all possible experience, whether I consider space as a mere form of the sensibility, or as something cleaving to the things themselves. In the former case however I comprehend how I can know a priori these propositions concerning all the objects of external intuition. Otherwise, everything else as regards all possible experience remains just as if I had not departed from the vulgar view.
...
My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from reducing the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of securing the application of one of the most important cognitions (that which mathematics propounds a priori) to actual objects, and of preventing its being regarded as mere illusion. For without this observation it would be quite impossible to make out whether the intuitions of space and time, which we borrow from no experience, and which yet lie in our representation a priori, are not mere phantasms of our brain, to which objects do not correspond, at least not adequately, and consequently, whether we have been able to show its unquestionable validity with regard to all the objects of the sensible world just because they are mere appearances.
[/quote]
A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? Does Kant not need to assume that we all intuit space the same way? And how can he see anyone's beetle in their box? The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? I still think Kant is great.
He’s quite popular on this forum I believe so you’re going to get something more in line with your thinking from others.
In phenomenological terms the whole subject/object issue isn’t much of an issue at all.
Yes I've read his lectures on Aristotle and Hegel. I didn't find Blattner's book all that convincing. I haven't heard of "The Young Heidegger."
Quoting mask
Interesting. It does seem he's getting at that when speaking of "de-worlding." But yes, that the subject-object dichotomy is just a "founded" mode of seeing the world I get out of him as well. And I have to say that prior to reading Heidegger, I never had quite considered things in this way, despite reading Freud and Schopenhauer and all our contemporary talk of automaticity.
Regarding the last part: you could argue, maybe, that later Heidegger narrows himself to language (and poetry), but earlier Heidegger certainly not. HIs interest then, and I'd argue even later, was ulitmiately being, not language. Hardly too narrow.
Quoting I like sushi
True enough.
Nice. I like The Concept of Time, first draft of B&T, if I had to pick just one. The big picture is squeezed into < 100 pages. I have the red & white little paperback translated by Farin and Skinner. Thankfully they don't capitalize 'being,' which used to put me off of Heidegger. It's more clearly an extension of Dilthey and Von Wartenberg (and about the historicity of human existence as opposed to more general questions about being --while including the classic analytic in abbreviated form.)
The problem with Blattner is maybe that he intentionally ignored the early stuff, as he says in the intro. You mentioned Dreyfus, whose Being-in-the-world is great. Maybe Dreyfus and others downplay the early stuff because it's inspired by Christian thinkers and also morbid-angsty. Anyway, what Dermot Moran writes in the essay linked to agrees with the much more detailed treatment in Van Buren.
https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Choosing%20a%20Hero%20Heidegger%20on%20Authentic%20Life%202010.pdf
[quote = link]
Although Heidegger is aware of Rudolf Otto’s analysis of religion as centred on the idea of the “holy” or the “numinous”, in fact, for Heidegger, the key to an understanding of religion in general and the Christian religion in particular is not so much the numinous as what he calls “the historical” (das Historsiche) (GA60: 323). The “core phenomeon” (Kernphänomen) (GA60: 31) or “founding sense-element” (GA60: 323) of religion is “the historical” (GA60: 31) : “Factical life 13 emerges out of a genesis and becomes in an entirely special way historical (enacted)” (GA60: 141). The religious way of being in the world is as a kind of historical consciousness. Unfortunately, in his 1920-21 Phenomenology of Religious Life course, Heidegger is not particularly forthcoming about what precisely he means by “the historical”. For Heidegger, history is not something that can simply be made an object of study. Rather, we are cast in history, we live it: “History hits us, and we are history itself” (Die Geschichte trifft uns, und wir sind sie selbst) (GA60: 173). Factical life and the experience of the historical add up to being the same thing; the manner human beings are concerned, worried or preoccupied by time and by the temporal aspects of their lives. In later lecture courses Heidegger will be more explicit about the manner that Dasein occupies history and is highly critical of inauthentic ways of understanding the process of history.
[/quote]
For context, I'm an atheist, but I like what Heidegger cooked up.
I also never encountered the notion of 'deworlding' in the same way as in Heidegger. Maybe what really brings it home is the analytic of everyday dasein, the usually ignored network of equipment, Dreydegger's 'one', 'interpretedness,' etc. Inherited frameworks of interpretation, a past that leaps ahead!
And then there's the gap between 'science space' (geometric space) and 'lived' space --the familiar path down the stairs or around the block. And in The Concept of Time he imaginatively reconstructs the public time of the clock that we all take for granted. For me, grasping being-in-the-world and being-with-others and (what I call ) being-in-language as 'phenomena' just obliterated certain epistemological issues that I could once take more seriously.
So even if a person jettisons the death and authenticity stuff, the unveiling description of all the structure of the mundane that we usually ignore as too close to us is a game changer. Being-with-others is primary. Can't start with the beetle in the box.
In a way, the introduction of the distinction (b/t subject and object) into philosophy ought to be seen as a kind of abberation, a wrong turn taken that we've had to devote entire generations of philosophy in order to get over. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Because it makes a difference as to what kind of thing the transcendental subject is. Collapsing the noumenon into the thing-in-itself idealizes the thing-in-itself in a way that makes Kant... Fichte. It makes all the difference in the world.
Thank you.
I'm afraid I don't understand the example of the toast. This raises a question about your conception of the thing in itself (noumenon). The face on the toast is just a phenomenal illusion. Things in themselves refer to objects such as substance, God, cause, soul, etc. that have no appearance. This is what defines noumenon by opposition to phenomenon.
It should be noted that Kant wrote in Old German. This leads to different translations. The one from Cambridge University Press (available online) seems particularly clear to me, but English is obviously not my mother tongue.
There is perhaps a reasonable version of it. Already in Democritus, we have a theory of the substratum of atoms and void and a (crude) theory of sensation/appearance. Feynman said that he would choose “atomic hypothesis” among all others if all scientific knowledge were to be lost in a cataclysm and he could only save one idea. Democritus had to consider that his sense organs weren't sensitive enough to see the atoms that were plausibly there due to more abstract considerations.
For me the problem with the subject-object distinction is about private language. Certain philosophers forget the social-historical nature of talking-thinking, that self-consciousness depends on the other, etc.
Quoting StreetlightX
I agree that the death theme is a distraction. It's as if Heidegger was trying to work his home-grown religion into an otherwise neutral analysis. A better approach to authenticity is perhaps in contrast to chatter or idle talk in the sense of pre-interpretedness that blocks access to a genuine grasp of a text, for instance. Gadamer's Truth and Method strikes me as sober and impressive application of Heidegger's insights on time.
Your mistake was here. Things in themselves are not perceived, only thought.Let us see the whole paragraph:
"The aim of this remark is only to prevent one from thinking of illus-
trating the asserted ideality of space with completely inadequate exam-
ples, since things like colors, taste, etc., are correctly considered not as
qualities of things but as mere alterations of our subject, which can even
be different in different people. For in this case that which is originally
itself only appearance, e.g., a rose, counts in an empirical sense as a
thing in itself, which yet can appear different to every eye in regard to
color. The transcendental concept of appearances in space, on the con-
trary, is a critical reminder that absolutely nothing that is intuited in
space is a thing in itself, and that space is not a form that is proper to
anything in itself, but rather that objects in themselves are not known
to us at all, and that what we call outer objects are nothing other than
mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose
true correlate, i.e., the thing in itself, is not and cannot be cognized
through them, but is also never asked after in experience". (B45)
Underlined is mine.
What calls you to confusion is probably the expression of what is in itself "in empirical" sense. Kant is not defending here his own doctrine, but he is exposing English empiricism that he will criticize in the following lines: Sens data are always subjective ("different" for each of us) and cannot give account of the very thing in itself. "What we call objects" (a pencil, a wolf) are only representations of sensibility (that is to say, phenomena). But thing in itself cannot be "cognized" so.
In my opinion what makes Kant attractive is that he stands between subjective idealism and dogmatic realism. The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind.
Quoting mask
There is a part of Kant's theory of mathematics that is fully valid: mathematics are constructions that are imposed a priori and then justified by experience. There is another part that is outdated: mathematics is universal. Since the emergence of non-Euclidean mathematics and its use in modern science, this is unsustainable.
I would like the debate to shift to Heidegger. I tried to read Being and Time and found it too cumbersome, so I stopped. I only know about him through third parties too involved in controversies against or in favour of him.
I also like indirect realism, which is what I think you are getting at. But why not Locke? Locke should get more play. And then Hobbes is one of the great writers in English. The fact that he doesn't dwell very long on this or that detail is perhaps to his credit. He steams ahead to the social nature of the human being. He also anticipates Heidegger by emphasizing that human beings are future oriented, in terms of fear and hope, and that they want to understand in order to predict and control.
Quoting David Mo
Have you considered that Kant (seems to) implicitly assume that all human subjects have some kind of core structure of cognition in common? Let's say that I am convinced by a mathematical proof, but that no one else finds the proof convincing. Where is mathematics then? It seems to me that as a matter of experience mathematics is relatively uncontroversial. We all agree that there are an infinity of primes. It seems we infer a shared hard-wired mathematical faculty from this consensus.
Quoting David Mo
Being and Time is cumbersome indeed. I recommend the first draft, which is less than 100 pages and written in a much friendlier style:
https://www.amazon.com/Concept-Time-Contemporary-European-Thinkers-dp-144110562X/dp/144110562X/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
That one will cost you.
Or you can read for free an even shorter lecture here that has (confusingly) the same name: https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pages-from-21501-the_concept_of_time.pdf
That shorter lecture is nice, but it is so short that it's more of an appetizer than the thing itself. As someone who hesitated about Heidegger for a long time and ended up thinking he was great, I insist that you just gotta read some more Heidegger. He was famous among those in the know for 10 years before B&T came out. B&T is to Heidegger like Nevermind is to Nirvana (made him famous for outsiders). And also over-produced.
Here's a free anthology of his earlier stuff. The style is plain Jane accessible. About half way through I start to recognize the exciting Heidegger.
https://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj5946/f/1_becoming_heidegger_2nd_revised_edition.pdf
...something which I think is exactly correct. The whole point is, the advent of Galilean science combined with Cartesian dualism posited a complete separation of mind and matter (as is common knowledge). But along with this, there was also the posit that the observing mind was identified with the secondary qualities - in effect, subjectivized, understood to be something that only existed in an individual sense as your mind or mine. So the mind was in effect 'bracketed out' of consideration, and then with the advent of Darwinian biology, reduced to basically an evolutionary adaptation - according to the likes of Dennett, a by-product of the selfish gene.
But really Kant is the antidote to that, although I don't think many scientists understand that, because it takes a kind of critical self-awareness which is among the things that have been bracketed out. This ‘bracketing out’ actually culminates, not in a philosophy, so much, as a stance or a way of being or state of mind. (See Bas van Fraasen Science, Materialism and False Consciousness..)
'Historically, theater has been understood in terms of character and narrative, but really it's about the sets'.
Quoting Andrew M
CPR, A369
What you're not seeing is the way the mind - not just your mind, or my mind - constructs the entire stage within which perspective and judgements of the age of the Universe exist.
(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271)
"No one can define the concept of magnitude in general except by something like this: That it is the determination of a thing through which it can be thought how many units are posited in it. Only this how-many-times is grounded on successive repetition, thus on time and the synthesis (of the homogeneous) in it. Reality, in contrast to negation, can be defined only if one thinks of a time (as the sum total of all being) that is either filled by it or empty. If I leave out persistence (which is existence at all times), then nothing is left in my concept of substance except the logical representation of the subject, which I try to realize by representing to myself something that can occur solely as subject (without being a predicate of anything). But then it is not only the case that I do not even know of any conditions under which this logical preeminence can be attributed to any sort of thing; it is also the case that absolutely nothing further is to be made of it, and not even the least consequence is to be drawn from it, because by its means no object whatever of the use of this concept is determined, and one therefore does not even know whether the latter means anything at all ..." (A243, B301)
For Kant being is basically temporality. Being is mediated through the schematism of temporality. Being is real or actual in so far as it is something mediated through the schemes of temporality.
Linguistic convention says there are basketballs out there; transcendental idealism says there are objects out there only called basketballs because the human represents the object to himself as such.
———————
Quoting mask
Correct. Given that all humans incorporate the same rational system, all reality in general should be consistent among them. A basketball is such for me as it is such for you. Even if I have no experience of them, if you tell me about one, I should understand what you’re talking about and form a representation of it a priori for myself. This is for the most part because of the categories, which permits conception of an object in general without all the the necessary intuitions given from perception.
———————
Quoting mask
I can’t find this passage. To tell the truth, I don’t even recognize it, my keyword searches don’t lead me to it, and because I’m too lazy to peruse all my literature even after thumbing through some of it, would you please refer me to its source? I’m not sure what geometry is having to be saved from, unless you meant illusory appearance. That has an affirmative answer, but I’m going to withhold it because I don’t want to confuse the contexts.
—————-
Quoting mask
Synthetic propositions of geometry indeed require practice to prove their truth, consistent with their specific objects. Analytic propositions of logic, on the other hand, do as well, but require only objects in general be given to them.
The science of relativity is grounded in Galileo’s mind alone, isn’t it? Einstein may or may not have thought SR and GR on his own, even if there never was a Galileo, but he didn’t.
This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.
The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction. AND we only able to know deductive reasoning because of inductive reasoning.
From therein Kant proceeds to cut and slice away at these ideas arrives at the categories and the terminological application of ‘noumenon’ and ‘phenomenon’ to better represent these initial points (a priori and a posteriori).
Perhaps the most baffling step is getting past ‘a priori knowledge’ not being known - see introduction to deal with that point. He’s more than worth a read.
Agreed. The point being, the manner it which it became an illusion.
I categorical reject the symbolism implicating the thing-in-itself should equate to noumenon.
I find it telling that it is so difficult to fathom, that the discursive faculty of understanding is the sole originator of any kind of likeness between them, and then only because they are misunderstood. They are utterly and completely different in form and matter, they are differently logically and they are different conceptually. The only commonality shared between them is knowledge and the lack thereof.
—————
Quoting David Mo
Yes, things in themselves and all those “such as” are the same as far as the faculty of sensibility is concerned, because none of them appear to us, but they all can still be thought by us. That does not mean the thing in itself refers to them, or, that those “such as” are even objects, in the manner in which a thing in itself is an object.
No, it doesn't. As I said above -- does it negate the conception you mentioned? No. And that's all I care about.
Try as I did I still don't see your interpretation as being coherent, or supported textually. But really whatever else one wants to say about noumena is irrelevant to me at this point.
I've never placed too much importance on Heidegger's views on death. Authenticity is interesting. But you're right -- his phenomenological analysis of "average everydayness" has always beens striking to me. His Introduction to Metaphysics should be read by anyone serious about Heidegger, and would be my recommendation to you if you haven't already.
Great recommendation! I have read it, but I agree that it's great. And we seem to agree that the analysis of average everydayness has value independently of what one makes of the death theme & authenticity theme. I think we can also phrase this as the phenomenon of the world. So forgetfullness of being is forgetfulness of the worldliness of world, of the network of significance that we mostly glide on and through without noticing it. This would be forgetfulness or ignorance of 'tool being' or equipment as ready to hand but not 'present.'
Sure. PFM, section 13, remark 2: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-h/52821-h.htm
Thank you. This matches what I grasped from my own reading. This idea of the same rational system is what Solomon called the 'transcendental pretense.' I think we do have the same rational system, more or less, but believing this seems to depend on experience, on being socialized. To me the deep subject looks plural rather than singular, even though consciousness is founded in the individual brain.
Solomon also talks of methodological solipsism, which is basically starting from Descartes' individual doubting mind. To me this is like trying to understand the internet by studying only laptops. Our brains have evolved to be networked and are only understood in the highest functioning as such a network. (That's my rough position at the moment.)
Quoting Mww
Some kind of corrosive Humean relativism?
Quoting Mww
Deep question. If the 'I' is a modification of the 'we' --if intersubjectivity is primary and not secondary-- what then? The hardware is individual, but the software is networked.
[quote=Wittgenstein]
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
[/quote]
If the language that the individual thinks in and with is forged socially, then Heidegger has a point with his being-in-the-world and being-with-others as a deeper layer than the epistemological theory of the individual mind processing sensation with an innate set of concepts.
Read (more) Kant is of course good advice. I love his introductions, but I haven't studied all of the details. Kant is not always a pleasure to read. And then debates about Kant are like lots of classical metaphysical debates, which are haunted by a kind of futility perhaps.
Recently I found a philosopher who articulated my vague misgivings about Kant.
[quote=Tomida]
Whereas Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are objects of scienti?c investigations (especially by the corpuscular hypothesis), Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are thoroughly unknowable. But despite their unknowability, Kant af?rms the existence of things in themselves, and this has been viewed for a long time as one of the serious problems in Kant’s philosophy. According to Kant, things in space (and their properties) are nothing but representations ‘in us’, and appearances qua representations necessarily demand the existence of things in themselves (though these are unknowable). From an historical point of view, however, if Descartes’ and Locke’s theories of ideas do not precede it, such a view must be unintelligible. If I may limit my consideration to Locke and Kant, perhaps we can say that Kant’s ‘things in themselves’ are the product of a degeneration of Lockean ‘things themselves’. In other words, Kant’s concept of ‘things in themselves’ would not make sense without the model of Locke’s naturalistic theory of ideas,[4] and as a result of its degeneration, the framework of his transcendental idealism seems to have a distorted logic.
...
As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense. But though he has such a view, Kant repeatedly emphasizes that sensible representations are given to us by ‘things in themselves’ affecting our minds or senses.
Why does Kant assert the existence of the unknown ‘things in themselves’?
[/quote]
https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lk
One answer is that we 'obviously' share a single world. Humans are born, humans die. The world remains. This vaguely suggests a substratum that is independent of any particular-mortal human mind.
Another problem I have with my imperfect understanding of Kant is:
[quote=Tomida]
Kant’s things in themselves, which correspond to Locke’s things themselves, affect our senses and in this sense they certainly bear a quasi-causal character. However, the concept of cause that Kant regards as one of the pure concepts of understanding is applicable only to appearances qua representations.
...
Hegelians and Kantians often say that Kant synthesizes empiricism and rationalism. Indeed, on the one hand, he acknowledges the affection by things in themselves and regards the objects of our experience as mental; on the other hand, he acknowledges various a priori items in the mind and regards their rational consequences as important. However, his synthesis is performed by tacitly accepting the naturalistic logic of ideas that Locke shares with Descartes, and at the same time distorting it. In this sense, Kant’s antinaturalistic, transcendental idealism rests on a tacit naturalistic basis.
[/quote]
Quoting David Mo
That things in themselves are only thought is correct, but everything a human perceives is also thought. On the other hand, to say a thing in itself is ONLY thought implies its existence is not necessary. If its existence is not necessary, it can have no necessary use. Isn’t its regulation of our knowledge a necessary use, insofar as at least instance of an unknownable, is informed by it?
But I take your intent with the proposition. The solution is to allow the determinations of the nature of the “-in-itself” to be different than the determination of the nature of the “thing” connected necessarily with it. See SS9-1.
—————
Quoting David Mo
I won’t say I haven’t made one, except that if I did, it would have nothing to do with the ideality of space or transcendental appearances. I haven’t thought of things or things in themselves in that way. Nor have I involved subjective conditions as properties.
I do grant anything to which my empirical intuitions cannot apply a transcendental existence, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me in considering things met in perception alone. The transcendentalism only disappears iff something progresses into the faculty that represents it as an appearance, which perception is never tasked to do.
I understand what you’re trying to say, by saying the thing-in-itself is not perceived. Things perceived do not vacate their space simply because they are impressed upon us, the thing remains even while we are thinking about it. Nevertheless, the thing thought about merely represents the thing that remains in its space, and THAT is the thing-in-itself.
Cool. Thanks. I admit to not thumbing far enough, or thumbing right over it. I lost my place in answering your question. Are you ok with the responses you got, or is there anything you’re still unsatisfied with?
YEA!!! (Does the Happy Dance, a-la Snoopy.....feet just a-blur)
I thought they were good responses. I guess I'd like to hear what you have to say about the transcendental pretense (the assumption that we all have the same rational system.) Or in general what you think Kant had to take for granted in order to write CPR. Given that Kant is obviously a great philosopher, what did he not see? Do you have any criticisms of Kant?
The system is complete in itself; the content of the system is predicated on experience, yes. And it really doesn’t matter what name a theory subsumes the system under, as long as they all agree we as humans all have the same faculties.
That may all well be, but it bears keeping in mind that peope don’t think qua think, in language; people think, meaning the private subjective rational activity, in images. Language only arises in discussions of thought, which is to say, the meaning of those images.
There's a line in Bennington's Derrida:
[quote=Bennington page 278]
[T]he empirical is the transcendental of the transcendental (of the empirical).
[/quote]
For context, I'm with Kant 100% that we get reality 'filtered.' I'm just not sure that his particular system is stable or eternally correct. What Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida have to say about language makes the situation more complicated, IMV.
I find it plausible that people think with words and images but not that thinking is essentially imagistic. How does Kant exist for us? And even if you thought what you posted in pure image somehow, it's only a beetle-in-the-box that I can never see. I can't compare my internal images to yours to grasp whether or not I comprehend you. I can only trade words with you. This 'sociality of reason' seems crucial to me, and I aim it against Descartes too. 'I' don't doubt. The 'we' doubts in me as me, with this 'we' serving as a metaphor for our possession of language as the condition of the possibility for doubting the external world.
What I think Heidegger gets right independent of all the death stuff is a grasp of world as fundamental.
[quote=link]
According to Heidegger, Descartes presents the world to us “with its skin off” (Being and Time 20: 132), i.e., as a collection of present-at-hand entities to be encountered by subjects. The consequence of this prioritizing of the present-at-hand is that the subject needs to claw itself into a world of equipmental meaning by adding what Heidegger calls ‘value-predicates’ (context-dependent meanings) to the present-at-hand. In stark contrast, Heidegger's own view is that Dasein is in primary epistemic contact not with context-independent present-at-hand primitives (e.g., raw sense data, such as a ‘pure’ experience of a patch of red), to which context-dependent meaning would need to be added via value-predicates, but rather with equipment, the kind of entity whose mode of Being is readiness-to-hand and which therefore comes already laden with context-dependent significance.
[/quote]
The world is not a set of objects but the 'stage' or 'background' on which or against which all things exist. IMV we learn the distinction of self and non-self. The individual mindspace is a product of social language use, though obviously it's not simply a fiction.
I submit Kant means by universal, anywhere there is a human employing those principles in the same conditions under which they were imposed a priori. No matter where we go in the Universe, they must apply, and now that Voyager 2 has exited the solar system, the universality of mathematics seems to be confirmed. It still exists just as we built it.
A sheet of paper will be a plane anywhere a human is in the same plane. Mathematics as human know them will not hold in a black hole, but then.....neither will a human. 1 +1 = 2 no matter what planet we occupy. There may be different mathematics in the Universe, dependent on the rationality that forges them, but those rationalities wouldn’t be the same as ours.
Here's the crux: our rationality. Being-with-others, a universal-transcendental subject. Not just me. At the base of the I as its most truthful-accurate version is an ideal we. I must manage my bias (my unreason) in order to see from and with the ideal we (our reason).
Yes, seems that way to me as well. A jar of jellybeans is not the jar.
A worth endeavor perhaps, but the nature of human subjectivity seems to prohibit, or at least seriously impair, its possibility.
I agree. And yet to say so is to have established some kind of universal trans-subjective truth about the nature of human subjectivity. Somehow I reason privately and come to conclusions about the limitations of the private reasoning of others. The CPR presents itself as the true metaphysics, the only kind now possible. A grandiose assertion! Which isn't to say he isn't right in some important sense...
What he adds to this:
[quote=Hobbes]
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense
[/quote]
is perhaps lots of detail about how our concepts manage and organize this pressing of our sense organs.
This version of Leviathan has a great introduction:
http://files.libertyfund.org/files/869/0161_Bk.pdf
Here is the way I make sense of this. The key for me is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive-nomological_model
Because we come equipped with mathematical intuitions and the notion of causality, we can hypothesize that maybe nature is subject to a law of gravity, for instance, mathematically expressed. We dream up patterns that may or may not fit the data. From this perspective, the mind is clearly active, even if it is passive with respect to sensation.
To me Democritus had to work like this, though without the math that become dominant with Galileo. 'Perhaps nature is really made of microscopic pieces.' Guided by this work of creativity, he could interpret uncontroversial facts in the light of their possible conformity to this hidden structure. As others have noted, observation is theory-laden. How much of Kant is compressed in that idea? If we take the theory-laden-ness of observation to be something that evolves historically, then we get various post-Kantian thinkers. Yes, reality is mediated by the social lens of an impersonal conceptual scheme, but also this scheme changes --or most of it is subject to change.
What you care or do not care about is irrelevant and beneath discussion. Far more relevant is the fact that Kant not get turned into a full blown idealist where the limit to thought is nothing but a posit of thought itself - as the noumenon is, and the thing-in-itself is not.
Repeat: your interpretation is wrong, but I don't care. It's not beneath discussion -- I started this discussion. Feel free to start another one. Or respond to someone else. It's irrelevant to me.
Just to inject a few words about linguistic convention... ;-)
Linguistic convention allows us to talk about basketballs and humans (grammatically interchangeable as subjects or objects depending on what one wants to say). But linguistic convention doesn't say that basketballs are "out there" - that kind of "in here/out there" distinction is itself made using language and depends on one's philosophical commitments.
As I see it, Descartes was confused by mind idioms that lead to him positing his mind/body distinction. Locke, Hume and Kant then subsequently carried that line of thinking to its logical conclusions. The issue with subject/object dualism is that it affects (or infects, depending on one's perspective) the way people look at everything such that it is difficult to conceive of any alternative.
That's not an argument for or against it (here at least). But just to point out how it can subtly frame the way we look at the world.
Thanks for replying. I'm reading your comments below as an application of Kant's system.
Quoting Wayfarer
As we've discussed before, observer in its physics sense does not imply mind or consciousness, it instead refers to a measurement apparatus or reference frame. As Heisenberg put it, "Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature."
So what the above passage says is that, taken as a whole, the universe is predicted to be static and unchanging (per the Wheeler-DeWitt equation). In order to predict a dynamic and changing universe, one must split it into subsystems where time and change emerge as a relational or relative measure between those subsystems. That's the case even if the subsystems are simply a lifeless planet + the rest of the universe.
Alternatively, let's see what your reading commits you to here. Before sentient life emerged on Earth there were no conscious observers. Therefore the universe must have been static prior to sentient emergence. Therefore it only appears as if the Earth were orbiting the Sun at an earlier time. But that consequence is one reason why virtually no-one holds the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation in quantum mechanics. As John Bell put it:
fdrake and I have discussed this also. It's obviously the case that there were no rational observers before h. sapiens (leaving aside gods and aliens). But here, you're assuming the stance of imagining a domain without observers in it - the vast empty universe with the early earth and primitive life-forms. Your conscious mind is still providing the stage, as it were, or the canvas on which all of these are seen in the mind's eye. I mean, 'before' is a human judgement, or at least a judgement made from a particular point in history, according to a particular scale.
Absent any scale, perspective or observer, then how can there be any duration, on the one hand, or distance between objects, on the other? What is 'the universe' from the viewpoint of a mineral? Absurd question, of course, because a mineral has no viewpoint. Nothing exists 'for it' (which incidentally is why 'objects' are not 'beings'). You and I as conscious observers know all manner of things about such an object - where it is, what it's made of. But again, that is because the mind furnishes the conceptual framework within which judgements of the nature of things are made.
Modern science wants to imagines a world without 'the subject' in it, as if from no viewpoint at all. It started with the rejection of scholasticism and Aristotelianism (and with good reason.) 'Let's start with what is really there, without the encumbrances of metaphysical speculation and other such nonsense'. Kant was part of that, wasn't he? He wrote one of the seminal documents of the Enlightenment, 'What is Enlightenment?' But Kant also realised that 'what is really there' is not so straightforward after all, as he was part of the philosophical tradition of asking 'how do we know?' So Kant respected naturalism, but he also sought something beyond its purview (i.e. 'declaring a limit to science so as to make room for faith'.)
There's a passage in Magee's book on Schopenhauer which I often quote in this context, which deals with exactly the question you've raised:
Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107
Now this explains how Kant can be both an empirical realist AND at the same time, a transcendental idealist. Many people - I suspect you also! - will think that Kant (and I) are saying that 'the world exists only in the mind of the observer'. He's not saying that - but he's also questioning the (generally implicit) view that most of us have, that the world exists completely independently of our perception of it (as per scientific realism). However, he's pointing out that there is an implicitly subjective element in every statement, every perception, even objective statements (which are to all intents, true to all observers, but only because of the kinds of observers that we are).
But we don't see that subjective element, not because it doesn't exist, but because it is the condition of anything we know (which is the particular meaning of 'transcendental' in Kant and also Husserl - necessary for experience, but not given in it). But because naturalism has 'bracketed out' the subjective, then it has overlooked this fact. I think the 'observer problem' is one consequence of this - kind of a wake-up call, if you like. That, to me, is the point of Andrei Linde's statement (and incidentally he has a Closer to Truth interview which explains it at much greater length, in his charming Russian accent and with a rather quirky sense of humour.)
Incidentally both 'measurement apparatus' and 'reference frame' also imply an observer, but don't try and think of that 'from the outside', as it were; the 'observer' is not part of the picture, but the picture is always in the mind of an observer.
I don't agree. In stripping away everything we can doubt, he was denying the Church a place at the foundations of our thinking, and understood in the way I think he intended, his conclusion is correct. Though you can question the existence of the junk you see around you, you can't question the existence of experience, which implies one who experiences.
If you subsequently realize that the experiencer and the object of experience (subject and object) are inextricably bound together logically, IOW, subject and object fall out of an analysis of experience or they're the product of reflection on experience, that doesn't undermine the value of the concepts.
Descartes was a valuable chamber in the nautilus.
I don't know much about Locke, except his (relative) liberalism. I get the impression that he's much simpler than Kant. If you want present the case for Locke, I would like to read it.
Quoting mask
The idea of the universality of mathematics had to be abandoned with non-Euclidean alternative mathematics. At first they were considered as mathematical "eccentricities", but they had to be taken seriously when the theory of relativity took them up. The situation today is as follows: pure mathematics works on diverse paths and theoretical physics takes the way it is interested in. Sometimes it is the demands of physicists that open up new mathematical paths. The idea of a single, infallible mathematical path is popular but not correct.
Otherwise, Kant was right about knowledge a priori. Just it is not so much a priori than he thought.
Thank you for the links.
Of course, Kant is a man of his time, and the debate of his time was between empiricists and rationalists. But to equate his starting point with Locke seems risky to me. In empiricism the concept of object is formed empirically (whether it is mathematical or not). In Kant it predates sensations. Without a previous concept of cause the game with the data of the senses would be chaotic.
If I remember correctly, Locke introduces some rationalism in his empiricism when he considers the mathematical world of things universally factual by giving them a material body: atoms. This is another matter, but it is also contrary to the Kantian starting point.
Well, I'd rather not take too many chances with Locke who I know only from textbooks.
I'll drop a few quotes.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10615/10615-h/10615-h.htm#link2HCH0004
[quote=Locke]
I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as those are increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of thinking in the several parts of it; as well as, afterwards, by compounding those ideas, and reflecting on its own operations, it increases its stock, as well as facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking.
[/quote]
Later in the work he tackles language.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10616/10616.txt
[quote=Locke]
Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words
are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from
our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly,
and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their
significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they
would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some,
not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots
do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to
those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far
is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a
designation that the one stands for the other; without which application
of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.
Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men
certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose
a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's
peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident,
in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same
language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has
so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases,
that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their
minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And
therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power
which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word:
which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what
idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of
his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates
certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits
the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the
same idea, he does not speak properly
[/quote]
I like his awareness that language is a social convention. To me one of the big 20th century insights was just how 'exterior' and social meaning and thinking are. Sometimes you'll see troubled solipsists appearing on forums either arguing their position or asking to be argued out of it. What in the tradition made such absurdity possible? Descartes and/or watching The Matrix too many times. But my point is that the language of solipsism is directed outward from the get-go and was learned through interaction in the first place. What I like about The Concept of Time and Philosophical Investigations is (among other things) the quashing of an entrenched assumption of private language in the single soul.
But more Locke:
[quote=Locke]
The next thing to be considered is,--How general words come to be made.
For, since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms; or where find we those general natures they are supposed
to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of
general ideas: and ideas become general, by separating from them the
circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine
them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction
they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of
which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call
it) of that sort.
[/quote]
We get abstract ideas from experience, by erasing unimportant differences.
[quote=Locke]
To return to general words: it is plain, by what has been said, that
GENERAL and UNIVERSAL belong not to the real existence of things; but
are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for
its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are
general, as has been said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so
are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are
general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular
things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all
of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which
in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars,
the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making; their
general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into, by the
understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. For the
signification they have is nothing but a relation that, by the mind of
man, is added to them.
[/quote]
General ideas are 'creatures of our own making,' which is a strong anti-metaphysical point.
[quote=Locke]
I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature,
in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is
nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things
propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF THEM
UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION,
FROM THE SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE ABSTRACT GENERAL
IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as
patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word FORM has a very proper
signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to
agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or
are put into that CLASSIS. For when we say this is a man, that a horse;
this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else
but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those
abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what
are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those
abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between
particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?
And when general names have any connexion with particular beings, these
abstract ideas are the medium that unites them: so that the essences of
species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor can
be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds. And
therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different from
our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species WE rank
things into.
[/quote]
It's we who sort the world into this kind of thing and that kind of thing. This is against the notion of those 'supposed real essences.'
Those are just some samples. I just mentioned Locke because I overlooked him for a long time. When I finally read him in an anthology of empiricists, I was impressed.
I know that it was a revolution. These days math is all symbols, so it's no longer a problem (roughly speaking.)Quoting David Mo
Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. Kant took certain distinctions as absolute that have since been brought down a notch. But he could hardly do everything at once, I guess. Maybe another reason I like Locke is because he writes in English and has a less grandiose personality.
Quoting David Mo
I think I know what you mean. As I understand him, Kant went into serious detail about our cognitive hardware. Locke does think about the operations of the mind, but he didn't cook up such a rigid system.
Quoting David Mo
I understand what you mean here too. Locke had a plausible theory of the the stuff that caused sensation, as did Hobbes. Kant did a wilder thing and made it an X. But how can the X cause sensation? If causation is just a structure within experience?
Kant: The senses provide subjective and contingent knowledge. We perceive something from a unique perspective and we don't know why it has to be that way. Necessity and universality come from reasoning. Reasoning tells us that what we see is a unity, the thing. Reasoning tells us why it has to be this way and not otherwise, its necessity.
In a certain sense, child psychology has proved Kant right: children do not construct the concept of cause or substance by adding sensations, but by giving them an order. This concept of order comes from maturation, not from the accumulation of sensations.
One last comment. Already Democritus and later Epicurus thought that atoms affected the human body so as to generate consciousness. True, they didn't doubt the existence of space and time. But the rest of experience was a kind of dream thrown up by the human sense organs and body in general in response to its interactions with atoms. When the body dies, that person's dream of the world ceases.
If one has this view, then obviously the objects of experience have to conform to the sense organs. What I non-expertly take as new in Kant is the focus on all of the linguistic-conceptual processing that goes into experience. After Kant, one can question whether the shared dream corresponds in any way to what is really going on. Yet Kant doesn't go into the 'sharedness' of this dream much, AFIK. How does one person trapped in his mindbox create the true metaphysics of all human mindboxes? Kant knew the structure and possibilities of my experience long before I was born. What assumptions go into that? Human reason is one and universal, a veritable Enlightenment brand 'Holy Ghost.'
[quote=Solomon]
The leading theme of [the story of Continental philosophy after 1750] is the rise and fall of an extraordinary concept of the self. The self in question is no ordinary self, no individual personality, nor even one of the many heroic or mock-heroic personalities of the early nineteenth century. The self that becomes the star performer in modern European philosophy is the transcendental self, or transcendental ego, whose nature and ambitions were unprecedentedly arrogant, presumptuously cosmic, and consequently mysterious. The transcendental self was the self ---timeless, universal, and in each one of us around the globe and throughout history. Distinguished from our individual idiosyncracies, this was the self we shared. In modest and ordinary terms it was called 'human nature.' In must less modest, extraordinary terminology, the transcendental self was nothing less than God, the Absolute Self, the World Soul.
[/quote]
This next quote is from a dead link. Not sure who the author is, maybe also Solomon.
[quote=unknown]
The exalted sense of the importance of the self arose from the subtle shift Kant introduced into Descartes's proposal. In the Kantian system, the Cartesian self became not just the focus of philosophical attention but the entire subject matter of philosophy. Rather than viewing the self as one of several entities in the world, Kant envisioned the thinking self in a sense "creating" the world - that is, the world of its own knowledge. The focus of philosophical reflection ever since has been this world-creating self.
The universalizing of the self readily followed. Underlying Kant's philosophy was the presumption that in all essential matters every person everywhere is the same. When Kant's self reflected on itself, it came to know not only itself, but all selves, as well as the structure of any and every possible self.
The transcendental pretense evident in Kant's philosophy helped produce "the white philosopher's burden." Kant's presumption that all selves resemble each other led some philosophers to conclude that they should be able to construct a universal human nature. Even thinkers (like Kant) who never left their hometowns should be able to make authoritative pronouncements on human nature and morality.
[/quote]
I'm not even against this 'transcendental pretense.' But it's worth point out, I think. And of course Locke and just about every philosopher needs it.
My understanding of the alleged transcendental pretense is that fundamental subjectivity is a license for arrogance, or, that because there is a common rational system amongst humans, a common great and wonderful behavior should be constructed from it. And because Kant is the prime champion for the power of the person as subject, he is accused as the culprit for the rise of such pretense.
What a load!!!! Kant’s time was the Enlightenment, the cultural, political and religious upheaval of which contributed much more to Everydayman’s new-found dominance than the Kantian (1784) sapere aude ever did.
——————-
Quoting mask
Superficially: reality of the external world combined with the power of natural science to explain it; the inevitability of metaphysics combined with the failure of natural science to explain it.
Fundamentally: it is possible to discover, and rein reason to within, a proper boundary.
——————
Quoting mask
The intrinsic circularity of human reason itself, re: the evolution of a theory on reason, using reason to evolve it. It is hard to say he didn’t see it, but rather merely ignored it, seeing as how there is no choice in the matter.
——————
Quoting mask
Nahhhhh. After 250 years, there’s not much left to be critical of, that hasn’t been beat to death by others. Besides, any criticisms a non-academic would have really is quite toothless.
Yes, I suppose. We talk usually in the form, “We think....”, “You know...”, “I am....”, and so on, which makes explicit a subject/object dualism in general intersubjective communications. But I wouldn’t call that an issue as much as I’d call it linguistic convention. Nature of the beast, so to speak, and definitely makes it difficult to conceive an alternative.
Ooooo but my oh my how they try: universal consciousness, utilitarianism, being one with my fellow man.....(sigh)
If there is a real issue, I would attribute it to science, which is trying its damnedest to eliminate the subjective nature of the intellect.
Yes, and raises a very subtle point of Kantian metaphysics: it isn’t what we know, but how we know it. OK, so as the theory goes, there exist a priori principles in the mind, and an example is a geometric figure, Well, after a certain age, it is highly unlikely a person doesn’t already have a great experience with geometric figures, which makes it very hard to claim a priori principles. Ok, fine. Divide a priori into pure and impure, in order to save the one because of an apparent contradiction with the other, and reflect back to a time of very first experience. Problem is, no one can remember what was going on in their heads at some very first experience, that isn’t conditioned by something they already know. Which makes the Hume-ian argument against a priori knowledge so powerful.
But if we consider a child, who has absolutely minimal experience with everything to begin with, hence isn’t affected by memory, it becomes easier to see the necessary rational groundwork for reason in general and a priori reason in particular. Because a child does learn, and learns without conditioning experience, some kind of a priori principles or pure conditions must exist in the human system. But if a child, and therefore anyone, has some form of pure a priori conditions, they couldn’t be constructed, for there would be nothing to construct them from, that aren’t themselves the same kind of thing, or from experience, which he doesn’t yet have.
This is why Kant specifically, and many others somewhat less but still inclusively, claim for the faculty of understanding the ability to think, for it would appear, however magically it must seem, that these necessary conditions, like, as you say, cause, substance, existence, possibility, necessity, etc., must arise from the intellect itself.
Of course, no one has been able to explain how understanding can think pure a priori and thereby necessary conditions....the categories.....but if it does, then all else falls into place neat as the proverbial pin. The second major objection: metaphysical theories cannot be falsified.
Children do not construct those concepts by adding sensation....agreed, absolutely
But if it is meant that the child does construct those concepts by giving them an order....I don’t know how that would work.
——————-
Quoting David Mo
Dunno why not, we own that unique perspective, so we know why it has to be that way. Couldn’t be any other way.
If you mean we don’t know why the something we perceive, given our unique perspective, has to be the way we perceive it, then that is exactly right. Our unique perspective is not an authority on the way of something, but only how we think of it.
Quoting David Mo
Yes, but only from our unique perspective. We cannot project our sense of necessity if it arises from our own reason. If that were the case, we’d be effectively telling the Universe how it must be, rather than us merely trying to understand how it is. Besides, whatever necessities the Universe holds in itself, can only be given to us depending on how we ask about them. Except for sheer accident, of course.
“...Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose...”
The Universe says, “I’ll tell you puny, know-nothing humans whatever you want to know. All you gotta do is figure out how to ask me the proper questions”
That was a great introduction. Although I couldn’t find when it was written; apparently, Pogson-Smith wasn’t famous enough for a wiki page of his own.
I am always fascinated by historical contexts, the influences of the time of the writing, as opposed to looking back from its future. I mean....who cares about the Papal Bull of 1570, but its effect on Hobbes was quite apparent. Descartes was talked about a lot differently then than now, as well.
Interesting.
That is, if it ever did (as so often charged) espouse an initial blankness of slate.
A slate or screen or stage in the head, and pictures or words in the head. And then, or already, intermediate images, impressions, echoes, traces, affections, representations, at all points in a continuous channel of re-processing, imagined as stretching from "object" all the way in to... er, yes, how does it end? Where and what is the "subject"? Plenty of controversy there. But virtually none for the image-or-text-processing analogy that implies video and text symbols arising within the organism.
And we can't blame modern technology. The analogy probably (I speculate) always pervaded cultures that produced physical symbols.
But of course animals (and neural networks) don't commit events to memory by processing and storing physical traces (like an electronic camera), but rather by training themselves to respond to stimulation (internal and external) with appropriate activity. Most of which, in humans uniquely, involves manipulation of, or preparation to manipulate, actual, external, symbols.
...What we mistakenly theorise as the presence of actual, internal ones.
So, cheers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscellinus, the only clear (and probably spurious) example of bucking image-ism that I can find, before Goodman and Quine.
Being-towards-death plays a role in human life and temporality, yes, but I don't see how it's very problematic. In fact the above is rather vague.
Quoting mask
Particularly the not-noticing of equipment use, yes. Our "ready-to-hand" activities simply don't involve a subject and an object at all, and yet this is how we spend the majority of our time. From Plato on, then, the history of philosophy has been a history of "presence." This is what's especially fascinating in Heidegger, in my view. His analysis of the Greek language and the presocratics is superb. It's funny that a lot of his work is untranslated still.
Rather, Kant asserts a compromise between the world and the self. The self provides the order of our knowledge and the world the substance. He was right about that. Man is more than just a thing among things. He is the thing that gives meaning to the world. A thing for himself, too.
As you rightly point out, Kant still thinks in terms of human nature. An absolute equality. By the way, the foundation of democracy. But in doing so, he neglects the individual-social, innate-cultural dialectics. A priori knowledge imposes itself on individuals, but is transformed by an a cultural a priori. It is not the same in the Sumerian cities as in the Second French Empire.
Jorge-Luis Borges, the most ignored-by-Swedish Academy -this is a price in itself- of Argentinean writers, said that he had read the best verses of his life in mediocre poets. I'm in. Why not you?
Kant's idea, which I assume, is that the a priori is something like a template that we apply to the world. We only know what fits our template. That is, the order that constitutes the phenomena . And we ignore what falls out of it. But without the empirical stuff no design could appear under our template.
An open question is whether we should assume some structural order in the world. This has been asserted to some Kantian empiricists and brings Kantism closer to a kind of weak realism. In this case, we would trap some structures of the thing itself, and only lose those that escape our template a priori.
Truly Kantian or not, it's suggestive.
Not so. The viewpoint of modern science today is that the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago. But there was no viewpoint a billion years ago.
Which is just to say that we view the world in a particular way (in our capacity as human beings). Not that we literally create the world that existed prior to our existence.
Yes it does. But the point at issue is what we see through our natural spectacles. The natural world (from a human viewpoint), or a Platonic shadow world?
Quoting Wayfarer
Here's my stab at it. Per Kant, there's a real world but it's completely unknowable. What we can investigate is the empirical world that is the product of various stages of conditioning by the mind.
Actually I was referring to Descartes' substance dualism there, not cogito ergo sum. As Gilbert Ryle has argued, Cartesian dualism is a category mistake.
Quoting frank
That's fine when talking about human experience. The trouble arises when universalizing the distinction beyond human experience.
Which is to say, the Earth's orbiting of the Sun in the early universe doesn't presuppose an experiencer and an object of experience.
Yes, I agree those are linguistic conventions. But they don't assume dualism. On the ordinary use, it is the human being that thinks (and is the referent of "I"), not their mind.
Whereas it is phrases like "the external world" or "out there" that assume subject/object dualism. They are philosophical usages, not ordinary conventions. Which is fine, that's what we're discussing, but I think it's important to be mindful of that. (That was a conventional use of "mindful", by the way...)
I did acknowledge this fact in my response, if you read it carefully. I since thought of another way of putting it - there is no measurement without perspective, and there is no perspective without mind. And when you say 'a billion years', you're talking of measurement.
The scientific realism that you assume and take for granted is still dependent on measure and so on mind. As the passage I quoted acknowledged, the reality of the early universe is no more being rejected than that of the 'pen with which these words are written'; but that it remains the reality of appearances.
Empirically speaking, I agree with you. But philosophically, it remains possible that we're all denizens of the Matrix, or projections of a grand simulation. So the purported 'facts of natural science' do not constitute the slam-dunk argument that you seem to believe they do. They're certain, given that .... .
Quoting Andrew M
That is the point at issue for naturalism, but not for philosophy. Philosophy questions the very things which we all assume and take for granted. That's why it's called 'critical'.
Quoting Andrew M
Kant never said that 'the world is completely unknowable'. Kant said that we know the world as appearance; it's not simply non-existent or unreal or a phantasm. I don't know if he would have used the expression that the world is a 'product of the mind' (and in this respect, that passage from Magee that I quoted might be misleading); it's that we know the world as it appears to beings with minds of the kind we have. On that basis, we project what we understand as 'the real world'. This is the activity of the most complex organ known to science, namely, the human brain.
Quoting David Mo
which is why we're referred to as beings.
I dont think Descartes suggested that it does, did he?
Quoting Andrew M
I dont really see what work substance dualism does beyond saying that mind is irreducible.
Irreducibility is compatible with science. It's been argued that it's more compatible than the alternative.
This quotation serves as a good opportunity to try to contrast Kant against Locke (which implies how differently they view the subject/object relation)
Locke is here just describing how all actually happens in mind. This is just self reflective empirical psychology. There is no principal philosophical problems involved here. What is lacking here is for example Kant's idea of synthesis. For Kant there is philosophical consciousness (or pure ego, selfhood) "behind" all these psychological operations. Kant is much more rational and theoretical in a philosophical sense. For Locke rationality* and theory are constructions on the basis of the empirical material without any philosophical mediation. This leads to a situation where rationality becomes (formal)logical and mathematical rationality. Thinking becomes pure logical and mathematical thinking (thinking as technique that one learns and masters). And this kind of thinking is seen as the natural functioning of the psyche. Scientific explanations and theories are the ultimate ground for Locke. Philosophy seems to be for him (neuro)psychological reflection on mental operations and general reflection on the genesis and usage of the human language. Kant tries to think logical and mathematical thought operations themselves and not just apply them to the world as a natural and true way to access things. * For Locke everything remains contingent, there is no (synthetic a priori) necessity. Or that there are only "natural necessities" forming mental operations.
In context, I am the non-academic, therefore it is I whose criticism is quite toothless.
That is not to say I don’t read, and appreciate the intelligibility of, non-academics; philosophy forums are full of ‘em, after all.
————
Quoting David Mo
Pure cognitive prejudice: he who has not the remaining time or eyesight left for luck, should limit himself to interest.
See, here I disagree. Derrida is on par with Zizek in my view -- a completely incoherent waste of time. Please point me to what you're referring to regarding Derrida's contribution to language.
Quoting Wayfarer
_____
being (n.)
c. 1300, "existence," in its most comprehensive sense, "condition, state, circumstances; presence, fact of existing," early 14c., existence," from be + -ing. Sense of "that which physically exists, a person or thing" (as in human being) is from late 14c.
_____
"Being" applies to anything that exists, not just to conscious things.
Common interpretation, that. A template impressed on the world to which it must conform. I would rather think a priori reason is the mold into which the world is poured. The only difference, which is more semantic than necessary perhaps, is that template implies projection of the mind onto the world, and mold implies receptivity of the world into the mind. Just depends on one’s choice in understanding of the relationship between mind and world.
——————
Quoting David Mo
What would the world look like if we didn’t? I’m not sure what you mean by a structure. Is it that we assume, e.g., atomic structure, because experiments support it?
Quoting Xtrix
Or rather... Chisholm's "Person and Object"?
Ockham to Quine's Roscellinus. On my analysis.
If taken from the principle of induction, this would be correct, but might should read....unknowable completely.
The world-in-itself is completely unknowable, taken as the totality of all possible thing-in-themselves, is the logically consistent proposition, wherein completely unknowable means not knowable at all. In that sense, the knowability depends solely on the human cognitive system, without any regard to empirical principles.
Well done!!! Pure reason writ large, yes?
Just as logic is predicated on the synthesis of major/minor/conclusion, so too is the theory of human knowledge, in this case transcendental idealism, predicated the synthesis of intuition/conception/judgement.
And, just as mathematics is predicated on law, which invokes the principles of universality and necessity, so too is reason, “....in obedience to the laws of its own nature...” speculated in such manner as to produce those laws.
Makes sense he would construct a logically, lawfully consistent theory based on the two domains in human experience that operate exclusively on those principles.
What was meant was that Kant exemplifies the philosopher who tries to think the scientificity. That doesn't mean that science is transformed into an excessive speculation.
Oh. Ok....never mind.
On naturalism, there is no "reality of appearances". We're not trapped in Plato's cave.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, they remain possible. Naturalism doesn't confer certainty.
Quoting Wayfarer
So at issue is the dualism between "the unknown thing in itself" and "knowledge of appearances".
The natural claim is that we can know things as they are (from our perspective as human beings).
That captures what you're saying above without the dualism.
Probably not. But Descartes set the stage for thinkers that came after him. See, for example, the passage from Magee's book on Schopenhauer that includes, "the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding". That is, the empirical world depends on its dual subject.
(Though note Wayfarer suggests that that passage might be misleading.)
Quoting frank
Ryle's argument is that mind refers to (or reduces to) a human being's intelligent activity. That Bob has a keen mind means that he's a smart guy; that he's lost his mind means that he's done something stupid, or that he's insane. It's not a substantial thing like a body. That's the Cartesian error.
Put differently, mind is an abstraction over a concrete particular, in this case a human being.
That way of thinking about the world goes back to Aristotle (e.g., the soul is the form of the body). Aristotle's form/matter distinction was abstract, unlike Descartes' substance dualism.
I like the template and mold ways of thinking of it. However I'd like to suggest that the a priori - the template or mold - is itself fluid.
Consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun moved across the sky. The heliocentrists replaced that with their own a priori view that it was the Earth that moved around the Sun. Same phenomenology, different template.
Apply that idea to space and time. Kant's a priori view was Euclidean. But Einstein replaced that with spacetime relativity. Same phenomenology, different template.
According to the image of a template it can be assumed either that the world is chaotic in itself and only the template provides shapes or that the template matches some shapes that are independent of it.
Suppose you apply a Daredevil template to a sheet with many superhero images and other informed stains. You only see the Daredevil image and think that only he is on the sheet.
Or there are only informed spots on the sheet and the template selects the ones that fall under the Daredevil template.
It's hard to decide. I'm inclined to the first idea on the basis that actual facts are not as simple as Daredevil and it would be something of a miracle if a complex reality could coincide with a priori without constant irruptions of chaos. I recognize that it is not a definitive reason.
Correct.
Minds cannot think because they do not exist per se.
Use of the word "mind" is a convenient façon de parler (Bennett & Hacker, 2003). What it refers to is an integrated set of organism events which produce automatic and controlled acts (corporeal actions).
Too many holes to poke at, too much ambiguity, and what is likely to follow is going to be either bordering on the mystical or hidden neatly away in postmodernist jargon.
The ‘mind’ exists just as solidly as a ‘cat’ exists. The point is they are both referential - convenient and frugal - communications of shared experience. We know they are shared because we wouldn’t be able to ‘refer’ to them otherwise. The hard physicalistic position of ‘mind’ isn’t there but brain is, is a pointless stance.
Nor is the approach of Derrida much use here as he’d only mock the situation and ask ‘does existence exist?’ or some other flatulence.
There is a mind, a chair, a table, a book and a cat, and the ‘isness’ of Heideggerian wordplay is only slightly less useful than Derrida’s. The ‘is’ and the ‘being’ are references of references of a referential referent ... round and round we go in a non-explanatory circle *YAWN*
Any attempt to narrow the phenomenological disposition of ‘being human’ necessarily cuts away the ‘essence’ by referring to some ‘it’ as ‘essence’. They’re there to make it known we known know as we DO NOT know what we don’t know if we can refer to it.
The mock rage I am expressing right now does make some ‘intention’ felt.
We don’t know what time is, what gravity is, nor what a bloody chair is.
Practically the thing I am currently aware of is my huge disappointment with what I‘ve read here. People tell me I expect too much, but really I only hope for something ... I’m still waiting to discover something. I just read fat upon fat upon fat, where’s the meat?
In room full of hedonists and egos what is there to learn? The most insightful moment of my life came without worded thought - the foolish part of me has been pretending since that time that I can express such an experience.
I resign. Funnily enough that is the answer of answers, the rest is just makeup on what was never viewed as an already perfect face of existing. Your hollow fruits have starved me!
Be at it dogs! May you all burn in silent screams with rictus grins defiant at your own pains and suffering. Scum floats to the top so don’t fear rising - better that than skulk in the depths with shadow puppets as a corrosive comfort of ‘meaning’.
Riveting.
He was riffing on Kant, not Descartes. Somebody suggested that though there appears to be a multitude of electrons, there's really only one. Schopenhauer's kind of like that regarding the self, a self-wave the appears as particles here and there.
Quoting Andrew M
An electromagnetic dynamo is an abstraction. It's still a powerful thing. We smart humans can navigate these kinds of situations without straying into category errors.
That's pretty common, yes.
Apparently.
What is it about those views that make them a priori?
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Even in Einstein, the observer in his own reference frame is in the Kantian view of Euclidean space and time.
Man, that’s a lot of templates. If there are an immeasurably large number of possible experiences, each one with its own template......where’d they all come from?
Now if there were a certain number of templates to which every single possible experience must abide, that might be something to consider. Sorta like a mind saying......hey, screw this. If that which is presented to me doesn’t meet certain necessary conditions, I ain’t even going to bother trying to make something of it.
‘Course, still have to explain where a few necessary conditions come from, just as much as a veritable infinite number of templates. Down in the metaphysical weeds are things like innate ideas, forms, pure conceptions....all kinds weird stuff.
I agree that we don't have full control of our steams of words.
Quoting I like sushi
I agree that we don't (exactly) know WTF we are talking about when we use words like chair or gravity or time.
Quoting I like sushi
What's strange is an attack (?) on Derrida in a post that uses one of his key ideas --that authorial intention does not control meaning. I don't ever know 'absolutely' WTF I am talking about. I drive nails somehow with the hammer of language. Somehow I bark the right-enough sounds and scratch the right-enough symbols and survive decade after decade in a high-tech society.
[quote=Derrida]
For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory, trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
[/quote]
http://lab404.com/misc/ltdinc.pdf
That sounds right. We are trained to employ the language as a whole. Afterwards we can argue about what 'subject' or 'justice' or 'being' mean. But this is us trying to make our training explicit by coughing up yet more words that aren't rigorously defined. Have we reason to think that it's a finite task? In the meantime we have to live, which means that we just rely on our training and muddle through, occasionally clarifying this or that blockage in the flow of our conversations or readings. Perhaps our training is the only foundation we can hope for.
Quoting Xtrix
Hi. For you and anyone who hates Derrida's style, here's an interpreter they might find more palatable. The interpreted essay is linked in a comment above.
http://www.colby.edu/music/nuss/mu254/articles/Culler.pdf
I can understand the frustration with Zizek as writer, though he's great in interviews.
I do sometimes wonder if the very idea of templates originated with the Platonic forms.The separation of form and substance seems likewise indispensable to the very idea of mass production.
Quoting Galuchat
How does that account for mental arithmetic?
Quoting frank
Feynman, whimsically, on the phone to Wheeler.
Quoting Andrew M
with the caveat that:
Quoting Andrew M
Quoting Andrew M
If we have to qualify it in this way, then does it really constitute 'knowing things as they are'? By conceding the perspectival nature of knowledge, you're more or less conceding Kant's point.
Quoting Andrew M
I'm wary of the use of the word 'creation' in this context. But thinking about it some more, it's close in meaning to what Andrei Linde says in the Closer to Truth interview that I linked to. Of course it seems obviously absurd when we think of it in terms of 'the world being in the mind' - but the problem is that when we're saying this, we're trying to envisage 'the world' and 'the mind' from the outside. There's the vast universe, the whole Earth is just a minute speck in relation to that. But we can't see it 'from the outside', we can't make an object of 'me knowing that'. It's a false perspective.
Quoting jjAmEs
The only perfectly consistent expression of 'is' is found in mathematics and logic. Otherwise it's just a useful approximation.
It doesn't seem obvious. We get the direct perception of a cat. The "mind" is an abstraction that comes partly from introspection and partly from similarity. I mainly call my own production of ideas "mind". Then I infer the mind of others by comparing my own behaviour with the behaviour of others. This comparison may not be the result of conscientious reflection, but it works this way.
"Mind" and "cats" are very different objects. For-itself and in-itself, you know.
I was thinking about Kant's theory of knowledge: space, time and categories. We build objects with them. Other "templates" are more particular and a posteriori.
They had something in common insofar as Plato was also anti-empiricist. But Plato thought of ideal molds for every single thing. A logical problem of infinite multiplication of forms. Kant is thinking of universal molds (if you like) limited to the main categories of thought. The rest are sensations. A heresy for Plato.
The notion that every shape corresponds to a different form is not necessarily what platonism entails. Form doesn't mean shape. For example, the 'form' of a wing (or 'flight') might be realised as a bat wing, aeroplane wing, and bird wing.
I quote,
"the rest is silence"
If you really want answers you will have to absorb a little mysticism, Shakespeare knew that when he wrote Hamlet.
Numeracy: ability to understand number arrangements, and perform numerical operations.
Minds aren't numerate, brains aren't numerate, human beings are numerate.
And so it goes with every other human "mental" condition, function, and process.
1) Body and mind are open sub-systems of (at least certain) organisms (e.g., those having a central nervous system).
2) Body is open to mind and environment.
3) Mind is open to body.
So:
1) Mind-body dualism is a non sequitur.
2) Human substance (being) is a unity having two properties (i.e., body and mind).
Yep.
Intuitions.
Could you say more?
I would agree with this, to an extent. The extent that a human entity can be regarded as a substance, however both body and mind are foundational to the conscious being therein. So perhaps one can describe the conscious being to be found in a human, fundamentally dualistic, due to the case that consciousness of the body and the consciousness of the mind, are foundational and both are necessary for that consciousness to occur.
Well, in essence mysticism includes an approach to knowledge which offers two other means of enquiry (there may be more). Other than the intellectual route to knowledge. An enquiry into the self and an enquiry into communion, or intuition with or aided by a real, or notional deity, of some kind.
During this inquiry insights may occur into other areas, or ideas, different, or even orthogonal to the intellectual route to knowledge.
For example I have realised that there is a form of knowledge, which is gathered, or achieved via acquaintance, or communion with aspects of the self, or other entities. A route in which the intellect is used only as a tool of interpretation of the experience which has become known, before the intellect became involved.
Thanks for that apt reference. It's well worth quoting the original passage in full.
What I mean by abstraction in this context is "A particular way in which a thing exists or appears." (Lexico, form) [*]
An electromagnetic dynamo is a thing that exists, not a particular way in which a thing exists (i.e., it's concrete, not abstract or formal).
--
[*] Per the surrounding discussion on Kant, it's interesting to note the Latin origin of form and its similarity to 'template' and 'mold':
"Middle English from Old French forme (noun), fo(u)rmer (verb, from Latin formare ‘to form’), both based on Latin forma ‘a mould or form’."
They comprise the (contingently) prior background against which observations are interpreted and judgments are made. That prior background can be represented in scientific or mathematical terms.
To change one's view from geocentrism to heliocentrism is to change that background - a Kuhnian paradigm shift, or gestalt shift.
Quoting Mww
I'm not sure what you mean. An implication of the Kantian view is that two events that are simultaneous for one observer are simultaneous for all observers. But that's not the case under Einstein's relativity (see relativity of simultaneity).
No, because there's a key difference in how Kant construes the perspectival nature of knowledge and that is in his understanding of appearance.
Here's an illustrative example. If we see a straight stick partly submerged in water, we notice that it appears bent. This gives rise to the natural distinction between what something is (e.g., a straight stick) and how it appears under different conditions (e.g., the stick appears bent when partly submerged in water and it's possible to mistakenly think that the stick is bent).
On Kant's view, both scenarios constitute mere appearances (which we can know). But we can't know the thing-in-itself. Thus he has collapsed the natural distinction and created a new and artificial distinction. As Kant put it:
Quoting Prolegomena, § 32
Quoting Wayfarer
There is only a problem if an object is defined in terms of outside/inside (thing-in-itself/appearance). If an object is instead defined in terms of what we observe (i.e., what we can ostensively point at) then we can know it as it is. Such as the stick from the above example.
That is why I reject the idea of a "view from nowhere" which tacitly assumes a thing-in-itself/appearance dualism. Instead, knowledge claims are made by human beings and so presuppose a human perspective.
...is categorically opposed to the Kantian a priori meaning, for any contingently prior background is merely another way to say “experience”.
“....By the term "knowledge a priori," therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience...”
Thus,.......consider the geocentrists whose a priori view was that Earth was the center of the universe, might better be said.....whose prior view.
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Two events for a guy and guy standing right beside him, will be simultaneous to both, yes. The difference between the observations will be immeasurable.
I’m thoroughly familiar with Einstein, 1920 (English)
—————
On sticks in water....
“.....It is not at present our business to treat of empirical illusory appearance (for example, optical illusion), which occurs in the empirical application of otherwise correct rules of the understanding, and in which the judgement is misled by the influence of imagination...”
Kant posits the "in itself" which just is the world existing "completely independently of our perception of it". Your own words "perception of it" should give you the clue; perception of the world (and the human understanding of it) is not the world, obviously, but merely a part of it.
You've been peddling this tendentious distortion and attributing it to Kant ever since I've known you on this and the other old forums. Time to read Kant's actual works yourself; educate yourself, wake up and stop with the phoney nonsense!
Even Bishop Berkeley had an answer for that!
Quoting Andrew M
It really isn't so simple. Again, in physics, the question has been suggested by the conundrums sorrounding 'wave-particle' duality, for example.
I think the key point is that if you accept naturalism simply as a methodological assumption, then there's no problem to solve (which is I think what you are suggesting.) I think Kant's argument comes into play when metaphysical conclusions are drawn on the basis of methodological axioms - in other words, when arguments are made about first philosophy on the basis of scientific naturalism.
:brow:
The subject/object dichotomy cannot be used as a means to take proper account of thought and belief. All minds consist entirely thereof. Therefore, the subject/object dichotomy cannot be used as a means to take proper account of minds.
:smirk:
This thread seems to have a plurality of different categories being employed by different participants. There's even been charges of category mistakes(categorical error in judgment, per Kant).
The subject/object dichotomy breaks up what exactly into two, one or the other? Everything? I think not. Everything we talk about? Again, I think not. All our talk? Again... no. It fails miserably at all of these tasks...
It's a false dichotomy. What on earth is it still being used for, and why?
As I read your 'approximation,' it implies something like an essence that is being approximated. 'Even though we don't know exactly what we are talking about, that something is determinate nevertheless.' But why should the sound/mark 'is' have some fixed, exact meaning? In general we use words together and not alone, and in non-theoretical situation.
Dewey's approach seems solid -- and reminds me of Heidegger, who was mentioned earlier.
[quote=IEP]
Opposing narrow-minded positions that would accord full ontological status only to certain, typically the most stable or reliable, aspects of experience, Dewey argues for a position that recognizes the real significance of the multifarious richness of human experience.
Dewey offered a fuller statement of his metaphysics in 1925, with the publication of one of his most significant philosophical works, Experience and Nature. In the introductory chapter, Dewey stresses a familiar theme from his earlier writings: that previous metaphysicians, guided by unavowed biases for those aspects of experience that are relatively stable and secure, have illicitly reified these biases into narrow ontological presumptions, such as the temporal identity of substance, or the ultimate reality of forms or essences. Dewey finds this procedure so pervasive in the history of thought that he calls it simply the philosophic fallacy, and signals his intention to eschew the disastrous consequences of this approach by offering a descriptive account of all of the various generic features of human experience, whatever their character.
Dewey begins with the observation that the world as we experience it both individually and collectively is an admixture of the precarious, the transitory and contingent aspect of things, and the stable, the patterned regularity of natural processes that allows for prediction and human intervention. Honest metaphysical description must take into account both of these elements of experience. Dewey endeavors to do this by an event ontology. The world, rather than being comprised of things or, in more traditional terms, substances, is comprised of happenings or occurrences that admit of both episodic uniqueness and general, structured order. Intrinsically events have an ineffable qualitative character by which they are immediately enjoyed or suffered, thus providing the basis for experienced value and aesthetic appreciation. Extrinsically events are connected to one another by patterns of change and development; any given event arises out of determinant prior conditions and leads to probable consequences. The patterns of these temporal processes is the proper subject matter of human knowledge--we know the world in terms of causal laws and mathematical relationships--but the instrumental value of understanding and controlling them should not blind us to the immediate, qualitative aspect of events; indeed, the value of scientific understanding is most significantly realized in the facility it affords for controlling the circumstances under which immediate enjoyments may be realized.
[/quote]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/dewey/
[quote=Dewey]
The office of physical science is to discover those properties and relations of things in virtue of which they are capable of being used as instrumentalities; physical science makes claim to disclose not the inner nature of things but only those connections of things with one another that determine outcomes and hence can be used as means. The intrinsic nature of events is revealed in experience as the immediately felt qualities of things. The intimate coordination and even fusion of these qualities with the regularities that form the objects of knowledge, in the proper sense of the word "knowledge," characterizes intelligently directed experience, as distinct from mere casual and uncritical experience.
This conception of the instrumental nature of the objects of scientific knowing forms the pivot upon which further discussion turns. That character of everyday experience which has been most systematically ignored by philosophy is the extent to which it is saturated with the results of social intercourse and communication. Because this factor has been denied, meanings have either been denied all objective validity, or have been treated as miraculous extra-natural intrusions. If, however, language, for example, is recognized as the instrument of social cooperation and mutual participation, continuity is established between natural events (animal sound, cries, etc.) and the origin and development of meanings. Mind is seen to be a function of social interactions, and to be a genuine character of natural events when these attain the stage of widest and most complex interaction with one another. Ability to respond to meanings and to employ them, instead of reacting merely to physical contacts, makes the difference between man and other animals; it is the agency for elevating man into the realm of what is usually called the ideal and spiritual. In other words, the social participation affected by communication, through language and other tools, is the naturalistic link which does away with the often alleged necessity of dividing the objects of experience into two worlds, one physical and one ideal.
[/quote]
Later in Experience and Nature, we get:
[quote=Dewey]
The distinctively intellectual attitude which marks scientific inquiry was generated in efforts at controlling persons and things so that consequences, issues, outcomes would be more stable and assured. The first step away from oppression by immediate things and events was taken when man employed tools and appliances, for manipulating things so as to render them contributory to desired objects. In responding to things not in their immediate qualities but for the sake of ulterior results, immediate qualities are dimmed, while those features which are signs, indices of something else, are distinguished. A thing is more significantly what it makes possible than what it immediately is. The very conception of cognitive meaning, intellectual significance, is that things in their immediacy are subordinated to what they portend and give evidence of. An intellectual sign denotes that a thing is not taken immediately but is referred to some thing that may come in consequence of it. Intellectual meanings may themselves be appropriated, enjoyed and appreciated; but the character of intellectual meaning is instrumental.
...
In principle the step is taken whenever objects are so reduced from their status of complete objects as to be treated as signs or indications of other objects. Enter upon this road and the time is sure to come when the appropriate object-of-knowledge is stripped of all that is immediate and qualitative, of all that is final, self-sufficient. Then it becomes an anatomized epitome of just and only those traits which are of indicative or instrumental import.
[/quote]
https://archive.org/stream/experienceandnat029343mbp/experienceandnat029343mbp_djvu.txt
As I read him, we (or certain philosophers) have tended to take these constantly present 'handles' or 'signs' as the 'real' being of the object.
Instrumentalism is one alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism
[quote=Dewey]
The empirical basis of the distinction between the apparent and the non-apparent thus lies in the need for inference. When we take the outstandingly evident as evidence, its status is subordinate to that of unperceived things. For the nonce, it is a way of establishing some- thing more fundamental than it is itself with respect to the object of inquiry. If we conceive of the world of immediately apparent things as an emergence of peaks of mountains which are submerged except as to their peaks or endings, and as a world of initial climbings whose subsequent career emerges above the surface only here and there and by fits and starts; and if we give attention to the fact that any ability of control whatever depends upon ability to unite these disparate appearances into a serial history, and then give due attention to the fact that connection into a consecutive history can be effected only by means of a scheme of constant relationships (a condition met by the mathematical-logical-mechanical objects of physics), we shall have no difficulty in seeing why it is that the immediate things from which we start lend themselves to interpretation as signs or appearances of the objects of physics; while we also recognize that it is only with respect to the function of instituting connection that the objects of physics can be said to be more "real." In the total situation in which they function, they are means to weaving together otherwise disconnected beginnings and endings into a consecutive history. Underlying "reality" and surface "appearance" in this connection have a meaning fixed by the function of inquiry, not an intrinsic metaphysical meaning.
[/quote]
Aristotle criticizes Plato because his concept or idea/form implies an infinite regression. If the idea is what the various individuals have in common there is a bat form and a flight form, and a black form, and an animal form, and a big ear form, etc.. And, what is worse, a form of what the idea of animal and the idea of life have in common, and a form of what they have in common the idea of what they have in common... The infinite chain can only be broken if an empirical resource is introduced: abstraction -as you did. But this is Aristotelian, not platonic.
In Kantian terminology I'm using now, intuitions are not templates (a priori), they are the content of our ideas. Space and time are the templates of sensible intuition. The metaphysical error is to use space and time templates without sensible material.
You are probably using "intuition" in other sense.
If we take the basic idea of pragmatism that objective reality is limited to that which we manipulate, how is resistance to our manipulation understood? It seems that praxis has to take into account reality's potential of adversity. I think pragmatism lacks some dialectics. It conceives of science as an ongoing success, rather than a contradiction between success and failure. That is the objective reality that escapes pragmatic optimism. And this is the subject's emergence.
Agree. I don’t have much to go on but a hunch right now but am intending to devote some serious reading to Plato’s theory of forms.
My basic intuition has always been that there are real ideas - real, not because there in someone’s mind, as we are naturally inclined to believe nowadays, but real in the domain of pure intelligibility. I think Plato intuited that but it’s a very difficult thing to grasp. Read these three points on Augustine on intelligible objects. (I have quoted this passage ad nauseam on this forum, but I’m still bewitched by it. )
Quoting jjAmEs
Hey Dewey was a pragmatist, wasn’t he? So the least he can do is be adaptable.
I get the standard criticism of Platonic dualism - that it eschews the real world of color and movement for lifeless, bloodless abstraction, and I think there is some merit in that criticism, But I can’t help but feel there’s some hidden wellspring of vitality which is missed by those criticisms. (Just exploring ideas here.)
By the many worlds theory!
Philosophy advances by the appropriation of terms, no doubt. Appropriation of terms into subsequent domains still should be legitimatized.
Intuition...content of ideas.
Space and time.....templates of sensible intuitions
Ergo....space and time are the templates of sensible content of ideas.
Could be, but....what is the sensible content of an idea? “Invisibility” is an idea, but hardly has sensible content. An object certainly has sensible content, but should such object then be merely an idea?
——————-
Quoting David Mo
Certainly an empirical error, I’ll give you that. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a metaphysical error to use time without sensible material, though, even while space would suit the case. All human thought is successive, a condition of time without material content. In fact, any first principle of relation necessarily implies time as an a priori template, re: cause and effect. Or, A cannot simultaneously be not-A.
Actually, it might be a metaphysical error to use the templates of space and time WITH sensible material, because metaphysically, space and time don’t have any sensible material conceived as belonging to them.
Don’t mind me.....just thinking out loud.
Quoting Wayfarer
Perhaps the timelessness or eternity of such a realm is what seduces. How are knowledge and time connected? In general, philosophers especially have sought imperishable knowledge. They have gazed at and described structures which are constantly present for those with eyes to see. Their descriptions are poetic acts that have given others these eyes to see. Even this way of looking at philosophical knowledge is itself caught up in that mission --in the articulation of the timeless essence of philosophy as the articulation of timeless essences.
In that sense philosophy is something like theory as religion.
[quote=Dewey]
The view which isolates knowledge, contemplation, liking, interest, value, or whatever from action is itself a survival of the notion that there are beings which can exist and be known apart from active connection with other things.
When man finds he is not a little god in his active powers and accomplishments, he retains his former conceit by hugging to his bosom the notion that nevertheless in some realm, be it knowledge or esthetic contemplation, he is still outside of and detached from the ongoing sweep of interacting and changing events; and being there alone and irresponsible save to himself, is as a god.
[/quote]
Philosophy offers us the pleasure of stepping out of time with all its risks and rottenness.
Marx is a good mention. Dewey even briefly touches on priority of theoretical knowledge and its relationship to class. The elite man is (or was) a man of theoretical leisure, a leisure made possible by slaves, inherited wealth, etc.
Quoting David Mo
I like your themes. I do think pragmatism is (at its best) more sophisticated than your description of it, though---which is not to say that it's a last word or doesn't have problems.
Cool. So my suggestion is that this should similarly apply to absolute space/time and relativistic spacetime.
That is, through experience, Einstein's Relativity has replaced Newtonian Physics (which approximates the predictions of Relativity in special cases).
Quoting Mww
OK, but for a third guy walking past, those two events won't be simultaneous.
Doesn't that contradict the Kantian view?
Quoting Mww
Yes. So it seems to me that Kant's notion of appearance is artificial. What problem does it solve that we haven't already solved with the natural distinction above.
Given the above distinction, what conceptual problem remains?
Quoting Wayfarer
There are still plenty of problems to solve even with that assumption (including philosophical) but at least they are then, in principle, solvable.
Quoting Wayfarer
On naturalism, the methodological assumption of naturalism is reflected back on itself (i.e., as the study of the study of nature). So why would that be a problem and how would Kant's argument be relevant here?
Firstly the statement I quoted and criticized was pretty straightforward:
Quoting Wayfarer
You are saying that Kant questions the idea that the world exists independently of our perception of it. Now, of course we all acknowledge that the world as experienced does not exist independently of us, but we are able to draw conceptual distinctions between the world as it is perceived and as it is "in itself", and the latter, by definition, exists independently of human (or any other form of) perception.
Kant says we cannot prove the world exists in itself independently of our perceptions of it, but we are certainly able to think that it does (although obviously not how it does); so Kant is not questioning the independent existence of the world in itself at all, but the independence of the world as experienced. In other words he is rejecting naive realism, but not scientific realism, which if it is at all reflective, acknowledges that we are only examining and conjecturing about the world as it appears to us (obviously, since the acts of examination and conjecture cannot deal with anything but what appears).
If you think anything else you wrote in the post I responded to by allegedly "cherrypicking" has any bearing on the correctness of my criticism of the part I selected, then feel free to clarify.
'First philosophy' or metaphysics is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. In a theistic metaphysics, then God is understood as being the source or ground of being. A naturalistic philosophy doesn't countenance such an idea as God is (by definition) super-natural, 'above' or transcendent to nature. So the attitude generally is, whatever hypothesis you want to consider, it can't include something which is by definition above and beyond the naturalist framework- which is what I'm calling 'metaphysical naturalism'. You see in many atheist arguments (including many posted here) that science proves or at least suggests that the world has a naturalistic explanation or can be thoroughly understood in naturalistic terms and that there is nothing outside or above or transcendent to nature in terms of which understanding ought to be sought.
This is where Kant is relevant - recall that he said that a central goal of his critical philosophy is to 'discover the limit to knowledge so as to make room for faith'.
I'm arguing that is that it is possible to pursue a naturalist account while still understanding that it has limits in principle - that the naturalist account is not all there is (which is what I understand Kant to be saying.) That is what I mean by distinguishing methodological from metaphysical naturalism - the former sets aside or brackets out metaphysics in pursuit of the naturalist account. But it doesn't necessarily say anything about what if anything might be beyond that. It's close in meaning to Huxley's agnosticism.
Quoting Janus
I think many scientific realists would either not be sympathetic to Kant, or wouldn't understand his critical philosophy. Some would but it would not be uniform by any means. (What was the wisecrack Richard Feynman made? That philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds?)
Consider the point in this thread where I brought this up - it was the quotation by Andrei Linde about the 'role of the observer' in understanding the nature of time. Linde is a physicist and cosmologist, responsible for a lot of the current theory around big bang cosmology:
[quote= Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma] The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. [/quote]
So, I'm arguing that this point is basically Kantian - that it acknowledges that time doesn't exist independently of the observing mind; where there is measurement, there is mind, and that also goes for the naturalist understanding of the early Universe. And this conforms with what I understand Kant to be saying:
(A370)
which he contrasts with 'transcendental realism':
(CPR, A369)
I know I'm not a Kant scholar but this particular point is central to what he described as his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that 'things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things'. I'm not making any point beyond that.
Of course things as experienced must "conform to thoughts", but Kant would not say that things in themselves must conform to thoughts; in facts he is saying quite the obverse.
And note in the passage quoted:
The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.
(CPR, A369)
He is just saying that transcendental realists are naive realists insofar as they conflate things in themselves with appearances, which is entirely in accordance with what I have been saying.
So, is invisibility a metaphysical idea? Or is it the result of applying a logical (non-x) category to things in general? I would say that "nothingness" is a metaphysical idea when you turn a logical relationship (negation) into a substance: "the" nothingness. Perhaps the same can be done with "the" Invisibility. Parmenides started with that - it is said.
Quoting Mww
We speak of things that happen IN time but it would be more exact to say that we measured things with time. Time without events and observers would vanished.
Relativity prevents us to consider that time is absolute? Is it not so?
Scientific realism is not a single doctrine. There are several scientific realisms ranging from dogmatic realism to cautious realism. I would say that the most widespread version today is: Scientific theories are an approximate description of reality. What "approximate" means is not easy to say.
In my opinion - after Kuhn - approximate can be interpreted as a refinement in predictions and measurements within a given paradigm. This implies that we must identify objectivity with prediction and intersubjectivity, which is not evident in itself in all cases.
Quoting David Mo
Would Kant think that invisibility is the concept of visibility with zero intensity? The succession of the sensations of visibility is (has attained, or is still) zero i.e. without fulfillment or empty. Or something like that. Then this concept would be used "correctly" i.e. in the context of empirical experience. The category of quality would be in that way operative, category, that helps to "determine" the degree of reality. (Actually the category of quantity is involved here too.)
Few remarks (I am not a native speaker of English or German, however, I read Kant in German):
The translation of intuition (Anschauung) can be very deceptive. It seems that Kant uses intuition (as a German word) only referring to intellectual intuition. This kind of intuition doesn't refer to any (pure or sensible) Anschauung (intuition) at all . On the other hand, there is Anschauung as sensible intuition i.e empirical intuition preceding the perception (Wahrnehmung) of object. Then, there is Anschauung as a "visual" illustrative aid in geometrical-mathematical construction (pure intuition; math. figures or forms are pure or ideal). Finally, there is imaginative or reproductive Anschauung (Einbildung) where empirical appearances are reconstructed in mind when one doesn't have a direct perception of the object.
From B34 onwards I have found more than fifty occurrences of the term "sensible intuition" in the English version of Cambridge University Press, 1998. Which German term are they translating?
They probably translate the verb anschauen (or Anschauung as noun), that is, "intuiting" in the context of "real" sensual-empirical cognition here and now. Sensible intuition is receptivity, something "passive" where material is given. Possibly the "deduction" section in Critique should be consulted where Kant deals with the imagination (Einbildung) etc. (I try here to clarify these terms for myself too. My knowledge of Kant is rusty and lacking in many ways.) (Husserl has a lot to say about these phenomena, by the way.)
That is what we call truth.
Quoting jjAmEs
This I disagree with. As philosophers we might seek that eternal truth, but when all we find is the deficiencies of human knowledge we are deprived of that pleasure. Philosophy doesn't offer us that pleasure, it dispels the illusion that we might obtain it.
Yes, I see what you mean. Newtonian absolute space/time was the view prior to relativistic spacetime.
Quoting Andrew M
I’m not understanding what in Einstein would contradict Kant. Where did Einstein prove Kant wrong, in as much as they each operated from two distinct technological and scientific domains? Kant had no significant velocities other than a horse, and there were no trains, which together negate even the very notion of time differential reference frames, so there wouldn’t appear to be any reason for Kant to notice measurable discrepancies in rest/motion velocities.
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Quoting Andrew M
What problem is there, that the natural distinction above solves? Appearance in Kantian terminology can’t be artificial in any sense, because it is a representation of sensation. If there is a sensation, there will be an appearance, period. And it is necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between sensation and appearance, otherwise there is no ground for the subsequent cognitive procedures, which falsifies the entire system. Appearance in Kant is like making the scene, as in “...that which appears...”, not what a thing looks like, because the advent of appearance in the system is long before cognition, which means there is nothing known whatsoever about the appearance except that one has occurred, been presented, to the system. Thus, it shouldn’t be said that that which is unknown at a certain time is thereby artificial.
I’m open to clarification on either of these, if you wish to provide it.
Yes, things happen in time is a general statement, or a general condition of all measurable things. Still, when we say we are measuring things with time, we are merely denoting the amount of time IN which a thing happens.
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Quoting David Mo
Depends on the metaphysical theory in play. According to Kant it is, because invisibility has no object of its own, so would be a concept of reason, hence, transcendental, which is itself in the metaphysical paradigm. Things may indeed be invisible and still present a sensation to the process of cognition, hence are subject to the categories, but the concept of invisibility, in and of itself, is not so subject. It is the thing by which we are affected, not the invisibility of it.
Perhaps, but does it not offer us nevertheless the pleasure of being wised up about our situation? If it didn't put us in a superior position, why would we spread it, cultivate it, pride ourselves on its study?
And how can we trust that our knowledge is deficient if knowledge of such deficiency is a part of that knowledge? It's hard to avoid positive claims and still do philosophy. Even 'skeptics' find themselves asserting timeless truths about human cognition.
It's true there are several versions of scientific realism, but I doubt that many scientists would deny that they are dealing with the world as perceived by humans.
The idea that scientific theories are approximate descriptions of reality is completely in accordance with the Kantian idea that we know things in themselves not as things in themselves but only as appearances. Kant does not claim that we entirely "construct" our reality, only that the form of our reality as appearance is mediated by the human perceptual system and brain.
[quote=link]
Roberto Torretti, The Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 242–43: "Like Whewell and Mach, Duhem was a practicing scientist who devoted an important part of his adult life to the history and philosophy of physics. ... His philosophy is contained in La théorie physique: son objet, sa structure [The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory] (1906), which may well be, to this day, the best overall book on the subject. Its main theses, although quite novel when first put forward, have in the meantime become commonplace, so I shall review them summarily without detailed argument, just to associate them with his name. But first I ought to say that neither in the first nor in the second (1914) edition of his book did Duhem take into account—or even so much as mention—the deep changes that were then taking place in physics. Still, the subsequent success and current entrenchment of Duhem's ideas are due above all to their remarkable agreement with—and the light they throw on—the practice of mathematical physics in the twentieth century. In the first part of La théorie physique, Duhem contrasts two opinions concerning the aim of physical theory. For some authors, it ought to furnish 'the explanation of a set of experimentally established laws', while for others it is 'an abstract system whose aim is to summarize and logically classify a set of experimental laws, without pretending to explain these laws' (Duhem 1914, p. 3). Duhem resolutely sides with the latter. His rejection of the former rests on his understanding of 'explanation' ('explication' in French), which he expresses as follows: 'To explain, explicare, is to divest reality from the appearances which enfold it like veils, in order to see the reality face to face' (pp 3–4). Authors in the first group expect from physics the true vision of things-in-themselves that religious myth and philosophical speculation have hitherto been unable to supply. Their explanation makes no sense unless (i) there is, 'beneath the sense appearances revealed to us by our perceptions, [...] a reality different from these appearances' and (ii) we know 'the nature of the elements which constitute' that reality (p 7). Thus, physical theory cannot explain—in the stated sense—the laws established by experiment unless it depends on metaphysics and thus remains subject to the interminable disputes of metaphysicians. Worse still, the teachings of no metaphysical school are sufficiently detailed and precise to account for all of the elements of physical theory (p 18). Duhem instead assigns to physical theories a more modest but autonomous and readily attainable aim: 'A physical theory is not an explanation. It is a system of mathematical propositions, derived from a small number of principles, whose purpose is to represent a set of experimental laws as simply, as completely, and as exactly as possible (Duhem 1914, p. 24)".
[/quote]
:up:
Duhem was a pretty major intellectual. I never encountered him at University but have since read about him.
I'm glad someone else liked that quote. 'As simply, completely, and exactly as possible' means also perhaps as economically or efficiently as possible.
I found another quote that may add to this thread, with the theme of holism.
[quote= Quine]
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections - the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.
If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement - especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?
[/quote]
https://coursys.sfu.ca/2015fa-phil-880-g1/pages/quine1/view
To me this is one of those things that's obvious when pointed out. We meet the world not piecemeal but with the entirely of our culture.
Right, although the "entirety of our culture" is itself piecemeal...
Do you mean that we hardly share a single culture these days? If so, I agree.
What's interesting here is the metaphor of stripping reality naked, of unveiling or unmasking it.
Perhaps those with more physics training can correct me if I am wrong. But it's my impression that laws of nature (patterns expected in measurements) tend to be 'timeless' or invariant. So finding patterns persistent patterns in observations is like seeing 'behind' or 'through' change to the the structure that persists in it. In this sense, Duhem's metaphor of divestment remains active, which helps explain why we tend to talk in terms of scientific explanation, despite the plausibility of certain objections.
If science doesn't explain, what does explain? Do religious myths explain? Are they to some degree a kind of science of human nature, expressed in metaphors? I'm tempted to contrast equations with metaphors, though I don't see how equations evade being organized in a largely metaphorical body of thought when connected to the world and their application.
If Hadot is right, then philosophy has at times been more about a way of life that included knowledge rather than a quasi-scientific endeavor. Pragmatic instrumentalism actually returns to this centrality of life, but usually with a worldly, irreligious spirit. An individual, eclectic reader --who is not terribly interested in adopting and defending this or that -ism -- can get 'spiritual insight' from one author and worldly metacognition from another. To me it seems plausible that philosophy is a gallery of metaphors, linked logically, with a range of applications. In another thread someone asks if philosophy is dead. Strange question! Is reading Pascal really comparable to reading a physics textbook?
It occurs to me that this argument itself seems metaphysical, or at least meta-metaphysical is some quasi-Kantian sense..which supports the quote from Quine. It is hard indeed to get that desired-by-some clean separation of metaphysics from what it threatens to 'contaminate.'
https://youtu.be/UneS2Uwc6xw?t=58
Quoting jjAmEs
I found this on the instrumentalism Wiki. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism
[quote=link]
Kant apparently presumed that the human mind, rather than a phenomenon itself that had evolved, had been predetermined and set forth upon the formation of humankind. In any event, the mind also was the veil of appearance that scientific methods could never lift.
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What did Kant make of the brain? Was his philosophy only as stable as the human brain? Did it have a kind of timeless spiritual substance as its foundation? To which the brain is only empirically and uncertainly related? Is pure reason brain independent? Can pure reason prove its own stability to itself? Or if time is just its own creation or mode of revelation, what then?
It seems that "Anschauung" doesn't have an easy translation:
In any case, the notions of sensible intuition and intellectual intuition share in Kant the quality of being immediate, that is, non-deductive. This is why the translators' option of unifying them under the same generic root (intuition) seems convenient. And in fact it has become the norm in translations from the languages I know.
From what I know of some scientists who write books the idea that they are describing the world of sensations is not universal. Some of them (many?) think that they are dealing with the real world that it is not the world of appearances. For example, the doctrine of two worlds (micro and macro) is a commonplace in the Copenhagen version of quantum mechanics.
If such a maximalist concept of explanation is adopted, nothing is an explanation.
In a less maximalist way, to explain is to include the unknown within the known. Thus, science explains by including the particular within the universal, the perceived within (as a case of) the law. And particular laws under more general laws.
Quoting jjAmEs
Metaphors don't explain. They suggest. Obviously, religion is the opposite to explanation because reduces the known to unknown. It is a pseudo-explanantion because uses the form of an explanation, not its clearing power.
Agree. I don’t think science on the whole is nearly as philosophically aware as Janus suggests. There are individual scientists who are, of course, but I don’t think they’re the rule. But the difference between philosophy and science is a philosophical difference, which means it will not be understood by a lot of science-y types. ‘Show me the data! Where’s the data! All you have is words!’ ;-)
It's questionable whether this is a pleasure. We tend to get pleasure from fulfillment of desire. If we seek knowledge, and all we get (what you call "being wised up") is a recognition that we have none of what we want, like Socrates, how can this be pleasurable? We must avoid contradiction, if it's what we want, then it's impossible that we already have it.
I think this is why Plato sought to put "good" in a category other than pleasure and pain. If pleasure and pain are diametrically opposed, and 'good" is associated with pleasure, then we can only get to the good through a release from pain, therefore pain is necessary for good. So he put "good" into a category with knowledge, which is distinct from the opposing pleasure and pain. Now, what is sought as knowledge, is sought as being good, but acquiring knowledge is not "pleasure", and having a lack of knowledge is not "pain".
Contradiction is avoided because knowing, knowledge, and good, are taken from Parmenides' category of being and eternal truth, and placed into Heraclitus' category of becoming. When we steadfastly avoid contradiction, we are forced to reconsider the law of excluded middle, and Aristotle puts considerable effort into this. What follows is that we take knowledge from the realm of what is and is not, and place it into the realm of what may or may not be.
Quoting jjAmEs
I don't agree with this, because there is an issue of what is intended by the person making the assertions. When a skeptic asserts a principle of skepticism, it is meant as a principle of guidance for that particular set of circumstances, which the skeptic is in. It is not asserted as a timeless truth. For a person who thinks of such principles as timeless truths, it would appear like the skeptic is asserting timeless truths. But this is a misinterpretation, because it is not what was meant.
It's simply a different way of looking at things. Recognizing that one's own knowledge, and human knowledge in general, is deficient, is not to see knowledge in terms of timeless truths, but to see knowledge and principles as changing and evolving. Once we dismiss timeless truths we have a completely different perspective which cannot be described in terms of timeless truths.
Indeed. But I'm suggesting that seeing knowledge as evolving is seeing its timeless essence as evolution and change. So a skeptic in this sense ultimately believes that knowledge won't achieve some kind of perfection, stop changing, etc.
Or to make this more concrete: we have some Kantians in this thread and also some mystics. The Kantians 'know' that the mystics can't really have access to metaphysical truths but only to the meta-metaphysical truth that such access is impossible. The mystics simply ignore this. I'm more a Kantian personally, but one could argue that the metametaphysical belief is still just a metaphysical belief that puffs itself up.
In the same way, I think it's fair to say that the atheist has a certain bias toward atheism just as the theist has a bias toward theism. People find arguments (largely) after the fact. As I read your position, you'd probably reject those who make claims of direct access to Truth, since your basic position seems to be that we are stuck at a certain distance from this object of our longing. The Monet effect. But I'd guess that you don't like truth-scorning pragmatism (because you include metaphysics in your handle.)
In my experience, there's a spectrum that runs from mysticism/religion all the way to intense pragmatism and even irrationalism. In between we get critical metaphysics, scientism, etc. And people don't much move from these positions but only get better at defending and presenting them. (Maybe I'm joining the skeptic here, saying that the essence of the mind is to stay put when it a certain existential problem is mostly solved.)
Quoting David Mo
I didn't say they think they are describing the "world of sensations", whatever that might even mean, but the world of things (which are revealed by sensation, obviously).
Quoting David Mo
Can you provide any quotes to substantiate this claim?
Quoting jjAmEs
Yes that, but also I mean that culture itself is not any kind of unity in the sense of being organically complete like an organism is thought to be. It is more like a shifting river.
That particular definition notwithstanding (which is a modern one, btw), I don't think naturalism presupposes an answer about God one way or the other. Aristotle was a natural philosopher and, on the basis of his observations of the world, argued for an Unmoved Mover.
Now whether or not his argument is correct, its seems to me that he didn't consider his argument to be going beyond nature or transcending nature. Instead he was just continuing to apply the same natural methodology to ultimate things. For Aristotle, knowledge of the universal always proceeds from the particular.
As you know, the Scholastics (as with Aristotle) considered themselves to be making natural arguments for the existence of God, which was termed natural theology as opposed to revealed theology.
Now fast-forward to Descartes:
Quoting Natural philosophy - scope
Here we see Descartes placing limits on what can, in principle, be known in the context of natural philosophy.
Quoting Wayfarer
So I would note that the premise of in-principle limits on knowledge is contrary to the premise that ultimate themes can be investigated in the context of natural philosophy.
In my view, naturalism doesn't presuppose either theism or atheism any more than it presupposes either Newtonian physics or Einsteinein relativity. Instead, whatever one's hypothesis, an argument from nature should be made. The relevant distinction isn't between naturalism and theism, but between naturalism and dualism.
Yes.
Quoting Mww
He had no reason to notice, perhaps. But the discrepancies are there and we've subsequently discovered, per Relativity, that the geometry of space and time is non-Euclidean. Which means that Kant's (synthetic a priori) judgments about space and time have been falsified by experience.
Quoting Mww
The stick example shows that one can be mistaken about what they think they've perceived. So the language term "appear" is introduced to represent that situation (e.g., the straight stick appeared to be bent). The problem it solves is to give us language for describing a naturally-occurring situation. Things aren't always as they appear to be.
Quoting Mww
You're showing the role the term plays in Kant's system. Fair enough. But that shifts the question to be about his system as a whole. What problem is it solving?
Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?
I'd say it fails us insofar as it unreflectively leads to naive realism, which is an unwarranted standpoint, or at least a distorted, because incomplete, picture of our situation.
I agree with that criticism. My most considered view is that the meaning of 'explanation' depends on context. Even then that meaning is strictly determinate (for reasons that Derrida is famous for presenting.)
Quoting David Mo
I find the situation more complicated. Although I'm an atheist (which I mentioned to be excused from the expected bias), I think that religious myth has a metaphysical function among other functions. I do like your notion that explanation connects the unknown to the known, or the unfamiliar to the familiar. But I think we find that in analogy, metaphor, and myth.
The creation myth is one example. If one believes that a human-like creator is responsible for all that is, then an unknown cause or the (psycho-)logical impossibility of a cause is replaced with a human-like intention. A total darkness is made user-friendly and familiar. For believers, God is not unknown, or not primarily unknown. God is what makes sense and what makes the world makes sense.
What is the 'clearing power' of explanation? For me there are roughly two kinds of power to be had, practical and emotional, which can be emphasized respectively in the directions of technology and religion. (This is an oversimplification, of course, but perhaps it clarifies.)
Ah, well I agree that organism is not a perfect metaphor then. For me the main idea is that our beliefs are entangled in a kind of system. We meet each new claim with years of sedimented experience.
I can, but it would take too much time for an obvious issue.
For the moment, consider this:
Galileo: the world is a book written in mathematical language.
Descartes: the essence of things is mathematical.
Heisenberg: the world of quantum mechanics is Platonic.
Einstein: he begins with Machism and positivism but finally rejects his concept of empirical meaning.
It seems that the idea that scientific explanation is contrary to intuition is the same as saying that it is opposite to the world of appearances... for many scientists. They adhere to the classic distinction between primary and secondary qualities. What is seen is subjective (qualia) and unobservable scientific objects are objective.
If it helps you in any way:
This is my point. Believers may affirm that they know God, but when obliged to clarify what they understand by God they stray into a world of contradictions, negations and darkness. When sincere they fall in God's silence, existential anguish or negative theologies. Therefore, if God is the Nothingness of rational thinking it can't explain nothing. From nothing nothing proceeds -parodying Parmenides.
Obviously I am atheist also. I don't like gloom.
Explanation subsumes the contingent (individual) in the necessary (universal). Take these words in a relative sense if you like.
Of course, explanation has practical and emotional consequences as you say. The former are evident: science is the most resilient example. The latter are less evident: contingency is anguishing. We have two options: we mitigate contingency with satisfying explanations or we face it. The former leads to positivism. The latter to existentialism. Take these words in a wide sense again, please.
As another hyper-critical atheist, I agree that intellectualized theism tends to stray into contradictions, differences that make no difference, gestures toward ineffability, etc. At the same, I don't feel adoration for Maxwell's laws but only admiration for the ingenuity that made them possible. To me (non-human) 'Nature' is a 'stupid' machine. Why am I attached to being rational? Much of it is pragmatic. I don't want to eat bad food, waste my money, be taken in by the wishful thinking of others in ways that will harm me in the usual, animal ways. But it's also 'irrationally' a matter of style. You say you don't like gloom. But isn't a certain gloom natural enough now and then in a godless world? Along with a certain ecstasy? The species with all its new toys is on a wild ride, and yet its eyes still gleam with dreams of something beyond it all. Except for us critical types, and yet that too is a dream. I at least confess that I am biased toward my atheism and mitigated skepticism. It was not the result of some clean calculation. We don't choose our faces or the thinkers we respond to. I am the product of my environment, or so my environment has forced me to believe.
And on myths as bad science...myths and rituals are richer than that. And I suggest that the non-philosophically religious get something from it, something anti-gloom and optimistic. If all is made fair in the afterlife, then horror becomes a kind of illusion. For me, an atheist, it's no illusion. And death is the utter annihilation of the individual. At the same time, we can tune in while still alive to what is universally great in the human experience, which is basically all the highest forms of relating to others, both directly and through culture. Death loses its sting when we lose ourselves in love (including in the love of theory.) And, along these lines, reincarnation is metaphorically correct. So is 'he who seeks to save his life shall lose it.' What I'm getting at is that religious myths are suggestive and flexible enough to be read more or less literally. This interpretative continuum makes it hard to reduce all religious thought to bad philosophy or bad science. Much of it is wisdom writing, psychology and sociology in narrative form, etc. And then myths are just pre-rationally potent as incitements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason
For scientific explanation, this makes sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive-nomological_model
At the same time, reality is messier than that. We can't explain all the ways in which we use or all the meanings of 'explain.' If meaning is determined by context, then context is boundless. Though obviously we can use our marks and noises well enough to survive this long as a species and as individuals.
Quoting David Mo
Why is contingency anguishing? I think it's fear of the future. So what we really want is protection against the future. Maybe it's a forecast. Maybe it's an afterlife. Desire, fear, time, knowledge. And time is especially futurity for desire and fear.
One way to escape time is to gaze on the forms, on the eternal structure of human cognition, on the essence of science or rationality, on the temporal structure of existence, etc.
Is the positivist just the existentialist who is too cool to talk about feelings ? Maybe not quite that, because the more famous existentialists tended to have their causes. So perhaps the positivist (not Comte but later types) is grimmer or meaner or more detached than that. Hobbes was mentioned earlier. He's a kind of positivist. 'If you monkeys don't want to die young and poor, then try this.' He names his book after a monster. (I relate to that monstrosity, to the degree that rational philosophy has the eyes of a dragon. Trying to see human nature and notions of good and evil from the outside is 'wicked,' in that it climbs if possible above every loyalty but one.)
My thoughts also. I was taking issue with those who believe otherwise.
Quoting Andrew M
However, no scholastic would have said you could have reached an understanding of God without revelation in the first place. Given faith, then reason could be deployed in support of faith, but for those without faith, reason would not suffice.
Though that would seem to be a failure of a person to understand how the language terms function rather than a problem with the language itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
:up:
Quoting Wayfarer
Not a full understanding, sure. But certainly the Scholastics believed (and the Catholic church still teaches) that faith presupposes natural knowledge of God's existence.
Quoting Summa, I, Q.2, art.2.
Now you've gotten into the type of contradiction I warned about. Change requires time, it cannot be timeless.
Quoting jjAmEs
Do you not see the problem with your representation? If someone states "truth is impossible", then it's very clear that they are not presenting this as a truth. To represent this as if the person were stating what is believed to be a "truth", is an obvious a misinterpretation. It's a classic straw man. The person has stated "truth is impossible". Clearly they are not stating that they believe that this is a truth. If you cannot apprehend this, you could ask the person how they think that statements and beliefs represent something other than truths, and try to learn and understand the person's perspective, but to simply assert that they must be stating this as a truth, because that's how it appears from my perspective, is to completely misunderstand, and not even attempt to understand the other person.
Quoting jjAmEs
There's a difference between claiming that there is no such thing as truth, and claiming that we do not have direct access to truth. If Truth requires God, then claiming that we have no direct access to Truth still admits to a belief in God, because it is implied that there is a Truth (therefore God) which we do not have access to. Atheism implies that there is no such thing as Truth, when Truth requires God.
Quoting Andrew M
The Unmoved Mover is actually quite distinct from God. Aristotle demonstrated that anything eternal must be actual. In this way he separated the concept of "eternal" from "infinite". "Infinite" was demonstrated as necessarily potential. He then posited the Unmoved Mover to account for the eternal actuality, that actuality which is necessarily prior to the potential for material existence. However, he described the eternal actuality as a circular motion, which is a description of a material thing, with infinite time duration. So his Unmoved Mover is a faulty concept which falls back into the category of an infinite material existence, which he had demonstrated was impossible. The Unmoved Mover is inconsistent with his logical demonstrations.
So the Neo-Platonists and Christian theologians understand "eternal" in a different way, meaning outside of time. And this is how God is understood, as outside of time, not as Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. This is very important, because "eternal" in this context does not mean an infinite duration of time (what Aristotle demonstrated as impossible, then turned around and proposed as Unmoved Mover), it means outside time.
My choice is to seek clarity among the darkness, not to add more darkness to the darkness.
Quoting jjAmEs
Quoting jjAmEs
There are optimistic and pessimistic myths. Cruel, submissive, rebellious or stupid. Some express the best human wishes and others the worst. They are usually the product of power societies and prescribe relationships of domination. What kind of wisdom can claim one thing and its opposite?
Myths are not bad science. Myths are ideology. They can suggest at best. They can never explain.
You don't need to go to the far future. Contingency causes the anguish of the present and the next immediate moment. If everyone - including myself - is so unstable that they can be what they are now and a thousand other things without any control, where is the sense of the world? What is my reason for trying to act in one way or another?
This is the impetus for any kind of necesity inside or outside this world. Laws of nature or immortal gods. May they bless us or may they crush us, but may they exist.
This is a little off-topic, is it not?
The very idea of failure of language per se seems incoherent to me. The point for me is that certain ideas may lead "naturally" to unreflective reification.
The idea of revelation leading to "natural knowledge of God" you touch on above is one example.
One example of faith consists in believing that there is any natural knowledge of God's existence.
Fair enough, but note the metaphor of light/darkness. I don't object to this making of clarity or light as hero. To the contrary. I'm just shining a light on our metaphorical/mythical framing of the project as the shining of a light.
Quoting David Mo
To me this concern feeds in to identity as something that endures. An essence weathers many moments. You also mention control. I'm suggesting that we need orientation and control, with control guided by predictions. 'If I do X, then this happens. If I do Y, then this happens.' It seems to me that the imagination is largely for running simulations.
Quoting David Mo
Yes, we need some structure to exist. Even an unfriendly structure is a comfort if contrasted with chaos. Bad laws with the rule of law can be better than good laws that aren't enforced or respected.
Quoting David Mo
Maybe. Maybe not. The whole game of subject-versus-object is situated in human existence with its fears and hopes. What problem is it intended to solve? Who or what is the philosopher trying to be?Quoting David Mo
What does explain? E = mc^2 ? How is the mere presentation of a pattern an explanation? Whatever its faults, pragmatism is shrewd for seeing explanation in the context of the rest of our activity. And instrumentalism as a philosophy of science sees us as tool-users to want to master our environment. Natural science helps us master the physical environment. The human sciences and religion have helped us master the social environment. What I have in mind is a holistic grasp of all the habits of a group of humans, including their verbal habits, as a total response to their precarious situation. The goal is not just an accurate staring at the given but rather successful practice. Phronesis.
Quoting David Mo
Does anyone live without ideology? Without orienting myth? I doubt it. One popular ideology is that of being post-ideological. 'Ideology' is always applied ideologically. Enlightenment's favorite myth is the autonomous human being, who smells just like the God he has to kill and supersede. So our ideology involves the notion of being lifted up above the superstitions that kept us in a gape-mouthed, childlike state. So runs the myth, perhaps. And yet what is missed is that people identity with their gods. The king and the priest and righteous man were not cringing servants but rather sons acting in the name of the Father. Enlightenment just radicalizes the patriarchy of the word. Rationality becomes the Inner Light.
First, Kant didn’t attribute any geometry to space, but rather, to objects in space. Kant was a “magister” in math and tutored university-level mathematics, so it is highly unlikely he wasn’t aware of non-Euclidean axioms, such that triangles on the surface of a sphere do not have angle summation of 180 degrees. But that fact does not negate the Euclid’s “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line”, which remains true even if one cannot get from A to B in a straight line. The truth that one cannot cut through the Earth to get from NYC to Hong Kong does not falsify the fact that cutting through the Earth is the shortest way.
Second, in order for experience to falsify “...Kant’s (synthetic a priori) judgements about space and time...”, one would have to show, 1.) he made any such statements, 2.) that if he did, how experience would falsify them, and most importantly, 3.) what synthetic a priori judgement actually is.
“....Judgements of experience, as such, are always synthetical....”
“....Mathematical judgements are always synthetical....”
“....mathematical propositions are always judgements a priori, and not empirical, because they carry along with them the conception of necessity, which cannot be given by experience....”
It is clear Kantian synthetic a priori judgements require necessity, which experience cannot deliver. Therefore experience cannot falsify them.
Consider, even though time dilation and length contraction have been shown to be the case, as regards relativity, all that began with pure mathematics, which are.......wait for it......all synthetic a priori propositions. Einstein had to think all this stuff before he ever wrote anything down, and had to wait years for technology to catch up enough to demonstrate the the truth in the math.
Also consider, no matter what relativity says, a guy doing geometric functions anywhere in the Universe can still use Euclid’s axioms. He’s still human and so was Euclid, so......
It’s always helpful to keep in mind just what relativity means.
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Did Kant think that our existing language that we use to represent the world and acquire knowledge somehow fails us?[/quote]
Could very well be, seeing as how he invented some for himself. Or at least reformed some extant meanings to suit himself. But generally I wouldn’t say he thought language fails us. That we use the same language doesn’t guarantee understanding, but does guarantee understanding is possible. And because the language of mathematics is the same for every human, understanding math is given, depending on experience with its use, of course.
—————-
Quoting Andrew M
That things aren’t always as they appear is certainly true, but it isn’t why Kant introduced the term “appearance”. Even if that which appears is not a false representation of the real state of affairs, it is no less an appearance than that which appears that is a false representation. Because the Kantian cognitive system is representational, there must be representations for each step in the procedure, so appearance is simply the first representation in the transition from external real physical to internal speculative theory. This is why I said “appearance” for Kant is like making the scene, being presented, and not meant to tell us what a thing looks like. Appearance serves the Kantian system equally to all five senses, which tends to eliminate what a thing looks like, when the thing being perceived doesn’t even have a look, but has instead a feel or an odor.
The stick appears bent is in the sense of what it looks like but really isn’t; the Kantian appearance of the bent stick is exactly that.....for all representational intents and purposes, the damn stick is bent!!! All the way through the cognitive system the stick retains the appearance of a bent stick, and it will be judged to be bent.....which is exactly what we see. It doesn’t matter to the system that light is being refracted, it doesn’t matter to the cognitive system that air density and water density are not the same, or even have anything to do with the perception of a stick in a peculiar condition.
Experience tells us the stick, appearing bent, really isn’t. The system only tells us what it has the capacity to tell us. If the laws of physics operate such that a stick looks to be bent, then the stick will appear bent. All the bent stick proves is that perception is passive, insofar as it makes no mistakes, but rather all errors in cognition are from judgement alone. We know the truth of this little tidbit, because the stick appears just as bent after we learn it isn’t, then before we learn it isn’t. And a crawly thing between your shoulder blades makes its sensational appearance without having a “looks like” appearance.
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Quoting Andrew M
Depends on what his system is thought to be. Actually, it is a speculative cognitive system, meant to show a possible method for the human intellect to arrive at an understanding of himself and his environment. Keyword...speculative. The theory was never meant to establish a truth about anything at all, except itself as such. Hence, the theory doesn’t solve any problems, except those the theory explores, and then only if one grants the tenets of it. The bent stick is a pretty lousy example of false knowledge, though, because somebody somewhere figure out real fast the illusion behind it. But no one in the normal living of normal life is ever going to have direct experience of time dilation, and the guy on the platform only makes his judgements based on his watch, not the watch the guy on the train uses.
As I mentioned, Bishop Berkeley already addresses this question in his Dialogues:
Third Dialogue, edition from https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/berkeley1713.pdf
When Critique of Pure Reason, First Edition, was published, many reviewers said that Kant was basically repeating Berkeley, which caused Kant to include in the second edition a 'refutation of material idealism' to distinguish his doctrine from Berkeley's.
I don't *think* you're really getting Kant's 'critique' but I'm hardly able to try and set you straight on it, as I'm not well read in Kant. The single point of Kant's philosophy that I appeal to, is his 'copernican revolution in philosophy', that being the constitutive role that the mind plays in our construal of nature. The world is not something that simply exists irrespective of our cognitive capabilities, there for us to discover; all of our knowledge of it is the product of the synthesis of perceptions and judgements which constitutes reality for us.
Subject, object and [new '-ject' word] concerning subject/object qualia.
I see the world as an ongoing union of many forces and elements.
Object, subject and then deeper, I think is sensible.
Alice(subject), see's Bob(object) - but what is Alice and Bob without the deeper understanding of people?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think you're understanding me. 'Knowledge is unstable' is posited as something stable about knowledge. 'It's the nature or essence of knowledge to adapt.' Or, more generally, 'everything changes except change itself.' So flux itself (in the abstract) is made the static being that can be glimpsed lurking behind a becoming that is itself recast as a succession of pseudo-beings and their associated pseudo-knowledges. As one person suggested, Nietzsche is Plato turned upside down. But inversion is a simple transformation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that a charitable interpretation should take such a statement as a kind of exaggeration. At best they are hinting toward an attitude that I find congenial. 'Nothing is true!' It seems bold at first, but it's a bluff. It's a safe sophomoric slop, while admittedly showing a certain flexible worldly wisdom at the same time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree. I had this kind of thing in mind:
[quote=Nietzsche]
HOW THE "TRUE WORLD" ULTIMATELY BECAME A FABLE
THE HISTORY OF AN ERROR
1. The true world, attainable to the sage, the pious man and the man of virtue,—he lives in it, he is it.
(The most ancient form of the idea was relatively clever, simple, convincing. It was a paraphrase of the proposition "I, Plato, am the truth.")
2. The true world which is unattainable for the moment, is promised to the sage, to the pious man and to the man of virtue ("to the sinner who repents").
(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, more insidious, more evasive,—It becomes a woman, it becomes Christian.)
3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a command.
(At bottom this is still the old sun; but seen through mist and scepticism: the idea has become sublime, pale, northern, Königsbergian.)[1]
4. The true world—is it unattainable? At all events it is unattained. And as unattained it is also unknown. Consequently it no longer comforts, nor saves, nor constrains: what could something unknown constrain us to?
(The grey of dawn. Reason stretches itself and yawns for the first time. The cock-crow of positivism.)
5. The "true world"—an idea that no longer serves any purpose, that no longer constrains one to anything,—a useless idea that has become quite superfluous, consequently an exploded idea: let us abolish it!
(Bright daylight; breakfast; the return of common sense and of cheerfulness; Plato blushes for shame and all free-spirits kick up a shindy.)
6. We have suppressed the true world: what world survives? the apparent world perhaps?... Certainly not! In abolishing the true world we have also abolished the world of appearance!
(Noon; the moment of the shortest shadows; the end of the longest error; mankind's zenith; Incipit Zarathustra.)
[/quote]
While I can't join Nietzsche in his high noon ecstasy, he's good for seeing the roleplay from the outside .
'I, Plato am the Truth' becomes a half-skeptical religion of truth-at-a-distance. Personally I'd think of identifying (1) and (6) to get a circle. Nietzsche surely felt that he was the truth in his ecstatic moments.
The question ignored here is: why philosophy? If philosophy only breaks our hearts, then why is it preserved ? Why do we spread the heartbreaking virus and scorn an unexamined life as not worth living? Is this not a return of the crucified hero, who also is stapled to a T?
Why dispel illusions? And if no eternal truth can be obtained in the first place, is an illusion still an illusion? If so, with respect to what? When ordinary notions of illusion and reality get inflated to metaphysical entities, the utility of the distinction shrivels.
My position is that philosophy matters. Bacon defends it in these terms. The eyes, the feet, the hands and other organs in direct contact with the world resented having to carry the stomach around, not realizing that they all derived their might from the stomach. Similarly philosophy feeds all the more immediately practical discourses. Or (alternatively) is a general who helps the troops from behind the lines.
Philosophy used to be understood as the pursuit of the eternal truth or at least something beyond the transitory affairs of life. Of course the word 'eternal' itself has become a cliche, emblazoned on ancient pillars standing in ruined temples, museum pieces, the kind of thing that post-modernism ridicules. But the eternal can take many forms, even manifesting in the guise of ephemeral and the transient. There was an artist who used to write 'Eternity' on the sidewalks of Sydney in beautiful copperplate script, in chalk.
You asked the question above, what is it about 'contingency'? Put another way, the contingent is the conditioned, the dependent, that which is made, fabricated, compound, transitory, subject to decay. So the question is, is there anything which is not made, not fabricated, nor born, not subject to decay? That is a very Buddhist expression, but a similar sentiment is found in many sources.
Nagel, in his essay Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, says that:
The problem is, this way of thinking is now so associated with religious philosophies that we've been innoculated against it. It 'sounds religious' so we shy away from it, often reflexively; whatever we're seeking, it can't be that, must be found in another direction. Hence the notion of 'secular philosophy', which, if applied to anything more than making the trains run on time and managing the Commons, is really an oxymoron.
The Western mind has defined these subjects in certain ways, all the encoded meanings have particular ramifications and connotations. Nietzsche of course blew all of that up, but what does he replace it with? A commentator said of him that 'he was simultaneously the opponent, proponent and victim of the nihilism he foresaw.' That's why it's important to be able to consider perspectives outside the Western. Otherwise you suffer from Westernitis, which is a very nasty condition. ;-)
I'm not against metaphors. They impact and can suggest orientation for practice or knowledge. But they do not explain, define or clarify. They can be a hypothetical starting point for knowledge, never an end in themselves.
Not Eliade, please.
Quoting jjAmEs
What are superstitions if not myths? Myths about Jesus Christ, myths about the Aryan race, myths about the Nation, the Spirits... and so on. Myths are tales. They don't reason, they narrate and proclaim. If you refuse to analyze stories with reason, if you allow a story to be the fundamental source of thought and action, your story becomes a superstition.
I think we're talking empty. Perhaps if you propose a myth that can replace reason we can discuss the issue more specifically.
I’m impressed you know the name, :up:
As I've argued within this thread, it still is. As is science and math. This isn't to deny a change in mood and the move toward professionalization. Let's consider phrases like 'make history,' 'leave a mark.'
[quote="Wayfarer;373039"]Of course the word 'eternal' itself has become a cliche, emblazoned on ancient pillars standing in ruined temples, museum pieces, the kind of thing that post-modernism ridicules.[/quote]
I don't think 'eternal' has become a bad word. What is science after if not the eternal laws of the physical? Could Pythagoras ask for more than a TOE that would fit on a T-shirt? I'm wary of the term 'post-modernism.' It's too vague.
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed. This is the dream of gods, forms, the transcendental subject, and so on. We can also consider how the stars must have affected early thinkers. A seemingly eternal pattern was hung above them in one sky over every human being. Mathematics also suggested something deathlessly reliable. And then the nature of man himself could be viewed as a being behind the becoming and perishing of generations. I've argued that knowledge is intrinsically the conquest of the transitory. Why do we bother?
This is an efficient sketch of the situation.
[quote=Hobbes]
Anxiety for the future time, disposeth men to enquire into the causes of things: because the knowledge of them, maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage.
[/quote]
Of course these days it's also a career, and one is rewarded in various ways for producing knowledge.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's also my impression that Plato is a religious figure. Socrates was obviously compelled by some sense of a spiritual mission. He was even a conspiracy theorist who couldn't resist arguing with experts and 'proving' that they didn't know anything, because they couldn't jump through his verbal hoops to his satisfaction. It be nice to read how some of them would have recorded or re-imagined the conversation.
Quoting Wayfarer
Who is the target audience for this? The use of 'we' seems disingenuous here. Intellectual types who reject ordinary religion presumably do so because they'd rather go without certain comforts and cling to their epistemological standards. Note that I've already defended reinterpretations of religious myth, and I repeat that reincarnation strikes me as metaphorically true. To me the demand for a personal afterlife (the preservation of face, name, memories) even seems shallow in some sense, since the most important stuff is repeated in the next generation, with new names and faces. All high culture is 'religious,' I suggest, even as cultural-intellectual fashions involve a renaming of the same old human feelings and projects.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think Nietzsche blew it all up. We can blame Galileo, Newton, etc. Nietzsche is a relatively late figure. In philosophy Bacon was already the beginning of the end. Once technology took off, the old religions no longer fit a no longer static world. Democritus had his revenge. (If I remember correctly, he was Bacon's favorite Greek philosopher.) In practical terms it was better to view nature as a machine without and indifferent to human motives. But then we have the romantic reaction to the disenchantment. We have nature versus spirit. We get Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, and other thinkers who embraced the permanent revolution in various ways. Nietzsche was in his best moments one of the great philosophers. In other moments he was terrible. Personally I identity more with Bacon or Hobbes, both of whom lived very much in the real world.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not so sure that a Westerner can so easily escape being a Westerner. I've dabbled like many Westerners in wisdom from the East, but I suspect my dabbling has always been through a Western lens. Imported religion was popular with Kerouac & Ginsberg and that gang, to name just one. Were they the real thing? Or some kind of fusion? Why shouldn't Western religious traditions be just as rich and perhaps even more fitting? The cynical part of me thinks the imports have a certain appeal simply as exotic. 'This is not your grandpa's religion.' Yet when I actually met a Buddhist monk once, he reminded me of a Catholic priest.
And is Westernitis a nasty condition? Or are we just as delighted as we are anxious? 'Only a god can save us,' quoth Heidegger. Do we need saving? Of course we'll usually take more of what's good....
Could you make a case for that assertion? Some thinkers have argued that analogy is the core of cognition.
[quote=Hofstadter]
One should not think of analogy-making as a special variety of reasoning (as in the dull and uninspiring phrase “analogical reasoning and problem-solving,” a long-standing cliché in the cognitive-science world), for that is to do analogy a terrible disservice. After all, reasoning and problem-solving have (at least I dearly hope!) been at long last recognized as lying far indeed from the core of human thought. If analogy were merely a special variety of something that in itself lies way out on the peripheries, then it would be but an itty-bitty blip in the broad blue sky of cognition. To me, however, analogy is anything but a bitty blip — rather, it’s the very blue that fills the whole sky of cognition — analogy is everything, or very nearly so, in my view.
[/quote]
[quote=Rorty]
What we call common sense—the body of widely accepted truths—is, just as Heidegger and Nabokov thought, a collection of dead metaphor. Truths are the skeletons which remain after the capacity to arouse the senses—to cause tingles—has been rubbed off by familiarity and long usage. After the scales are rubbed off a butterfly’s wing, you have transparency, but not beauty—formal structure without sensuous content. Once the freshness wears off the metaphor, you have plain, literal, transparent language—the sort of language which is ascribed not to any particular person but to ‘common sense’ or ‘reason’ or ‘intuition’
[/quote]
Philosophy has been largely based on an unnoticed ocular metaphor.
[quote=link]
Since it is based on the visual metaphor, Kant's epistemology is not the antirepresentationalism proposed by Rorty. For Kant there is a mediation between the object out there and the mental eye, what is rejected by Rorty. He thinks, that we do not need mediation, since we are unmediately in (touch with) the world. As he says, "Pragmatists reply to ... arguments about the veil of appearances by saying that we need not model knowledge on vision. So there is no need to think of the sense organs or the mind as intervening between a mental eye and its object. Instead, pragmatists say, we can think of both as tools for manipulating the object. They reply to arguments about the distorting effect of language by saying that language is not a medium of representation. Rather, it is an exchange of marks and noises, carried out in order to achieve specific purposes. It cannot fail to represent accurately, for it never represented at all."
Sense organs, mind and language are for Rorty not representational instances, but only tools for coping with the reality.
[/quote]
https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/TKno/TKnoBoro.htm
Quoting David Mo
I looked him up. He's not my cup of tea. I have no cure for mankind to sell. As an individual, I became confident enough in my atheism to eventually go back and enjoy religious myth as literature. I still relate more to young fiery atheists than thinkers like Eliade or the later Heidegger. I do like Campbell, Jung, Hesse, Schopenhauer, Nobby Brown, others.
Quoting David Mo
Well myths do narrate at least, don't they? I'm hardly suggesting that myths alone will get us through life. This is a high tech society. We need organized, disciplined, technical knowledge...of course. We need longwinded prosy arguments in many situations.
I agree that taking a myth literally is superstition, almost by definition. I do wonder whether some people project a certain reading of myths on others. Was Euler a fool? How about J. S. Bach? Christianity has all kinds of more or less sophisticated interpretations. Wal-Mart fundamentalism is out there, of course, but so is negative theology.
Also myths don't replace reason. They are part of reason. We have lots of stories about heroes and villains, not all of them religious in the traditional sense. Plato's forms are a metaphor that caught on. His famous cave appears again in The Matrix. The appearance-reality distinction is taken for common sense, though in its extreme form it's a particular creation, a piece of oral and written culture.
I did a project on him when I was a student. At first I found it fascinating. Until I realized it was pseudo-science and mysticism in camuflage. Anyway, he continues to be stimulating.
Eliade was actually very fashionable in the postmodern wave. Now he's fallen into oblivion. More or less.
It's you who is not understanding; "knowledge is unstable" is very clearly not posited as something stable, because that would imply contradiction. The person proposing "knowledge is unstable" is very clearly not proposing it as an eternal unchanging truth, because that would be a contradiction of terms. You are simply interpreting it this way, because it is your belief that knowledge consist of such eternal unchanging truths. You have not properly interpreted what the person who says "knowledge is unstable" means. Therefore it is very clear that you have misunderstood.
Quoting jjAmEs
"Change" is just a word, and what that word means, what you call the "abstraction" also changes. So it's false to say that change itself does not change. The "abstraction" changes.
Quoting jjAmEs
But why would you say philosophy breaks our hearts? If it is removed from the category of pleasure and pain, as I suggested, it's not itself a heartbreak, which is the description of a pain.
Quoting jjAmEs
You seem to be mixing temporal perspectives. "What is" refers to the present in time, and that is changing. So to convert "what is" into an eternal truth is a perversion. That actually is the nature of the illusion, that the changing nature of "what is" can be converted into an eternal truth. The illusion ought to be dispelled because it induces pain and suffering through mistaken certitude. The relief or release from pain and suffering is itself a pleasure, but the thing which brings us that pleasure, knowledge, is not itself the pleasure. But when knowledge is categorized like this, it can bring either pleasure or pain, and pain is produced by mistaken knowledge. Philosophy is the means by which we discern between the two. Yes it may still break the heart but it lessens the probability.
For Aristotle, it's the celestial spheres that move in a circular motion (as moved by the Unmoved Mover). The Unmoved Mover, per its name, doesn't move.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For Aristotle, time is the measure of change. The Unmoved Mover does not change, so time is not applicable for it.
Yes, in the context of this thread, the idea of mind comes to mind.
Quoting Janus
Yes, though I would note that Aristotle didn't seem to be motivated by faith.
[quote=link]
From the perspective of religious thought, Eliade argues, hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world, establishing a sacred order. The "profane" space of nonreligious experience can only be divided up geometrically: it has no "qualitative differentiation and, hence, no orientation [is] given by virtue of its inherent structure".[88] Thus, profane space gives man no pattern for his behavior. In contrast to profane space, the site of a hierophany has a sacred structure to which religious man conforms himself.
...
From the standpoint of religious thought, the world has an objective purpose established by mythical events, to which man should conform himself: "Myth teaches [religious man] the primordial 'stories' that have constituted him existentially."[166] From the standpoint of secular thought, any purpose must be invented and imposed on the world by man. Because of this new "existential situation", Eliade argues, the Sacred becomes the primary obstacle to nonreligious man's "freedom". In viewing himself as the proper maker of history, nonreligious man resists all notions of an externally (for instance, divinely) imposed order or model he must obey: modern man "makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. [...] He will not truly be free until he has killed the last god".
Eliade says that secular man cannot escape his bondage to religious thought. By its very nature, secularism depends on religion for its sense of identity: by resisting sacred models, by insisting that man make history on his own, secular man identifies himself only through opposition to religious thought: "He [secular man] recognizes himself in proportion as he 'frees' and 'purifies' himself from the 'superstitions' of his ancestors."
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade
I agree with the last point. The secular identity depends on the traditional identity which it negates. This 'secular' identity has freedom or autonomy as its ideal --as that which must be incarnated, repeated, brought to completion in perfected deicide.
It seems hard indeed to avoid some kind of 'spiritual' role-play, which may obviously take the form of anti-superstitious flame-throwing in the name of the fire god.
Note though, that the term "external world" does not (necessarily) refer to a world beyond human experience, but to an inter-subjectively shared world which is external inasmuch as it does not depend on any particular human percipient for its existence.
How could anyone coherently think that science deals with a world beyond human experience? The most that one could plausibly suggest in this connection is that human experience is a part of the natural world as it is "in itself" and so is naturally "isomorphic" with, or "reflective of" it.
However the Earth itself is curved in spacetime due to its mass. So there is no Euclidean straight line from NYC to Hong-Kong through the Earth. (Unless one projects the line "outside" the universe.)
Quoting Mww
OK, so it seems you're saying that both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry would be synthetic a priori for Kant.
Then it is an entirely separate question of how to mathematically represent the universe, which is a question for physics (and involves experience).
Quoting Mww
Thanks, that makes sense. So it's the tenet of representationalism where I part company. In my view, the ordinary object we point to (the intentional object) is not a representation or an object of sense. That precludes the Kantian thing-in-itself/appearance distinction.
The categories of subject and object are scientifical categories, but not the only categories of scientific methodology.
So I agree with Kant's conclusion here as against Berkeley:
Quoting The Refutation of Idealism - SEP
Quoting Wayfarer
Where I disagree with Kant is his idea that an object that we point to, such as a tree or a person, is a representation (i.e., a sense-data object, or appearance). The mind is constitutive in the sense that we are intentional about what we are pointing to (and thus a perspective is implied). But it is not constitutive in the sense of coming between an object and our judgment of it (as is implied by Kant's thing-in-itself/appearance distinction).
Kant would not claim that 'an object is a representation of something unknown'. That is much more like representative realism which is the idea that our perceptions are caused by the intrinsic qualities of objects, and based on these perceptions we can infer things about them.
The distinction between phenomena and noumena is not a distinction between two kinds of object. He's not saying, here is the phenomenal appearance, and there the object as it really is. We only ever know phenomena, how things appear to us, but that doesn't mean that they're simply ideas (qua Berkeley) but that the act of knowing is a synthesis of ideas, sensations, and judgements.
I think you're still operating from within the 'innate naturalism' that Magee talks about in his book on Schopenhauer - the conviction of the innate reality of the sensory domain. It's a very difficult thing to question.
Quoting jjAmEs
There are two things that confuse me in your comment:
Analogy and metaphor are not synonym. Metaphor is a special kind of analogy. Therefore what kind of analogy need to be precised. If analogy means a relationship of identity or likeness between two different objects, I agree. It is a mental procedure that is in the basis of many kinds of knowledge: commonsense, philosophy or science. It is induction. But this process must be complemented with other logic and inductive methods if it want to be rigorous. Analogy in itself can be correct or fallacious. You can find if it is one thing or other only by means of a subsequent elaboration.
Rorty is obsessed with updating the language. He reduces the philosophical value to novelty or antiquity. He thinks that what matters is to be fashionable. No wonder he talks about living and stale metaphors. Anyway, he's right about that. Stale metaphors become commonplace. Therefore, living metaphors have a power of provocation while stale metaphors lead to conformity. This does not mean that one is objective and the other is not. It is just that one sets thought in motion and the other is scholastic.
I'm crazy about Bach. If the Holy Trinity exists, Bach is in the upper corner. I'm sure he is. But I don't think music is a good example for myths. It's too abstract compared to narrative myths. And I don't believe in the causal relationship between the form and content of music. If we want to discuss a myth, it would be better to choose a true myth: Prometheus, Mary's virginity or the creation of the world according to the Mayas.
I think there are also rogue metaphors. Selfish Gene is a classic.
That's essentially what it is for Kant, except that the "intrinsic qualities of objects" (Lockean primary qualities) are also part of the appearance/representation. Thus nothing can be inferred about the thing-in-itself, which is unknowable.
See below (bold mine).
Quoting Prolegomena Part I §13, Remark II
Well, the so-called "Unmoved Mover" is better translated as "Unmovable", or "Immovable", according to what is explained in BK12 of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
It is described like this. It is necessary to assume an eternal unchangeable actuality to account for the fact that no change can be prior to time. So there is necessarily something which is moved by the immovable actuality, and this must be the "first motion", which is the eternal continuity of circular motion. The cause of the eternal circular motion, the "immovable" cause, must be a final cause, as the object of desire, or object of thought, which moves without itself being moved. Therefore the so-called "Unmoved Mover" moves without itself being moved, because it is necessarily "immovable".
The problem, as I said, is that it is a faulty concept. Eternal circular motions of the planets, or of anything else for that matter, are not real. Therefore if there is something which is necessarily "immovable", because it is prior to time, it cannot be described as the cause of eternal circular motion, because eternal circular motion is not real. Where Aristotle goes astray is at Ch.6, Bk12, where he assumes that it is impossible for movement to come into existence. He assumes this because he cannot conceive of anything as prior to time. This is the false premise which leads him to the falsity of the eternal circular motion.
Quoting Andrew M
Aristotle clearly distinguishes two senses of "time" in his Physics, one as the thing which measures, and the other as the thing measured. When he speaks of "time" in his Metaphysics he his referring to the latter, the thing being measured. The problem is that he cannot conceive of time as having come into existence, because this would imply an actuality which is prior to time, and "before time" appears to be contradictory. This is why he settles on time having always existed, and explains this with eternal circular motion, which is how that time which always existed, would be measured. But "eternal circular motion" is a faulty concept.
Hmmm.....curved in spacetime, or curves spacetime? Cured in space, sure....it’s a spheroid. Curves spacetime, sure..... it has mass in a gravitational field. If Earth is curved in spacetime, that’s more information than I have any practical use for, so I’ll take your word for it. Nevertheless, if I have a transparent globe and shine a laser pointer between two points through the globe, it will be a shorter measure than if I pin a string at the same origin on the globe and measure to the same terminus on the surface of the globe. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Quoting Andrew M
Synthetic a priori propositions, yes, according to Kant. Synthetic because each and every single unit, and similarly each and every operator, of any kind of mathematical system is absolutely useless in and of itself, but must be combined with some other unit of some relative domain, and a priori because, simply put, there are no numbers in Nature. Drawing or merely thinking a line, or a 2, can do nothing whatsoever by itself. Even if the most basic use for a line is to connect two points still presupposes the thought of two points, and the thought of some reason they should be connected.
——————-
Quoting Andrew M
Actually, such has become somewhat of a problem, for both reason and mathematics. It follows that in order to maintain logical consistency and in order to prevent empirical absurdities, if the most basic mathematical functions are synthetic a priori, then so too are the more complex. In fact, the more complex the formulas, the less apt they are for immediate empirical demonstration, which makes them all the more a priori. We have progressed in the astronomically very large and the microscopically very small long past direct experience, so we have become adept at inventing mathematical structures to predict that which we cannot directly observe. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, then we must invent the instruments with the expressed intent of indirectly observing exactly what the math predicts.
It should never be contentious that the Universe in general is mathematically represented, merely because of our own limited observational capacities, and our understanding has never been outside the exclusive preview of physics, but the involvement of experience, in its common sense, is necessarily limited to the math and the experimental results of it. We’ll get to Mars eventually, sure, and with it we’ll have experience. But it might just turn out to be quite impossible for us to get to Andromeda.
———————-
Quoting Andrew M
That’s fine, no problem. No matter how one goes about labeling his mental machinations, he is still obliged to demonstrate how such machinations become knowledge, and indeed, common knowledge, such that any congruent rationality understands him. If you claim something about some ordinary object, you then have to explain how it gets its very particular name, and also explain it such that it is possible for me to give it the same name.
I think I understand you to mean by “...(the intentional object)...” to indicate something like Brentano’s “immanent objectivity”, which is a kind of presupposition about a thing because there are certain inherences in it which avail themselves to a certain kind of rational system, and post hoc ergo propter hoc as knowledge. I grant there is general reliability between the thesis whereby things possess properties we perceive and know them by, and the thesis whereby we give things the properties that make them the objects they are known as.
On the other hand, if by “the ordinary object we point to” is just some physical reality I can direct my finger toward to indicate a certain existence, then that is not a Kantian representation, so in that you are correct, but it is nonetheless an object of sense, insofar as an affect on the senses is given by it, else I must admit to pointing at nothing. It follows that “an ordinary object we point to”, re: Kant, and “...(intentional object)...”, re: Brentano, are mutually exclusive, for the former is known as something and the latter is not, in the same stages of cognition for each under the auspices of their respective theoretical speculations.
All that being said, it remains indisputable that whatever is external to the brain absolutely cannot be the same as whatever is internal to it, which makes explicit some form of representational system for human knowledge of objective reality is indisputably the case. Such must be the ground of any epistemological/cognitive theory.
Terrible. This whole discussion, just like the opening question, is without any significant point, awfully vague and undirected, it is impossible to say what are you even talking about or why.
The only interesting, pragmatic and meaningful context to talk under the theme of subject/object, is the mind-body problem and basically two questions:
a.) epistemological question whether can objective science ever explain subjective phenomena of perception and understanding
b.) ontological question whether inability of objective science to explain subjective phenomena automatically means we need to postulate either substance or property dualism in order to explain the qualities of the mental realm
Oh, OK. Glad your towering intellect is here to set us straight.
With reference to the OP, do you see the world in some other way? What other way would there be to see the world?
— tim wood
I made this post earlier.
I described the Earth as I sensed it, partially scientific, partially creative. Can I sense, purely, the experience, or must I conduct science?
I might not be able to define a star 100,000 light years away, but it is visible.
Are we over inflating our science, above mind and simulation? Mind and simulation allows us to conduct science.
Quoting Andrew M
In saying this, you're assuming the reality of the object outside your judgement of it. This is what makes your approach more like Locke's. And that is understandable, as Locke's is very much a kind of common-sense realism.
For me the way to put this is that groups of humans use marks and noise as part of surviving and prospering in the world. The marks and noises they use to do this change in the long run. Rorty is clear that he is not saying that language is just marks and noises understood at tools. Instead this perspective is presented as one metaphor among others, good for this or that. In this case, the metaphor is language is a tool. An opposed metaphor is language is a lens. If we think of our talk or thinking as a lens through which we see the world, then we can worry about distortion in the lens. You mentioned correctness in your post, which leans on the lens or eye metaphor. From a pragmatic language-as-tool metaphorical grounding, we worry more about success or failure relative to this or that purpose (including the purpose of obtaining consensus about our other purposes.)
Quoting David Mo
I wasn't suggesting that music be understood as myth. My point was that great souls like Bach were Christians in some sense. Individuals can take myths literally or symbolically (to oversimplify).
My broader point is that superstition need not involve the supernatural. I expect that we'll agree on this point. But here's an example:
[quote=Wiki]
The pseudo-scientific ideas of Lysenkoism assumed the heritability of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism).[1] Lysenko's theory rejected Mendelian inheritance and the concept of the "gene"; it departed from Darwinian evolutionary theory by rejecting natural selection.[2] Proponents falsely claimed to have discovered, among many other things, that rye could transform into wheat and wheat into barley, that weeds could spontaneously transmute into food grains, and that "natural cooperation" was observed in nature as opposed to "natural selection".[2] Lysenkoism promised extraordinary advances in breeding and in agriculture that never came about.
Joseph Stalin supported the campaign. More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were fired or even sent to prison,[3] and numerous scientists were executed as part of a campaign instigated by Lysenko to suppress his scientific opponents.[4][5][6][7] The president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed until the death of Stalin in 1953.[2] Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines was also negatively affected or banned.[8]
[/quote]
Another example is nazi racist biologism.
'Magical thinking' is not eradicated with the 'supernatural,' though I do understand that desire for cognitive purity. At the same time the quest for cognitive purity (rigor, accuracy, etc.) looks like a repetition of a myth structure. I'm skeptical about the idea of some complete break from our mythological roots. Such a complete break is itself the repetition of creation from nothing.
[quote=Wiki]
In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/pr??mi??i??s/; Greek: ?????????, pronounced [prom??t?éu?s], possibly meaning "forethought")[1] is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of humanity from clay, and who defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to humanity as civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and as a champion of humankind[2] and also seen as the author of the human arts and sciences generally.
[/quote]
He sounds like an enlightenment hero, doesn't he?
[quote=Wiki]
For the Romantic era, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomised by Zeus – church, monarch, and patriarch. The Romantics drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, the Satan of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the divinely inspired poet or artist. Prometheus is the lyrical "I" who speaks in Goethe's Sturm und Drang poem "Prometheus" (written c. 1772–74, published 1789), addressing God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. In Prometheus Unbound (1820), a four-act lyrical drama, Percy Bysshe Shelley rewrites the lost play of Aeschylus so that Prometheus does not submit to Zeus (under the Latin name Jupiter), but instead supplants him in a triumph of the human heart and intellect over tyrannical religion.
[/quote]
Is this not enlightenment humanism personified? And is this not our currently dominant hero myth? In a less spiritualized version, we have capitalism's entrepreneur. The enemy is religion, tradition, the mediocre masses, resistance to innovation, etc.
The punishment of this titan is the punishment of the bold individual who wanders from the safety of conformity and the punishment of the community that leaves behind the comforts of its gods and traditions. Today there is plenty of fear about where our technology is taking us. There is also the sense of spiritual loss of some kind.
A truly stale metaphor is no longer recognized as a metaphor. The idea of literality (itself a dead metaphor!) is contrasted with metaphoricity. We tend to think of metaphors as mere embellishments, not recognizing that dead metaphors that were once optional now function as a kind of pre-interpretation of the situation that steers us sometimes into dead ends. Deconstruction is to some degree about heating up these old metaphors so that they are fluid and alive again. We can experience the past in its contingency, as choices in foundational metaphors that could have been made otherwise.
This myth isn't so easy to interpret. One of the safer interpretations is that Mary represents the unselfish love of a mother, with the virginity intended to exclude the greed in lust.
There are riskier interpretations that I won't go into here. I will gesture toward works like Love's Body, a book that fuses Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian theology. I understand this book as belonging to the quest for self-knowledge, though of course it's not empirical science. I don't think it has a genre, but I do think it's a first rate book of something like philosophy but more willing than most philosophies to leap into the depths.
[quote=link]
Paul Robinson writes that Love's Body "makes quite clear that psychoanalysis was only a stage in Brown's development toward a rather curious (and radical) brand of religious mysticism. The very concrete body of Freudian psychology has been absorbed into the Mystical Body of traditional Christian theology. To be sure, Freud remains an important authority, and there is a racy (and confusing) display of sexual rhetoric. But the erotic language is largely metaphorical; as Brown himself says, 'Everything is symbolic...including the sexual act.'
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love%27s_Body
https://books.google.com/books?id=Va0wDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
I guess I like the 'mysticism' that isn't afraid of but even learns from the masters of suspicion.
[quote=Brown]
The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.
...
We can begin, I think, to make sense of these paradoxes if we think of the Oedipal project as the causa sui (father-of-oneself) project, and therefore in essence a revolt against death generally, and specifically against the biological principle separating mother and child.
[/quote]
...
What are you talking about, what is your point, and how does that have anything to do with the title of this thread?
Your manners could use some work, but nevertheless I'll answer you. I like Dewey's general approach (other names might work as well.)
[quote=link]
Dewey’s pragmatism—or, “cultural naturalism”, which he favored over “pragmatism” and “instrumentalism”—may be understood as a critique and reconstruction of philosophy within the larger ambit of a Darwinian worldview (Lamont 1961; MW4: 3). Following James’ lead, Dewey argued that philosophy had become an overly technical and intellectualistic discipline, divorced from assessing the social conditions and values dominating everyday life (FAE, LW5: 157–58). He sought to reconnect philosophy with the mission of education-for-living (philosophy as “the general theory of education”), a form of social criticism at the most general level, or “criticism of criticisms” (EN, LW1: 298; see also DE, MW9: 338).
Set within the larger picture of Darwinian evolutionary theory, philosophy should be seen as an activity undertaken by interdependent organisms-in-environments. This standpoint, of active adaptation, led Dewey to criticize the tendency of traditional philosophies to abstract and reify concepts derived from living contexts. As did other classical pragmatists, Dewey focused criticism upon traditional dualisms of metaphysics and epistemology (e.g., mind/body, nature/culture, self/society, and reason/emotion) and then reconstructed their elements as parts of larger continuities. For example, human thinking is not a phenomenon which is radically outside of (or external to) the world it seeks to know; knowing is not a purely rational attempt to escape illusion in order to discover what is ultimately “real” or “true”. Rather, human knowing is among the ways organisms with evolved capacities for thought and language cope with problems. Minds, then, are not passively observing the world; rather, they are actively adapting, experimenting, and innovating; ideas and theories are not rational fulcrums to get us beyond culture, but rather function experimentally within culture and are evaluated on situated, pragmatic bases. Knowing is not the mortal’s exercise of a “divine spark”, either; for while knowing (or inquiry, to use Dewey’s term) includes calculative or rational elements, it is ultimately informed by the body and emotions of the animal using it to cope.
[/quote]
Note that your mind/body dualism is included here.
Another questionable philosophical habit is talk about the isolated consciousness, the forlorn ghost in the machine.
[quote=link]
Dewey rejected both traditional accounts of mind-as-substance (or container) and more contemporary schemes reducing mind to brain states (EN, LW1: 224–225). Rather, mind is activity, a range of dynamic processes of interaction between organism and world. Consider the range connoted by mind: as memory (I am reminded of X); attention (I keep her in mind, I mind my manners); purpose (I have an aim in mind); care or solicitude (I mind the child); paying heed (I mind the traffic stop). “Mind”, then, ranges over many activities: intellectual, affectional, volitional, or purposeful. It is
primarily a verb…[that] denotes every mode and variety of interest in, and concern for, things: practical, intellectual, and emotional. It never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. (AE, LW10: 267–68)
As Wittgenstein (entry on Wittgenstein, section on rule-following and private language) pointed out 30 years later, no private language (see entry on private language) is possible given this account of meaning. While meanings might be privately entertained, they are not privately invented; meanings are social and emerge from symbol systems arising through collective communication and action (EN, LW1: 147).
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey/
In case it's still not clear how this bears on the thread, subject-object talk is not necessarily fundamental. We don't have to take it that way. Or, if we want to, it's better perhaps to think of social organisms in an environment. Inquiry for such organisms is not usually a pure knowing but rather adjustment and transformation that is as much deed as word. And even the word is used not just for representation but primarily as part of the creation and transformation of physical and social environments.
A big fan of Dewey, Richard Rorty, is also worth mentioned.
[quote=link]
On Rorty's account, modern epistemology is not only an attempt to legitimate our claim to knowledge of what is real, but also an attempt to legitimate philosophical reflection itself—a pressing task, on many accounts, once the advent of the so-called new science of the sixteenth and seventeenth century gradually gave content to a notion of knowledge obtained by the methodological interrogation of nature herself.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/
In other words, philosophy has been trying to save its own reputation against a background of undeniable technical progress. How is it that all the technology works without the permission or endorsement of the epistemologists? Who cares these days what philosophers think? In my view philosophy is still valuable, but perhaps only philosophers still believe that philosophy is some kind of master discourse that polices all the rest.
May be it is a matter of language, but I wouldn't say that the Lysenko case was about myths or superstition. It was ideology mixed with pseudoscience and totalitarianism.
Quoting jjAmEs
I don't see the connection. Seeking something in the knowledge that it is not fully attainable is the principle of all intent. The problem lies in what you are looking for: reason or myth.
This is the Wiki version. For the Greeks, Prometheus meant punishment for the excessive pride of those who think they are smarter than the gods. Well-deserved.
This is how a myth can represent one thing and its opposite. It depends on what you want. This is not objective knowledge.
I like this definition.
[quote=link]
Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology
To me religion fits in with that nicely, including the 'religion' of the enlightenment (which is my 'religion' or ideology.) Where we perhaps differ is that I understand my position to be an invested or founded position. I adopted the ideology of those who want to transcend ideology as much as possible. Why truth? Why objectivity? Why rationality? Why skepticism? What image is pursued here? Prometheus, etc.
Many critics of religion (like Dawkins) understand religion as pseudo-science (which is a correct diagnosis in many cases, though the definition of ideology above is perhaps better.)
[quote=link]
Chapter one, "A deeply religious non-believer", seeks to clarify the difference between what Dawkins terms "Einsteinian religion" and "supernatural religion". He notes that the former includes quasi-mystical and pantheistic references to God in the work of physicists like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and describes such pantheism as "sexed up atheism". Dawkins instead takes issue with the theism present in religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.[13] The proposed existence of this interventionist God, which Dawkins calls the "God Hypothesis", becomes an important theme in the book.[14] He maintains that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific fact about the universe, which is discoverable in principle if not in practice.[15]
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Delusion
"Ruby lips". It is a classical (hackneyed) metaphor. Metaphors are metaphors. New or old. It is a matter of form.
Of course myths are far more flexible than E =mc^2. As for objective knowledge, what is the measure of that? In my view we respect science primarily because of its technical miracles. Not everyone understands or endorses mainstream science, so we can't rely on a unanimous vote. Can we objectively say that J S Bach is a good composer? Many would be tempted to say no. But I'm not so sure about a radical boundary between physics and aesthetics. In both cases we depend on community consensus, even if (of course) we imagined something stronger.
Do rivers have mouths? Do needles have eyes? Do you see what I mean? (Is meaning literally visible?)
Metaphor itself is a dead metaphor.
[quote=link]
The English metaphor derived from the 16th-century Old French word métaphore, which comes from the Latin metaphora, "carrying over", in turn from the Greek ???????? (metaphorá), "transfer",[8] from ???????? (metapher?), "to carry over", "to transfer"[9] and that from ???? (meta), "after, with, across"[10] + ???? (pher?), "to bear", "to carry".[11]
[/quote]
A metaphor is a carry-over or carry-across of structure. It makes sense to me that we would point out one pattern or structure in terms of familiar patterns or structures.
Then idea is a central metaphor, a visual metaphor.
[quote=link]
The word "Idea" originates from the Greek, and it is the feminine form of, the word ????? (Greek eidos: something seen; form, shape; related to idein "to see," eidenai "to know" [2]). "Idea" meant at first a form, shape, or appearance and implied the "visual aspect" of things in classical Greek.[3]
[/quote]
This concern with metaphor isn't just one internet rando's pet.
[quote=link]
While the basic features of phenomenological consciousness – intentionality, self-awareness, embodiment, and so forth—have been the focus of analysis, Continental philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida go further in adding a linguistically creative dimension. They argue that metaphor and symbol act as the primary interpreters of reality, generating richer layers of perception, expression, and meaning in speculative thought. The interplay of metaphor and phenomenology introduces serious challenges and ambiguities within long-standing assumptions in the history of Western philosophy, largely with respect to the strict divide between the literal and figurative modes of reality based in the correspondence theory of truth.
...
Derrida, from the outset, will call into question the assumption that the formation of concepts (logos) somehow escapes the primordiality of language and the fundamentally metaphorical-mythical nature of philosophical discourse. In a move which goes much further than Ricoeur, Derrida argues for what Guiseseppe Stellardi so aptly calls the “reverse metaphorization of concepts.” The reversal is such that there can be no final separation between the linguistic-metaphorical and the philosophical realms. These domains are co-constitutive of one another, in the sense that either one cannot be fully theorized or made to fully or transparently explain the meaning of the other. The result is that language acquires a certain obscurity, ascendancy, and autonomy. It will permanently elude our attempts to fix its meaning-making activity in foundational terms which necessitate a transcendent or externalized (to language) unified being.
...
For Arduini, figurative activity does not depict the given world, but allows for the ability to construct world images employed in reality. To be figuratively competent is to use the imagination as a tool which puts patterns together in inventive mental processes. Arduini then seems to recall Nieztsche; anthropologically speaking, humans are always engaging in some form of figuration or form of language, which allows for “cognitive competence” in that it chooses among particular forms which serve to define the surrounding contexts or environments. Again, metaphor is foundational to the apprehension of reality; it is part of the pre-reflective or primordial apparatus of experience, perception, and first- through second-order thought, comprising an entire theoretical approach as well as disciplines such as evolutionary anthropology (see Tooby and Cosmides).
...
The Continental theories of metaphor that have extrapolated and developed variations on the theme expressed in Nietzsche’s apocryphal pronouncement that truth is “a mobile army of metaphors.” The notion that metaphorical language is somehow ontologically and epistemologically prior to ordinary propositional language has since been voiced by Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Derrida. For these thinkers metaphor serves as a foundational heuristic structure, one which is primarily designed to subvert ordinary reference and in some way dismantle the truth-bearing claims of first-order propositional language. Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology does away with the assumption that true or meaningful intentional statements reflect epistemic judgments about the world; that is, they do not derive referential efficacy through the assumed correspondence between an internal idea and an external object. While there may be a kind of agreement between our notions of things and the world in which we find those things, it is still a derivative agreement emerging from a deeper ontologically determined set of relations between things-in-the-world, given or presented to us as inherently linked together in particular historical, linguistic, or cultural contexts.
The role of metaphor in perception and cognition also dominates the work of contemporary cognitive scientists, linguists, and those working in the related fields of evolutionary anthropology and computational theory. While the latter may not be directly associated with Continental phenomenology, aspects of their work support an “anti-metaphysical” position and draw upon common phenomenological themes which stress the embodied, linguistic, contextual, and symbolic nature of knowledge.
[/quote]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/met-phen/#SH1b
Flexible? The interpretation of a myth is practically subjective. Everyone finds in it what he has put in it. Scientific objectivity is something else. It rests on a series of reasonable assumptions: intersubjectivity and prediction specially. That's why it achieves a consensus that the interpretation of myths cannot achieve. Jung and Freud will never agree. And they come from the same stem.
I like science. But why do we call those assumptions 'reasonable'? Reasonable for you and me, but not for others. Without its technical results to back it up, it would be one more set of norms for conversation. To be clear, I'm for science and against superstition. So the issue is what grounds science, what lifts it above other ideologies. For me it's an instrument that works, prediction and control. And it works even for people who don't believe in it, which sets it apart from myth. I'm not worried about dark matter. Nor am I the least bit attracted to some God of the gaps.
I think we trust tools that get us what we want. Science through technology is the most reliable wonder-worker that most of us have seen. (Others claim to have been given golden tablets by angels and son on, which is more impressive, but I don't believe them.) For me pseudo-science is what imitates the style of science without actually working. Tech is the test.
I'm sure you can find some writers out there who deserve that kind of lampooning. At the same time, the 'pomo' caricature also serves as wishful thinking for those who just find certain philosophers too difficult (or more likely want to be spared the effort of even trying to read them.) Personally I'd be embarrassed to find the quotes below too difficult.
[quote=Derrida]
In order for my "written communication" to retain it function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable-iterable-in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability...structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved (whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to cite the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable--iterable -- beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.
...
What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance" [disparition: also, demise, trans.], it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful [mon vouloir-dire, mon intention-de-signification], of my wish to communicate, from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter [du souscripteur: the signatory, trans. ] is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift [derive] bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
[/quote]
[quote=Plato]
Soc. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
...
Soc. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
...
Soc. Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power-a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?
Phaedr. Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?
Soc. I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.
[/quote]
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html
Note that in an argument against writing, the metaphor of writing is employed. 'Graven in the soul' implies that the soul is itself a tablet, a text. That's the beginning of a deconstruction. The higher (speech) ends up depending on the lower (writing), ends up being a mere form of the lower. And speech is subject to the same principle of iterability as writing, though a present speaker can always pile on more words in explication of those already spoken, which are themselves subject to the same law of iterablity and (generalized) writing. Wittgenstein's arguments against private language aim at making a related point. This is not to deny but to complicate the presence of meaning in the individual mind as kind of governing metaphor that can lead us into confusion or simply block other aspects of meaning (its sociality, for instance.)
[quote=Foucault]
The author allows a limitation of the cancerous and dangerous proliferation of significations within a world where one is thrifty not only with one’s sources and riches, but also with one’s discourses and their significations. The author is the principle of thrift in the proliferation of meaning. As a result we must entirely reverse the traditional idea of the author..the author is not an indefinite source of significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition and recomposition of fiction.
[/quote]
Here is a different spin on the same idea. The author is authority that helps us hide from the ravages of time in the form of the drift and ambiguity of meaning. I prefer Derrida's more neutrally toned presentation, but Foucault is obviously not some unreadable phrase generator.
Here's something from the New Age generator:
[quote=link]
Consciousness consists of transmissions of quantum energy. “Quantum” means a flowering of the high-frequency. We dream, we believe, we are reborn. We exist as supercharged waveforms.
Nothing is impossible. The goal of vibrations is to plant the seeds of life-force rather than suffering. Inseparability is the knowledge of fulfillment, and of us. Today, science tells us that the essence of nature is being.
Have you found your path? If you have never experienced this quantum shift through non-local interactions, it can be difficult to self-actualize. It can be difficult to know where to begin. Humankind has nothing to lose. Throughout history, humans have been interacting with the solar system via vibrations. We are at a crossroads of potential and dogma. Dogma is the antithesis of being.
How should you navigate this magical totality? Indigo Child, look within and enlighten yourself.
Although you may not realize it, you are Vedic.
[/quote]
https://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
It's as crude as the one you linked to, a nice substitute for actually trying to understand a particular 'New Age' text.
Here's another one that generates one-liners.
[quote=link]
Nature is a reflection of an abundance of timelessness.
[/quote]
http://wisdomofchopra.com/
Quoting jjAmEs
I would interpret this as a statement of Plato's attitude towards written texts generally. He says:
This is why a great deal of what Plato taught was traditionally understood not to have been written down at all. And you can see why, in such important matters - because they're so prone to misinterpretation, 'they cannot protect or defend themselves'. His Hindu contemporaries philosophical teachings were likewise called 'upanisads' - meaning 'sitting close to', i.e. indicating a spoken or silent teaching between guru and chela.
You're right, that's nonsense. I tried to read up on Penrose's theory to this effect but couldn't make head or tail of it. The new age quantum philosophy I relate to is simply Heisenberg's take on physics and philosophy and its successors. Which actually has quite a lot of bearing on the OP.
An alternative possibility to consider is that the mind/body problem (and subject/object dualism generally) is the result of a category mistake.
Yes, but Kant also assumes this in positing the thing-in-itself. What I'm saying is that the object itself is what my judgement is about, not a Kantian appearance.
Quoting Wayfarer
Except that Locke's primary/secondary qualities distinction is, itself, a Cartesian carryover. It's all about figuring out whether qualities belong to the subject or the object which presupposes the dualism in question.
OK. By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something (i.e., the thing she is intentionally talking about or acting on).
When Alice points at a tree, she is not pointing at an object-of-sense or a representation, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name "tree". Now Alice both senses the tree and represents it conceptually, but note that I'm describing Alice's cognitive activity there, not the tree.
Alice has a specific cognitive system such that the tree has a specific form for Alice (which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree). Even she herself has a specific form for Alice. Thus she can also observe herself pointing at the tree. She is in the scene that she is representing conceptually.
This is a non-dualist model - there is no internal/external distinction here. There is just an object that exhibits a specific form in relation to another object that it interacts with (or, in the case of self-reference, observes to be itself).
This is the model of ordinary public language (see Wittgenstein's private language argument), of Aristotle's naturalism (particular/form) and of physics (system/state), among others.
Quoting Mww
So the dualist internal/external distinction is just what I'm disputing here. What Alice is referring to when she points at the tree, and the tree itself, are the same thing. The tree has no intrinsic representation, it instead has a form for Alice (which may or may not generalize to other human beings and sentient creatures).
How do you arrive to that conclusion?
Referring to internal/external distinction as "dualism" makes potential point of confusion with substance/property dualism. It’s unclear if you yourself are not confusing the two.
Of course, because you forgot to include internal/subjective perspective. For example when Alice is sleep waking and dreaming she is pointing at a tree, while in fact she is pointing at a truck that is about to run her over.
But that is just what is at issue. For the purpose of making this point, there is no 'object itself'!
In everything you say, you are starting from the assumption that there is a real object. But what you assume to be 'the object itself' is precisely what is at issue. You're instinctively presuming a realist position, against which you're then criticizing what you understand as Kant's distinction between appearance and reality. In your view, 'everyone knows' that the world is real, populated by really-existing objects independent of our perception of them. But this is what is being called into question.
By thinking about how the term mind and other related terms (like thinking) function in everyday communication. The answer is that it's a way of talking about intelligent activity. From earlier in the thread:
See also Gilbert Ryle's critique of Cartesian dualism.
Quoting Zelebg
Substance and property dualism are specific expressions of dualism. You can find different expressions of dualism in Plato, Locke, Kant and others. Internal/external or subject/object is a more general characterization of dualism:
Quoting Subject (philosophy)
Yes, there are lots of ways things can go wrong. And so we make ordinary language distinctions between being awake and dreaming.
We can acknowledge dreams (and hallucinations and illusions) without supposing that we can't successfully refer to things even when we are awake and of sound mind.
Well I guess that's that then! It's all an illusion... ;-)
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, you're calling it into question. But why? And what's your argument? I describe my model above - what problem does it have?
We either experience qualia or we don’t. What do you say?
Why would anyone raise such idea as a serious issue? Issue for what exactly?
Not a mere illusion. Things have a degree of reality.
Quoting Andrew M
But it's based on a implicit realism which is itself a mental construction - vorstellung, I believe is the German term for it. And besides - it's a model, and where there's a model, there's a mind!
Quoting Zelebg
For philosophy, of course. I found a pithy aphorism in a book about Kant that was referred to up-thread:
(Kant, Refl 3716, ca. 1764 – 68)
Quoted in Pollok, Konstantin (2106-02-07T17:28:15). Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason, Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
There are external properties, like location, direction, and shape, that can be investigated objectively. That is empirical science. No problem here.
Then there are internal properties, like sensation, emotion, and cognition, that can, or can not, be investigated objectively, and this question is the problem.
Are you trying to say there is another problem? Do you offer some answer to the problem question I pointed at? Are you making some other point, what is it?
The very epitome of a dualistic nature: focus towards immediately presupposes focus from. The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it?
———————-
Quoting Andrew M
If you had said.....when Alice points to a tree, she is pointing at the thing itself which, by convention, has the name “tree”.....I would have only slightly less inclined to find fault, for even that modified assertion still asks....where did the name “tree” come from, or, what form does convention take, such that “tree” falls out of it as a direct, and apparently necessary, correspondence between pointer and....er...the pointee?
Nevertheless, the minor objection is still the question....what could Alice possibly be pointing at, if not an object that impresses her senses? Perhaps the hyphenation has some meaning, but I don’t see any difference between object-of-sense and object of sense. There is no contention in saying she is pointing to the object itself, which must be something she senses. Otherwise.....why bother with the act of pointing, or indeed the act of speaking, at all? There is just as little contention in saying she is NOT pointing at a representation, because all representations, are internal to the human cognitive system, no matter which system one uses to explain himself.
At any rate, usually Alice pointing to tree is chalked up to experience, insofar as Alice already knows the thing she’s pointing at is conventionally named as “tree”. The major objection then becomes, just because we are told why she points the way she does, because of something she knows, does not tell us anything about how she arrived at the correspondence required between the pointing, or talking, she does physically, and the understanding she does mentally, such that the pointing and the understanding don’t contradict each other. What is being asked here is, and what convention of naming things reduces to, is, what happens to Alice between being told “this is a tree”, and her comprehension of what she’s being told?
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Ok, so this is the attempt to answer the question of conventional naming.
.......Alice has a specific cognitive system, certainly;
.......such that the tree has a specific form for Alice, maybe;
......which is how she is able to identify and represent the tree, incomplete.
Form as in what objects look like, or form as in general characteristic of a class or group of objects. If a tree has a specific form for Alice, how does Alice tell one kind of tree from another? If Alice can tell one tree from another, it cannot be merely from the form “tree” that facilitates such separation, but would seem to require a form for each and every single aspect of difference. The interconnectedness of the root system of aspens absolutely cannot be derived from the mere form “tree”.
The maybe arises in particular in the fact that things Alice can intentionally point to or talk about may not have a form as does the tree. Alice can certainly point to examples of injustice, and talk about beautiful things, but she is only talking about things under certain conditions. Alice can talk about time, but she’s gonna have a hellava lot of trouble pointing to it.
And the incompleteness arises from the very simple question.....where does the form reside? How is it possible to determine with apodeitic certainty, that forms reside in the objects, or that form resides in the cognitive system from which identity and representation of objects is given?
I wouldn’t be so bold as to make a positive claim in that regard.
————————-
Quoting Andrew M
I grant Alice has a form for herself, which has been called, among other things, the transcendental object, or transcendental ego, the “I” of subjective activity. But the “I” is never used in pure thought, and only becomes manifest in communication as an explanatory placeholder.
I don’t dispute your rationality, one can think whatever he wants, but I nevertheless categorically reject the notion that Alice observes herself, or that she is in the scene. Way too much Cartesian theater for me.
And Alice isn’t in the scene as much as she IS the scene.
————————
Quoting Andrew M
This may be the case, for a third party observer. I can see that Alice and the tree she points to are both objects. There is no internal/external distinction because they both are external to me. But they are still objects from the perspective of me as a subject in the form of a third party observer. It is still me (subject) seeing or thinking them (objects). This does nothing whatsoever to prove the non-duality of Alice with respect to her tree.
—————
On Gilbert Ryles:
He is correct in saying Descartes attributed the mind/body problem to the category of substance, when he should have attributed it to the category of relation, such being promulgated long before Ryles. But that does nothing to extinguish the problem, but simply relocates it to a theoretically more sustainable realm. Nowadays, we have the knowledge that justifies “mind” as being just a seeming.....what it seems like to the normal average joe.....rather than what the brain is actually doing, the knowledge to which folks back in the day didn’t in the least have access.
Be that as it may, those same average joes don’t give a crap what their brain is doing, when it comes to wondering why things are the way they seem. As long as that happens, there is going to be a mind/body, subject/object dualism. WHAT it is may be argued, you or anybody from the analytic domain and me or anybody from the continental, from now til doomsday, but THAT it is, is indisputable.
On Wittgenstein:
Who????
As most are apt to say. But when saying that, all that happens without conscious attention, is neglected. You have no awareness of appearances, intuitions, conceptions, so you base judgements on the object as it is perceived. Nature has done you a favor. Appearances and all those esoteric entities only have meaning in a theoretical sense.
Kant also assumes the reality of objects but does not posit things-in-themselves on that assumption. He admits that things-in-themselves are just as real as the objects of judgement, and that there is no real difference between them. The difference lays in us, not the things.
If you can find no reason whatsoever to claim with certainty that the thing on which we base our judgements and the thing as it is without being judged by us, are not identical, you are justified, by the principle of deduction, in claiming the latter as not having any meaning or purpose. But that is only half the story, in as much you must also have every reason whatsoever to claim the thing of our judgement is without failure to be identical to the thing as it is in itself without our judgements, by the principle of induction.
As long as you see that it is absolutely impossible to know everything there is to know about anything a posteriori, which the principle of induction demands, then you must see it is possible for there to be a reason why the two instances of an object are not identical. And possibility is its own justification; we don’t need to know what the difference is, only that a difference is possible. This is why the thing-in-itself is a knowledge claim, not a reality claim. Reality does not depend on us, but our knowledge of reality sure as hell does.
If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.
Shadows on the cave wall...
Quoting Wayfarer
Seems like we agree. So what's the problem?
I mean subjective experience, of pain for example, yes radically private. You deny? Ok, let us hear your reasoning then.
There's no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here (whereas the tree doesn't have that capability). The issue is over whether this is characterized in a naturally observable way or in a radically private way (as exemplified by the Cartesian mind).
Quoting Mww
It's of course true that she wouldn't be pointing at the tree if she hadn't sensed it. What I'm distinguishing here is the object itself (which she has a representation of) and the representation itself (as a kind of reified object).
An analogy would be with a photograph of Alice's son Bob. When Alice shows the photo to a friend and says that this is her son Bob, she doesn't mean that the photograph she is pointing at is her son, she means that the person that the photo represents is her son. That's the case even though the friend only sees the photo.
That's what I'm indicating with (hyphenated) object-of-sense there. It seems that Kant understands the object of sense to be a representation (like a photo or, more dynamically, like a shadow in Plato's cave or a movie), not the thing-in-itself.
Whereas on my model, Alice is referring to the thing itself (which is independent of how Alice represents it, or even that Alice ever senses it at all).
Quoting Mww
So on my model, "correspondence" is not the right term here, which implies a matching up between what she is doing physically and what she is doing mentally (i.e., dualism). But she is not performing two activities, she is performing one activity which is simply pointing at the tree. It's an identification (i.e., that this thing that Alice is pointing at is what she means by tree), so isn't subject to dualism's intractable interaction problems.
Now things can go wrong in various ways - misjudgments, illusions, dreams, hallucinations. But these are naturally characterized as different activities to what Alice is doing above when she successfully identifies the tree.
This raises the issue of how she can be certain she has successfully pointed at the tree (perhaps it is an illusion). The short answer is that she can't be certain. Nonetheless, her action can be successful as in the given example.
Think of this as a formal model for how language terms operate. It proceeds from knowledge of the thing, not knowledge of the appearance.
Quoting Mww
We can suppose a form for every difference, but some characteristics will be deemed important or general, others less so. Aristotle, for example, proposed essential and accidental characteristics. Wittgenstein proposed family resemblances. The bottom line here is that we go with what works. After a while we develop more formal processes around that (as exemplified by the scientific method).
Quoting Mww
And people do have trouble. But as you imply, the principle is the same on my model - they just involve more complex abstraction from what we point at than is the case for a tree.
Quoting Mww
The form is in the object (in relation to Alice). It's not determined to be there with certainty, it is instead presupposed by the model.
One instead chooses whether to use this model or some other model (assuming one thinks about these sorts of things at all, which is Wayfarer's usual complaint).
Quoting Mww
So what is Alice observing when she looks at her hands? Merely her body? On my model, the "I" for Alice is a human being, not a mind or a body.
Quoting Mww
I agree there is no certainty when one claims that this thing that they are pointing at is what they think it is. There are various ways of going wrong. The model says that on the condition that Alice has identified a tree, she has acquired knowledge. So her claim is always provisional.
Language depends on public criteria. See Wittgenstein's private language argument and specifically regarding pain, see his beetle-in-a-box thought experiment.
So I had to read all that just to see your point is that you are refusing to talk because you have nothing relevant to say about it.
I agree. Wittgenstein's point is radical and yet often ignored (just as similar Derridean insights are ignored.)
For me it's not as some in is thread might see it. It's not that private experience like pain is being denied. We know what people mean by such talk (we know how to get along in less philosophical conversation.) Nor is something like the presence of meaning being denied. But this general notion of immediate contact with sensation or meaning is revealed as a largely unquestioned assumption, to those willing to suffer the damage such an insight does to their current attachments.
I wrote:
Quoting jjAmEs
You wrote:
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed, and it's precisely this demotion of writing in the name of speech that is strangely presented with a metaphor that involves writing. Socrates contrasts to writing that cannot defend itself 'an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner.'
That this metaphor is not accidental is suggested by the relationship of ideality and iterability (explored in Voice and Phenomenon). The relative permanence of writing is presumably being borrowed.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm open to the value of spoken and silent teaching. I also like Hadot. But is there not always the risk of performative contradiction? What does it mean to make written gestures away from writing? Is writing merely a recruitment tool, a half-truth that lures the student in for a personal initiation? The implication seems to be that what is learned is non-verbal --perhaps like learning to ride a bike. I find that kind of knowledge not only plausible but ubiquitous.
But how is one to distinguish one variety of mute know-how from another? As the outward sign is demoted or denied, so is rationality. This is fine, but why should access to the super-rational present itself rationally ? 'He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.' And yet he who 'knows' feels compelled to say so. To me it's this need that makes me skeptical of the needy person's Enlightenment or mystic access. They are compelled to write just like me, even if they also remember peak experiences in which they temporarily felt beyond the need to explain or justify or even describe. How can such experiences even be talked about, though, without retrospective or anticipatory metaphors?
It seems you misunderstood my response. If pain were radically private (in the Cartesian sense), then we would not have language to talk about it. Yet we do. So the term pain must have public criteria. This is surprising to many people. The links were to Wittgenstein's arguments against the possibility of a private language, in case you or other readers weren't familiar with it.
Quoting jjAmEs
Yes, exactly. :up:
We don't feel other people's pain in a literal sense. We observe some linguistic and bodily behaviours. These behaviors provoke an immediate response in our feelings and behaviour. This response is not deliberate and conscious. Therefore, we can say that we feel the pain of others. But this is not literally true. The only pain we feel is our own.
For me, the philosophical point is that pain, happiness, someone's belief that it is raining, etc., can all be referenced (and, in principle, explained) on a natural model - there's no need to invoke a Cartesian-style mind/body distinction. Further, such a claimed distinction rests on a category mistake - the idea that we are ghosts in machines (per Ryle's metaphor). Both idealist and materialist theories of mind can fall prey to this category mistake (in distinctive ways):
Quoting Notre Dame review of Bennett and Hacker's Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
We have this one word 'pain' for something that we are all supposed to experience privately. How do I know that what I call my pain is what you call your pain?
Quoting David Mo
Exactly. So even though we have a certain intuition that the word 'pain' is attached to private experiences which cannot be compared, the concept only works because of various social conventions. In my view, Wittgenstein's point about the beetle in the box is a radical insight. It applies not only to pain or sensation but also to the issue of meaning. If the concept of pain depends on social convention, then so does the meaning of 'subject' and 'object.' The basic philosophical prejudice is arguably the notion that words are attached somehow directly to mental entities. And then this prejudice understands social practice to be secondary and derivative, ignoring that the functioning of a concept is radically dependent on social practice.
We have this idea of private experience that by definition cannot provide evidence. I can never know whether we 'mean' the same thing according to the private conception of meaning. All we can do is trade more signs, witness one another's behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x86hLtOkou8
[quote=Wittgenstein]
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?
Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
[/quote]
I think Derrida is making a related point in Signature, Event, Context. The point is not to simply deny the privacy of pain or meaning but to root out unquestioned assumptions or dominant metaphors.
One such metaphor is the mind as an eye that gazes on atemporal meaning.
For instance, 2 is an ideal object because it's always the same when I bring it back to mind. I can repeat the cognition or experience of this ideal object again and again. Its ideal reality is 'in' this possibility of reliable repetition. 2 doesn't exist as a physical object but either as innate form of human cognition (Kantianism of some kind) or as an object in some nonphysical realm for which humans have a 'sense' organ (mathematical Platonism).
[quote=Derrida]
The unique and permanent motif of all the mistakes and distortions which Husserl exposes in "degenerated" metaphysics, across a multiplicity of domains, themes, and arguments, is always a blindness to the authentic mode of ideality, to that which is, to what may be indefinitely repeated in the identity of its presence, because of the very fact that it does not exist, is not real or is irreal—not in the sense of being a fiction, but in another sense which may have several names, whose possibility will permit us to speak of nonreality and essential necessity, the noema, the intelligible object, and in general the nonworldly. This nonworldliness is not another worldliness, this ideality is not an existent that has fallen from the sky; its origin will always be the possible repetition of a productive act. In order that the possibility of this repetition may be open, ideally to infinity, one ideal form must assure this unity of the indefinite and the ideal: this is the present, or rather the presence of the living present. The ultimate form of ideality, the ideality of ideality, that in which in the last instance one may anticipate or recall all repetition, is the living present, the self-presence of transcendental life. Presence has always been and will always, forever, be the form in which, we can say apodictically, the infinite diversity of contents is produced. The opposition between form and matter—which inaugurates metaphysics—finds in the concrete ideality of the living present its ultimate and radical justification.
…
Husserl will awaken it, recall it, and bring it back to itself in the form of a telos— that is, an Idea in the Kantian sense. There is no ideality without there being an Idea in the Kantian sense at work, opening up the possibility of something indefinite, the infinity of a stipulated progression or the infinity of permissible repetitions. This ideality is the very form in which the presence of an object in general may be indefinitely repeated as the same. The nonreality of the Bedeutung, the nonreality of the ideal object, the nonreality of the inclusion of sense or noema in consciousness (Husserl will say that the noema does not really—reell—belong to consciousness) will thus give the assurance that presence to consciousness can be indefinitely repeated—ideal presence to an ideal or transcendental consciousness. Ideality is the preservation or mastery of presence in repetition. In its pure form, this presence is the presence of nothing existing in the world; it is a correlation with the acts of repetition, themselves ideal.
[/quote]
from Voice and Phenomenon.
I look forward to your response.
We don't have language to describe ontology of pain or any of the qualia. We can talk about it on a superficial level because we share similar experience.
We sure can not talk about qualia in terms of size, weight, speed, charge… or ony of the physical units of measurement. How come?
What is your conclusion then: there is no hard problem, there is no qualia, or what?
Ok. Keeping context in the fore.....
You: By intentional, I mean directing one's focus towards something;
Me: The thing being acted upon presupposes an actor, doesn’t it?;
You: there is no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here.
.....it seems established that Alice, the actor, is directing her focus intelligently towards something, the object of her focus. To be pointing to a tree, as precedent has it herein, would certainly appear to be naturally observable, by anyone physiologically equipped to observe as does Alice herself. But I’m worried about the meaning of pointing to with respect to focus towards. Pointing to, in its strictest sense, would seem to be undeniably naturally observable, but focusing on seems just as undeniably radically private. Doing anything intelligently implies a source of intelligence, which implies radically private, but does not necessarily imply the naturally observable act of pointing.
So saying, when I point to, I mean to physically indicate. Therefore, I do not point with that which is radically private. My focusing on is not naturally observable, because focusing on, that is to say, the instantiation of a rational methodology, is an act of the intelligence, hence radically private. Thus, to resolve the issue as stated, I submit that all acts of the intelligence are characterized as radically private, all intelligent acts are naturally observable, and in general, the human does both.
———————
Quoting Andrew M
Looks a lot like the ol’ map/territory paradox. Alice shows her friend the map of what she sees as the territory. ‘Course, the photo is a map to Alice as well; it’s just that she knows the territory better than the map depicts. Actually, she knows the territory so well, the map is quite useless to her. So she has both a first-hand, useful representation of her son, and a second-hand perfectly useless representation of the exact same thing in the photo of her son.
I, on the other hand, as Alice’s friend to whom she shows the photo, has a representation of the territory given from the map. The map, however, by telling me merely what the territory looks like, gives me no experience of the territory, so the map is useless to me as well.
——————-
Quoting Andrew M
Ok, understood. But your model presupposes knowledge. Alice points to a thing she already understands as being identifiable as a tree. In such case, it is more parsimonious to attest she is performing a single task, but in doing so, reason is cast aside, which begs the monstrous question.....how can reason be so readily cast aside. Kant asked Hume this very question, because Hume agrees with you, insofar as, in effect, Alice identifies what she means for no other apparent reason than that’s what she always does. It’s called constant conjunction. And it’s empirically justified, but rationally, it sheer hogwash.
Constant conjunction...better known as mere habit....says what is done in the performance of one activity, but never how what is done comes about. Now you can bring in your language dudes, because they will inform you that language tells Alice what to do. Somebody told those dudes what to do, and somebody told those somebodies what to tell the dude to tell Alice....and eventually we end up asking the very same question Kant asked: how does the first guy find out what to tell everybody else? And if that is so patently obvious a problem for all people in general, it absolutely must be the exact same problem for any single member of that general population. Which gets us right back into where your model wants to get us out of...the dual aspect of physically doing, and mentally understanding what to do, so the two don’t contradict each other. Or, if you wish, so Alice is enabled to perform her single act.
—————-
Quoting Andrew M
True, she can’t. Her rationality relies on the law of non-contradiction, even if she’s not aware of it. She will become aware as soon as she makes a mistake in her pointing. Wonder what she’ll do when she has to learn something all on her own, where no kind of experience can help her. When all she has to go on is how it feels.
Quoting Andrew M
No doubt, no argument. Proceeding from knowledge says nothing about knowledge itself, but I’m all happy we’ve agreed knowledge comes first.
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Not my model. My model says on the condition that Alice has knowledge, she has thereby acquired the means to identify an object in the world. Whether or not the object is a tree depends on something else.
I reject them both (and the mind/body dualism they presuppose).
Quoting jjAmEs
Nicely said. This contrast in approach to meaning can also be traced back to Plato for whom the natural world was secondary and derivative (compared to the ideal Forms), and Aristotle for whom the natural world was intelligible.
So I characterize it differently on my model. Keep in mind(!) that I reject radical privacy, but not mind-related terminology.
Alice might point at the tree in a focused way, in a distracted way, or entirely randomly. The first involves intelligence, the latter two not so much. Or perhaps it turns out that she wasn't pointing at all, but instead made an incidental hand movement while talking about something else. So context matters here.
Describing an action as intelligent is a way to characterize that action (as opposed to the action being thoughtless, for example). There isn't a separate private mental act over and above the action.
And, contra behaviorism, neither is her action reducible to a mechanical or external body movement. That framing implicitly assumes the dualism that is at issue.
Ryle again:
Quoting Thinking and Saying - Gilbert Ryle
--
Quoting Mww
OK, so I'd like to try to use those metaphors to illustrate our respective models.
On my model, when Alice looks at the tree, she is not looking at a photograph of the territory (since there is no photograph), she is looking at the territory which has a specific form in relation to her. Her beliefs about the territory are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves).
Whereas on your (Kantian) model, Alice is looking at a photograph (the territory in sense) of the territory-in-itself. Her beliefs about the photograph are her map (e.g., that the tree has green leaves). Whereas the territory-in-itself remains unknowable.
Does that capture your model, on your view?
Quoting Mww
Not quite. It presupposes objects that can be known about.
You asked about how the first person bootstraps their knowledge on my model. The answer is that they try something and, if that doesn't work out, they try something else (assuming they survive long enough to do so). And language builds up around those experiences.
For example, suppose Robinson Crusoe needs to build a shelter and he's looking for a tall, straight stick to support the roof. He encounters a stick partially submerged in water. He assumes he's seeing a bent stick and continues looking elsewhere. This is a kind of naive realism that assumes that things are always just as they appear. From his perspective, he believes (mistakenly) that he has acquired knowledge of the object.
Later he happens to pull the stick out and realizes it is straight. He makes a mental note of the implications of this discovery for future reference.
And so knowledge and language accrete in tandem with practical experience. One step forward and, sometimes, one step back.
Now would Robinson Crusoe have had a considered philosophical explanation for all this? Probably not. Lucky for him that we're here!
A couple of points. First, the above is not a description of Humean constant conjunctions, it is a description of Crusoe's practical experiences in terms of his purposes and achievements.
Second, on my model, the references to "pull the stick out", "realizes" and "mental note" do not imply a physical/mental dualism. They should be understood as holistic descriptions of his actions.
That is, he did not "physically" pull the stick out and, as a separate action, "mentally" realize that it was straight. Instead his realization that it was straight was part-and-parcel of pulling the stick out - a single action (which we can then go on to separate in an abstract sense for analysis). Note that in some other context, he may pull the stick out and not realize it was straight. The key is to resist reducing those two different actions (in their respective contexts) to equivalent "physical" behaviors + some additional and separate "mental" activity.
With "mental note", that should be understood as remembering something (in contrast with writing it down on paper). It has an apparent Cartesian implication, but it's just a way of speaking about the exercise of a particular human ability, in this case committing something to memory.
Quoting Mww
Do you mean that if she has knowledge of the appearance (the photo in my illustration), she can then go on to identify an object such as a tree? Also, what does "whether or not the object is a tree" depend on?
Yeah, so how do you reject the hard problem of consciousness?
I reject the hard problem of consciousness because it's premised on dualism. I reject dualism because it arises from a language confusion (which we briefly discussed here). Philosophers Pigliucci and Hacker make the same argument:
Quoting Massimo Pigliucci - What Hard Problem?
Quoting Peter Hacker - Hard problem of consciousness (other views) - Wikipedia
No, a description is not the thing itself. Is that what you're asking?
If Alice says, "My tooth hurts" (first-person) and Bob says, "Alice's tooth hurts" (third-person), then both are describing exactly the same thing - Alice's toothache. However neither Alice's nor Bob's description of her pain is the pain itself.
It's the inability to explain how and why humans experience pain, etc., that constitutes "the hard problem".
Do you agree with that characterization of the problem?
I think this is because the quale (the beetle in the box) is more or less defined as what we cannot be objective about. I can't know what redness is for others as a kind of direct sensation, but I do trust that we all have the same set of red things. We know how to use 'red.' But this applies not only to redness but to the meaning of 'meaning' and of 'quale' itself.
[quote=Chalmers]
It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.
[/quote]
Does it seem objectively unreasonable? What does that even mean? Is he just saying that it's strange that the right arrangements of otherwise inert stuff become sure that they have feelings? I agree: it is strange. But strange compared to what? And what of the contingency of the world itself?
What is an explanation? How can that which is not observable or comparable by definition by integrated within an objective causal nexus? What can be dealt with is sentences and other signs of consciousness. Does anesthesia work? We think so, and we can give reasons without ever having been put under. From an instrumentalist point of view, we have already made progress on the hard problem. Though this requires working with the trusted signs of private experience. 'How can we explain why a person talks about a pain that is otherwise undetectable?" This kind of talk (a public phenomenon) can be worked into a system for prediction and control.
Thanks. I think we are aiming at saying roughly the same thing.
While I think we mostly agree, I can't quite fit this outright denial of 'private, immaterial experiences' into my perspective. I think the phrase does serve a purpose. I believe in a redness that I can't compare with the rednesses of others. I experience something that I am tempted to call 'meaning' as I read a book.
At the same time this 'private' experience can't ground social practice, and it's social practice that makes it possible for us to talk even with ourselves about an infinitely private experience of redness. In short, the folk metaphysics of dualism seems to be not absurd but only blissfully unaware of how the beetle in the box cannot ground the talk about the beetle. Perhaps denying the beetle is also saying too much?
Is Hacker right? I'm sympathetic to where he's coming from, but perhaps the perspective matters. Metaphysically the hard problem is just a sub-problem of 'why is there is anything at all'? Certain philosophers gesture at the limitations of explanatory discourse. That there is a world in the first place cannot be explained as a matter of principle. Does this make the question 'why is there something?' grand or pointless? The philosopher offers a profound freakout for those who will follow his argument. The scientist is concerned with questions that can be answered (partially) increased conceptual organization, prediction, and control. (Or that's my read of the situation.)
It's rather glib, don't you think? Chalmers' opening paragraph:
I'm wary of your dismissal of the problem as being either 'terminological confusion' or 'a category mistake' (and yes, I have studied Ryle). It seems to me the motivation for such dismissals amounts to a refusal to acknowledge that there is a problem at all (per Dennett).
But I see Chalmers as articulating a very real and profound philosophical problem, which is that no matter how much knowledge we accumulate about the objective domain - and after all, this is what science is in the business of - that the nature of the knowing subject will always elude this analysis.
It's not a problem in the sense that the person in the street is going to be bothered by it (although it might affect him in ways she's not likely to understand). But it's a problem for science when it confronts the question of the nature of consciousness (or even just 'mind'). And understanding why it's a problem and what kind of problem it is, is indeed difficult.
Quoting jjAmEs
Scientific hypotheses have two sides. The left-hand side is the equation, hypothesis, theory, or what have you. The right-hand side is the result or prediction. Water boils at 100 degrees, lead at 374, and so on. So a scientific explanation ties together predictions which have been tested against results - left hand and right hand side. That is what a scientific explanation is, in a very general sense.
But the philosophical issue is that, in the case of understanding consciousness, we are what we seek to know; we are both object and subject. That's why, for instance, Daniel Dennett has to claim that humans are merely and purely objects ('moist robots' he says, semi-humorously); because if the human subject is real, then his project (which is based on positivism and behaviourism) is stymied. And why? Because the mind is real but not objective.
[quote=Thomas Nagel] Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”[/quote]
Is Consciousness an Illusion?
On the other hand:
[quote=Ernst Cassirer]The man who believes himself endowed with an autonomous will thus places himself in another order of things and relates himself to determining grounds of an entirely different sort from when he perceives himself as a phenomenon in the sense-world and subordinates his causality to external determination under natural laws. The fact that he has to represent and think everything in this twofold way is not at all contradictory, for it rests in the first place on his consciousness of himself as an object affected by the senses, in the second on the consciousness of himself as intelligence, that is, as an active subject who, in using reason, is freed from any passive attachment to sensory impressions.[/quote]
Quoted in Pollok, Konstantin Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason (Kindle Locations 68-74). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
Understood. One can’t reject mind-related terminology yet still talk about mind-like things. Still, because minds, in and of themselves, would seem to be irrefutably private, it seems odd...or self-contradictory....to reject radical privacy in the mental sense, which is what we’re discussing here.
—————-
On “Thinking and Saying”:
I understand you to be countering the predicates my continental transcendentalism with it, but I’m not seeing how that gets accomplished. Rather than dissect it ad nauseam, I’ll just bring forth one item I noticed, abruptly, so to speak, and that comes from.....
“.....This notion of thinking is that of pondering or trying to solve a problem, not that of believing or feeling sure, which unfortunately goes by the same English name of "Thinking." I am interested in cogitation, not credence; in perplexity, not unperplexity. Our specimen thinker is going to be the stilI baffled Penseur, not the man who, having reached conviction, has stopped struggling to reach it....”
.....which is found in the first paragraph after the topic break on p5. The “man who, having reached conviction...” has cognized that which he was beforehand thinking. To say interest in cogitation, not credence: is self-defeating, for credence IS cogitation, as opposed to arriving at cogitation, by means of “pondering or trying to solve a problem”, which is, of course, what le penseur is actually doing when he thinks.
“.....To think an object and to cognize an object are by no means the same thing. In cognition there are two elements: firstly, the conception, whereby an object is thought (the category); and, secondly, the intuition, whereby the object is given. For supposing that to the conception a corresponding intuition could not be given, it would still be a thought as regards its form, but without any object, and no cognition of anything would be possible by means of it, inasmuch as, so far as I knew, there existed and could exist nothing to which my thought could be applied....”
(B147)
Now, one may perhaps interject that Ryles is not talking about cognition when he uses the term cogitation. If that is the case.....I give up. Anybody can say whatever they want if they also invent the terms to justify it. Just going to be mighty difficult to find common ground, though.
“....What is the point of the under-breath muttering which the thinker really is very often doing when thinking? What is the heuristic use of soliloquizing? There is no one-strand answer.....
(Of course there is: understanding)
......The still baffled Pythagoras, in again and again muttering a geometrical phrase to himself, may be intending, by way of rehearsal, to fix it in his memory; or in discontent with its slack phrasing, he may be intending, if he can, to stiffen it; or he may be meaning to re-savour the thrill of a recent discovery...”
....all possible, yet all reducible to........go ahead, take a guess.
Now, about these under-breath mutterings. Ever read a book that thoroughly enthralled you? I mean...took you away and put you right where the author wanted you to be. For me, it was Stephen King, and I’m here to tell ya I never saw the words he wrote, and I never muttered a damn thing. All that says, is that it is entirely possible to have mental activity without the slightest internal muttering, which makes explicit there are certain mental activities in which language has no play. If there are some mental activities in which language has no play, yet mental activities are completely comprehensible, the whole intentionality thing is rather worthless, at least from a radical private perspective.
Anyway, thanks for the reference showing me the ground of your arguments so far. Rest assured I don’t necessarily disagree with them entirely, even if I find such grounding both insufficient for theoretical completeness, and misguided in theoretical derivation.
Ok, fine. Two items. Pg7:
“...Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed. But now he reduces, in its turn, observation itself to Nothing But some oddly stingy minimum. However, this stinginess of the empiricist must not soften us towards the lavishness of the transcendentalist. For though he properly acknowledges the differences between kicking and scoring, or between just presenting arms and obeying the order to present arms, yet he goes on to make these differences occult ones. For since they are not to be the earthly or muscular differences demanded in vain by the empiricist, they will have instead to be unearthly, nonmuscular differences that transcend the referee's and the sergeant's powers of perception...”
In the immortal words of Herr Pauli......That is not only not right, it is not even wrong! One has no business qualifying the transcendental with the transcendent, and neither are necessarily occult in nature. Ryles may have been nodding toward Steiner, re: “The Outline of Occult Science”, 1909, but Steiner was no proper transcendentalist, but rather a mere mystic, or spiritualist, a la Swedenborg.
——————
Quoting Andrew M
My model: as you put it, is pretty much the case, yes. I balk at “her beliefs”, however, because if she knows the object as a tree, she has no need to merely believe in the properties that cause it to be a tree in the first place. This is a reflection on my thesis that we attribute properties to objects, as opposed to your thesis that objects are necessarily in possession of intrinsic properties belonging to them irrespective of the perception of them.
———————
Quoting Andrew M
Ok, fine. I shall take that as saying we still agree language always presupposes experience.
Quoting Andrew M
Robbie can certainly pull and realize simultaneously. Or, if he happens to be on a tide flat and perceives the exposure of rocks, he can realize without any pulling. But mental note-taking is precisely the other part of the dualism being discussed. And in no case is it possible for Robbie to realize something before his experience of it. He can think it, but thinking is not realizing.
Quoting Andrew M
Even if it be granted the action of pulling and the action of realizing are part-and-parcel of each other, simply from their simultaneity, they are still parts. Besides, realization can be considered really nothing other than a change in subjective condition, and all change takes time, so......
I know what you’re trying to say, and at first glimpse there is force to the argument. But the argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, because no explanation sufficient to facilitate it has as much power as an explanation that refutes it. The only reasonable recourse such argument has going for it, is to deny the theoretical reality of what Ryles calls “....any catalogue of simple qualities and simple relations, whether rude or refined...”. Which is tantamount to denying reason itself, because reason is exactly that catalogue.
——————
Quoting Andrew M
No. Forget appearances, they are subconscious, theory-specific hypotheticals. Technically, they are means to an end, but a relatively minor one. I meant by my model, re: on the condition that Alice has knowledge, that given a series of mental activities, pursuant to a perception of sense, knowledge of what that perception entails, is given.
Whether or not the perception entails the conception of a particular object, depends exclusively on extant experience. After learning the identity of some particular object....
(Dad, what is this thing? Son, that’s what we call a fork. Oh. Ok)
.......every subsequent perception of a similar object will, all else being equal, be identified as that kind of object....
(SON!! Use your fork, not your fingers!! Oh. Ok.)
Before learning the identity of a particular kind of object, a perception will entail an unknown something in general, which is thereby left open to any non-contradictory judgement the perceiver’s naming method permits.
(What the hell is THAT?? Damned if I know...call it a ______ )
We understand this, because the very first instance of naming anything, is never conditioned by what the object is, but only as how we wish to know it.
(electrostatic discharges of black-body radiation are not fire arrows of the gods; the fundamental constituency of hadrons are not colored)
Til next time......
I'm not defending Dennett, since I don't think consciousness is an illusion.
But I don't think that one can say that the mind is not objective. This is the general idea of a 'publicly traded' concept. It functions socially. It's supposed to refer to lots of individual minds. Yet some would have these minds be so private that they are utterly incomparable.
I don't know the quale that you call 'red.' I only trust that we both know that the prototypical rose is red. Indeed, the moist robot metaphor is made possible in the first place by the notion of the radically private mind. While only a sociopath doubts that others have feelings 'behind' their behavior, the notion of the private mind creates an infinite chasm one mind and another. A sophisticated enough moist robot would presumably fool us into caring about it, perhaps electing it to lead us. On the other hand, how do we know that a coffee cup isn't conscious? If a [s]lion[/s] coffee cup could speak, we wouldn't understand it. Language depends on social practice.
I know more or less what you mean by the mind is real but not objective. But I also gave the example of anesthesia for surgery. The technician definitely wants to keep the patient from feeling the surgery. But the technician can't directly mind-melt with the patient to guarantee unconsciousness. Clearly there are signs of consciousness, and these signs are part of the public concept of consciousness. In terms of prediction and control, we are already chipping away at the hard problem. If we abandon prediction and control, then what kind of explanation do we want? A poem that satisfies intuition? The story of God breathing life into Adam?
The world as a whole can't be explained. So I'm not bothered by the radical version of the hard problem. But that radical version is framed to be insoluble.
Ever heard of Wilder Penfield? He was a Canadian neurosurgeon and a pioneer of modern neurosurgery. Among the curious facts about neurosurgery is that the brain doesn't have pain receptors, so he was able to carry out surgery on conscious patients as a matter of routine. He found that he could elicit very detailed memories by stimulating areas of the brains of patients under surgery - so detailed that the patients could literally 'smell the coffee' (to give one example). But the point which intrigued him is that the subjects always knew when it was something that was being done from them, and could distinguish it from something they themselves were doing. On this basis, he (somewhat reluctantly) adopted a dualist philosophy, which became subject of a well-known popular book by him, Mysteries of the Mind.
It's also interesting to note that Australian neurosurgeon, Sir John Eccles, likewise developed a dualist view of mind and brain (and in fact co-authored a book with Karl Popper on this subject.)
Of course all of this is subject to dispute. However I'm inclined towards a form of dualism. But the crucial mistake since Descartes is to view 'res cogitans' as something objectively real (or conversely not objectively real); a literal substance, a thinking thing (which is the literal meaning of 'res cogitans'). There is no 'thinking thing' but the fact that there is not, is the denial of something which never existed in the first place. It's a false conceptualisation, in which sense I agree with Ryle's criticism of it, but I draw radically different conclusions from that.
Quoting jjAmEs
Mind is not an object - this is an empirical statement. There are billions of things that are objects - but 'mind' is not among them. The fact that 'it functions socially' is only a statement of something everyone supposes to be true. In fact, the mind is a mystery in the midst of being - that is why materialists feel such a sense of urgency in denying it! If you admit the reality of mind, then materialism is unsustainable.
Quoting jjAmEs
The reason I keep referring to Dennett is that he is a textbook materialist; if you want to understand what that theory means, then he's the go-to. So he's not a straw man, he's the genuine article. If you want to criticize materialist philosophy of mind, then look no further.
Quoting jjAmEs
But that's not the point at issue. The 'hard problem of consciousness' is that, no matter how complete a functionalist theory of mind is, there is always going to be an explanatory gap. It wouldn't be a problem, were it not for those who say 'what "gap"?' 'What is left out?' Because when you can't answer the question in their terms - that is, objectively - they say: "aha! It's nothing, see!" That's because, as I say, it's not an objective reality; rather it is that which the whole concept of objectivity is founded on. But 'the subject forgets himself' - as Schopenhauer puts it. Or as Jacques Maritain says:
Quoting jjAmEs
The kind that that is the subject of philosophy as distinct from science.
The paracingulate sulcus differentially marks reports of sensory stimulation from the specific brain regions responsible for sensory processing depending on their correspondence with other somatic input. It's just science, we don't have to invoke some magical woo every time we don't know how something works.
I should also add, Penfield was a rigorous scientist and surgeon, and came to his conclusions on the basis of many hundreds or even thousands of observations. The only 'woo' involved was his observation that the subject was always aware of the distinction between being manipulated by the surgeon and his or her own volitional actions. I would be interested to know how that subjectively-observed difference could be validated with respect to neural data.
Reason is simply a method of thinking. One which has proven remarkably successful for understanding the world. One key tenet in this method is not inventing new structures until it is clear existing ones do not suffice. To see such a difference as Penfield did and formulate a hypothesis not that some other part of the brain he's looking at must perform this function (as it turned out was the case) but to instead invent an entirely fabricated realm of existence for which we have no empirical evidence at all, is not 'reason'.
It's the equivalent of me inventing an invisible race of key-eating aliens every time I lose my keys rather than the simpler explanation that I've simply forgotten where I put them.
I think the man is absolutely brilliant and any short comings can be made up for the fact that we are all standing on his foundation in some sense. I couldn't find out if he was a Christian but i know he believe in a God/god.
Any scientist worth their salt would have followed established principles of scientific investigation and looked for the simplest explanation provided within theories which already have good foundational support. If a subject is aware of something, that awareness is most likely provided by a region of the brain. We know this because thus far we've been able to correlate awareness with brain activity in every case we've tested.
So if a patient is aware of some distinction (between externally and internally invoked sensation), then the simplest explanation is that some region of the brain is providing this awareness. It's no surprise at all then, that this turned out to be the case.
It also opened up some incredibly useful avenues of treatment for paranoid schizophrenia (whose sufferers seem to have diminished paracingulate suculi). What use has your dualistic answer been?
Quoting Wayfarer
It's complicated, obviously, but a simple summary is that the brain has suppressive, backward acting neural signals which suppress output from neural collections on the basis of higher brain activity. The network makes a prediction about the source of stimulation, updates that prediction on the basis of other forward-acting signals, and then suppresses contrary signals to yield a consistent model.
Elsewhere you asserted logic is simply a method of thinking.
Are there more?
Well, yes. Depends on the purpose of the categorisation. Some psychologists distinguish between intuitive and reasoned thinking, others between emotive and rational. Some consider reflex a kind of thinking. It's not like there's a laid out taxonomy or anything, it depends on the field of enquiry as to what categorisation might be most useful.
I think you are missing my point. I'm not saying that minds are objects like balloons or clouds. I'm saying that 'the mind' is a publicly tradable concept. Their are more and less intelligible ways to employ this word. I don't legislate the language. It is given like the law. To deny this is to implicitly confirm it.
Any denial is only intelligible in the first place in terms of social conventions.
Also lots of classic materialists were something like dualists.
[quote=Hobbes]
Concerning the Thoughts of man, I will consider them first Singly, and afterwards in Trayne, or dependance upon one another. Singly, they are every one a Representation or Apparence, of some quality, or other Accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an Object. Which Object worketh on the Eyes, Eares, and other parts of mans body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of Apparences.
The Originall of them all, is that which we call Sense; (For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of Sense.) The rest are derived from that originall.
...
The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense...
[/quote]
Then, more generally,
[quote=Wiki]
According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist.
[/quote]
To me the essence of materialism is something like a taking of the physical substratum seriously. It's not a denial of sensation or thought but a belief in some kind of substratum or matrix/matter with a controlling influence on 'mind.' Democritus theorized atoms that were too small for human eyes to see. The substratum (in this case atoms and void) had to be approached indirectly. Another crucial aspect of materialism (according to Lange) is that this 'matter' is subject to simple human-indifferent laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Materialism_and_Critique_of_Its_Present_Importance
In short, I don't associate philosophical materialism with the denial of what we aim at with 'mind.' I'm a materialist, yet I feel no need to deny mind. Nor am I afraid to admit the necessity of contingency (that the world as a whole is inexplicable and hence mysterious). I'm also more of an instrumentalist than a realist when it comes to theories about the substratum, yet:
[quote=link]
More recently, Stein (1989) has argued that the dispute between realism and instrumentalism is not well joined: once realism has been sophisticated (as he suggests it must be) to give up its pretensions to metaphysically transcendent theorizing, to eschew aspirations to noumenal truth and reference, and to abandon the idea that a property of a theory might somehow explain its success in a way that does not simply point out the use that has been made of the theory, and once instrumentalism has been sophisticated (as he suggests it must be) to recognize the scope of a theory’s role as an instrument to include not just calculating experimental outcomes, but also adequately representing phenomena in detail across the entire domain of nature and providing resources for further inquiry, there remains no appreciable difference (or no difference that makes a difference) between the two positions.
[/quote]
https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/pkylestanford/files/2016/10/InstrumentalismRoutledge.pdf
If method is a systematic procedure according to rules, then reason should be readily granted as the method of (human) thinking. But I’m reluctant to admit we have methods of thinking corresponding to the plethora of subjects being thought about.
I’m not going to argue against your expertise in psychology, obviously; just looking for a little clarity.
Perhaps someone will speak up for Dennett. If not, then he's a strawman in this context.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
I ask again what kind of explanation is sought? I accept the necessary contingency of the world as a whole. So I'm not anti-mystery. If the explanatory gap is just that again, then OK. But what is philosophical explanation? If not prediction and control, then perhaps it's conceptual coherence or an emotionally satisfying narrative about how things hang together.
I mentioned anesthesia because we do indeed have practical theories about consciousness that allow for prediction and control.
If others object to the 'explanatory gap,' I'm guessing that they do so because they expect this 'gap' to be filled nevertheless with a metaphysical or religious explanation. Some might just be anti-mystery. Others are just OK with the mystery but more interested in useful & illuminating theories (conquering ignorance and impotence ).
Why? A soldier at war demonstrably thinks differently to a mathematician working on a problem. People even think differently depending on whether or not they're too hot or cold. We can see the different areas of the brain involved, we can judge by the results of problem solving exercises and confirm by subjective self-reporting. The evidence is quite compelling that both sensory inputs and recalled data are processed differently given different contexts. I just wonder why you'd have some reluctance to this idea, does it conflict with some other, equally compelling view?
I agree that we have to already share a lifeworld and a language before we can do science. As Bohr put it:
[quote =summary by link of Bohr]
1. The interpretation of a physical theory has to rely on an experimental practice.
2. The experimental practice presupposes a certain pre-scientific practice of description, which establishes the norm for experimental measurement apparatus, and consequently what counts as scientific experience.
3. Our pre-scientific practice of understanding our environment is an adaptation to the sense experience of separation, orientation, identification and reidentification over time of physical objects.
4. This pre-scientific experience is grasped in terms of common categories like thing’s position and change of position, duration and change of duration, and the relation of cause and effect, terms and principles that are now parts of our common language.
5. These common categories yield the preconditions for objective knowledge, and any description of nature has to use these concepts to be objective.
6. The concepts of classical physics are merely exact specifications of the above categories.
The classical concepts—and not classical physics itself—are therefore necessary in any description of physical experience in order to understand what we are doing and to be able to communicate our results to others, in particular in the description of quantum phenomena as they present themselves in experiments.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
We also find something like this in Husserl's Crisis. I understand as a kind of socialized less rigid Kantianism.
[quote=Husserl]
[In] my naive self-consciousness as a human being knowing himself to be living in the world, for whom the world is the totality of what for him is valid and existing, I am blind to the immense transcendental dimension of problems … I am completely … bound by interests and tasks … [and] a certain habitual one-sidedness of self interest … I can, however, carry out the transcendental re-orientation in which … I now have, as a new horizon of interest … a new, infinite scientific realm—if I engage in the appropriate systematic work …
[One] kind of thinking … tries to bring ‘original intuition’ to the fore—that is, the pre- and extrascientific lifeworld … The proper return to the naïveté of life—but in a reflection that rises above this naiveté—is the only way to overcome [this] … naiveté …
In science we measure the lifeworld … for a well-fitting garb of ideas … It is … a method which is designed for progressively improving … through ‘scientific’ predictions, those rough predictions which are the only ones that are possible within the sphere of what is actually experienced and experienceable in the lifeworld …
Considering ourselves … as scientists … the manner of scientific thinking puts questions and answers them theoretically in relation to the world … Cofunctioning here are the other scientists who, united with us in a community of theory, acquire and have the same truths or … are united with us in a critical transaction aimed at critical agreement …
For the human being in his surrounding world there are many types of praxis, and among them is this peculiar … one, theoretical praxis. It has its own professional methods; it is the art of … discovering and securing truths with a certain new ideal sense which is foreign to [extra]scientific life, the sense of a certain ‘final validity’ …
[/quote]
https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/husserl-on-the-task-of-science-in-and-of-the-lifeworld
For me the problem is ignoring that concept is social rather than private.
Equally compelling views is a relative quality, but still, the enabling parameters for neural networks corresponding to war being different than enabling parameters for neural networks corresponding to peace remain enabled neural networks nonetheless.
From a more esoteric domain, it is unarguable that the human doesn’t think in terms of neural networks, even if neural networks are the physical mechanisms for it. If the brain operates under a strict, singular, mechanically deterministic method, however complex it may be, why wouldn’t the merely philosophical operate under some method as singular, strict and logically deterministic, with some arbitrary corresponding complexity?
Either way, the conditions under which a method operates, shouldn’t determine the rules of the method.
Sure.
Quoting jjAmEs
There's nothing dualist about it - concepts are the simple residuum of the effects of sensations.
Quoting jjAmEs
That's completely accurate. I did an essay on Lucretius under Keith Campbell in his Philosophy of Matter class. Mind is the product of matter - that's really all there is to it.
Quoting jjAmEs
That it's not!
I very much like Husserl. Sorry I can't respond in greater detail, duty calls. Back later.
The brain almost certainly isn't a strict singular mechanically deterministic system. Neural signals are rapid stocatto outputs and trace complex routes, they are inhibited by incoming signals which are also rapidly intermittent. This creates a stochastic, probabilistic system because small changes in the route taken by the outgoing signal determines whether it comes before or after the suppressing one. I won't go on, I'm not a neuroscientist myself so this is second hand knowledge, suffice to say the brain is probabilistic... Probably.
Quoting Mww
'Shouldn't' in what sense? As in you don't think it ought to, or as in there's some law of thought preventing it? If the former, then tough, it does. So you'll just have to live with that. If the latter (and you're not denying the evidence I've alluded to) then you're simply extending the definition of rational thought to cover all thought. Not only is this contrary to most use, but it renders the term useless. We can suffice with just 'thought'.
You used system in regard to a strict, singular, deterministic; I used method. The method is the rules, the system is the use of the rules. No matter the particulars, the brain (the system) obeys the laws attributed to natural forces (the method).
Shouldn’t in the sense that should would be destructive, insofar as if the conditions under which the method is used determine the method, the method is no longer rule-based, therefore not a proper method.
If we can suffice with just “thought”, which I advocate as being the case, why do we need more than one method for it?
I guess it depends on what one means by dualism. I had something in mind like indirect realism. The quoted article explores how indirect realism clashes with elimination materialism.
[quote=link]
Sense data are seen as inner objects, objects that among other things are colored. Such entities, however, are incompatible with a materialist view of the mind. When I look at the coffee cup there is not a material candidate for the yellow object at which I am looking. Crudely: there is nothing in the brain that is yellow. Sense data, then, do not seem to be acceptable on a materialist account of the mind, and thus, the yellow object that I am now perceiving must be located not in the material world but in the immaterial mind. Indirect realism is committed to a dualist picture within which there is an ontology of non-physical objects alongside that of the physical.
[/quote]
https://www.iep.utm.edu/perc-obj/#H2
Hobbes definitely sounds like an indirect realist at the beginning of Leviathan.
[quote=Hobbes]
And this Seeming, or Fancy, is that which men call sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour Figured; To the Eare, in a Sound; To the Nostrill, in an Odour; To the Tongue and Palat, in a Savour; and to the rest of the body, in Heat, Cold, Hardnesse, Softnesse, and such other qualities, as we discern by Feeling. All which qualities called Sensible, are in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is, by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes, Eares, and other organs thereunto ordained.
[/quote]
The object is one thing and the image of the object is another. This is the object-in-itself and the object-for-us, matter and mind.
Below is a great slice of Hobbes that shows to what degree he was an armchair scientist of the soul, a folk psychologist knee deep in the 'transcendental pretense' mentioned earlier. To know others we must know ourselves, for others have reasons to conceal from us what we don't necessarily conceal from ourselves. His book appeals to the soul-searching of its readers.
[quote=Hobbes]
Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, That Wisedome is acquired, not by reading of Books, but of Men. Consequently whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in power, towards their inferiors; or to encourage men of low degree, to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters; But to teach us, that for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope, Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men, Desire, Feare, Hope, &c; not the similitude or The Objects of the Passions, which are the things Desired, Feared, Hoped, &c: for these the constitution individuall, and particular education do so vary, and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of mans heart, blotted and confounded as they are, with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible onely to him that searcheth hearts. And though by mens actions wee do discover their designee sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himselfe a good or evill man.
But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him onely with his acquaintance, which are but few. He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be onely to consider, if he also find not the same in himselfe. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.
[/quote]
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm
Strictly speaking it means mind and matter are different substances - in the philosophical sense, not the everyday sense, which is radically different. But this is where Cartesian dualism departed radically from scholastic dualism (i.e. hylomorphism). It's a deep subject, that book I mentioned by Pollok has a whole chapter on Kant and hylomorphism. But hylomorphism is 'matter-form' dualism, which is very different to Descartes' 'matter-mind' dualism. The problem with Cartesianism is that it posits 'res cogitans;' as a literal substance in an objective sense - something which objectively exists. And that leads to the intractable problem of how this 'ghost in the machine' can pull levers or do anything (which is Ryle's criticism).
My approach is 'mind is that which grasps meaning'. And the reason we can't say what mind really is, is because of the reflexive problem of consciousness, i.e. that 'the eye cannot see itself, the hand cannot grasp itself.' That's why I say mind is not an objective reality - it is that which 'objective reality' depends on. Whereas materialism inverts this, and says that the mind is dependent on its own objects. This is the realisation that prompted Schopenhauer's remark about the 'Olympian laughter':
My point exactly.
Hobbes is just the kind of target Kant had in mind when he criticized empiricism. I won't try and re-state all the details, but suffice to say everything Hobbes writes about the mind, is subject to the criticism 'percepts without concepts are blind'.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm thinking you still don't see what I mean by that. There's a certain overlap in our positions, which is something like: Concepts are important. They exist. Perceptions are concept rich, but just stupid sensations. We need language/thinking even to absurdly deny the existence of language and thinking. We need linguistic conventions for denying the centrality of such conventions.
[quote = link]
In dualism, ‘mind’ is contrasted with ‘body’, but at different times, different aspects of the mind have been the centre of attention. In the classical and mediaeval periods, it was the intellect that was thought to be most obviously resistant to a materialistic account: from Descartes on, the main stumbling block to materialist monism was supposed to be ‘consciousness’, of which phenomenal consciousness or sensation came to be considered as the paradigm instance.
The classical emphasis originates in Plato's Phaedo. Plato believed that the true substances are not physical bodies, which are ephemeral, but the eternal Forms of which bodies are imperfect copies. These Forms not only make the world possible, they also make it intelligible, because they perform the role of universals, or what Frege called ‘concepts'. It is their connection with intelligibility that is relevant to the philosophy of mind. Because Forms are the grounds of intelligibility, they are what the intellect must grasp in the process of understanding. In Phaedo Plato presents a variety of arguments for the immortality of the soul, but the one that is relevant for our purposes is that the intellect is immaterial because Forms are immaterial and intellect must have an affinity with the Forms it apprehends (78b4–84b8). This affinity is so strong that the soul strives to leave the body in which it is imprisoned and to dwell in the realm of Forms.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#MinBodHisDua
[quote=Culler]
What Freud, Saussure and Durkheim seem to have recognized is that social sciences could make little progress until society was considered a reality in itself: a set of institutions or systems which are more than the contingent manifestations of the spirit or the sum of individual activities. It is as though they had asked: “what makes individual experience possible? what enables men to perceive not just physical objects but objects with a meaning? what enables them to communicate and act meaningfully?” And the answer which they postulated was social institutions which, though formed by human activities, are the conditions of experience. To understand individual experience one must study the social norms which make it possible.
[/quote]
[quote= Saussure]
The notion of value... shows us that it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements.
[/quote]
[quote=Chandler on Saussure]
The arbitrariness principle can be applied not only to the sign, but to the whole sign-system. The fundamental arbitrariness of language is apparent from the observation that each language involves different distinctions between one signifier and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'free') and between one signified and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'bush'). The signified is clearly arbitrary if reality is perceived as a seamless continuum (which is how Saussure sees the initially undifferentiated realms of both thought and sound): where, for example, does a 'corner' end? Commonsense suggests that the existence of things in the world preceded our apparently simple application of 'labels' to them (a 'nomenclaturist' notion which Saussure rejected and to which we will return in due course). Saussure noted that 'if words had the job of representing concepts fixed in advance, one would be able to find exact equivalents for them as between one language and another. But this is not the case' (Saussure 1983, 114-115; Saussure 1974, 116). Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided up very differently. Indeed, no two languages categorize reality in the same way. As John Passmore puts it, 'Languages differ by differentiating differently' (cited in Sturrock 1986, 17). Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no 'natural' concepts or categories which are simply 'reflected' in language. Language plays a crucial role in 'constructing reality'.
[/quote]
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htm
What I make of this is that we are trained as children to employ a system of signs in the context of a social life which is largely non-linguistic. This system of signs is also a taken-for-granted lens on the world. It makes philosophy and science possible. It is their 'ground.' And yet philosophy and science seek out the ground of this ground (metaphysical or physical substratum). The Mobius strip comes to mind.
Derrida's concept of iterability is attempt to make sense of the realm of the ideal, the realm of Forms. What is this human passion to dwell in the realm of the forms? To escape time, decay, vulnerability, confusion... I share this passion. We want to add to the Book, live in the Book.
Maybe, but if the deterministic natural forces are expressed through a stochastic system then there's no reason at all to suppose a deterministic method will result.
Quoting Mww
I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here, but at a guess, you seem to be hinting at the idea that rules determine which set of rules to use. That may be (although see above as to the underlying uncertainty in the system), but again, you're defining away rational thought. If rational thought is not a type of thought then the word 'rational' is pointless.
Quoting Mww
We don't have more than one method because we need to. We simply observe thinking strategies and decide we're going to gives different names to some of the differences we see. We could not do that, and just call it all 'thought'. We could divide it into a hundred different types based on every tiny difference we observe. It's just a matter of utility.
But remember why I was making this point. The discussion is about 'objects and subjects' and by implication, the role of 'the objective sciences' in regards to this question.
So in saying that 'the mind is not objective', I'm not saying that it's not possible to discuss the nature of mind, or that the concept is not meaningful in various domains of discourse. The reason I'm saying that mind is not objective, is to undercut the presumption that it is a subject for the objective sciences at all. And the reason I refer to Dennett, is because his attitude of 'eliminativism' recognizes this fact. (IN that, it's very similar to, and maybe descended from, behaviourism).
But what eliminative materialism wants to eliminate or deny or describe as 'folk psychology' is in fact the fundamental nature of being itself. TO which the materialist reply is invariably: TOSH. There is no such 'fundamental nature'. If there were, you would be able to demonstrate it empirically'.
Do you see my point?
But isn't your description precisely the eye seeing itself? The hand grasping itself? The mind is the meaning-grasper, the meaning-hand. Or the mind is sense organ for the otherwise invisible conceptual realm. The mind is a special kind of hand or a special kind of eye. Both metaphors are great.
For me objective just means 'expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations.' It's not about objects, though everyday objects are usually admitted without controversy or bias and therefore naturally come to mind.
I do understand that sans consciousness there would be no there there. Consciousness and being have an intimate if complicated relationship. Yet some kind of substratum that survives the coming and going of individual consciousnesses is just as intuitive as consciousness grounding being. We read the traces of dead philosophers and repeat (we hope) their cognitive leaps. They etched something in/on the realm of forms.
Quoting Wayfarer
Perhaps you can expand on your distance from this Cartesianism.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with you and Schopenhauer that a certain kind of materialism is the just target of Olympian laughter. I don't gel with Dennett, for instance. But if we leave metaphysics and just think of technology, then it makes good sense to see how we can construct the complex from the simple. In my view, 'matter' is just as problematic as 'mind.' The mind-matter distinction is useful in many contexts but doesn't work as a crisp and final metaphysics. 'Matter' is something like an old stand-in for the 'thing in itself' or the substratum. My own position is something like a generalized instrumentalism, but that's largely an attitude. To me most of the 'great' philosophers got something right, were illuminating.
Quoting Wayfarer
I know. Of course Kant made important advances on Hobbes. I'm hardly suggesting that Hobbes is up-to-date and hot off the press. But, as others have noted, Kant's theory is only intelligible against the background of Hobbes and Locke.
https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lk
[quote=link]
These correspondences between Kant’s and Locke’s frameworks point up some character differences between their corresponding elements. One such difference is that between ‘things themselves’ and ‘things in themselves’. As already mentioned, Locke’s ‘things themselves’ are single corpuscles or aggregates of corpuscles that possess only primary qualities (and powers based on them). They affect our sense organs qua aggregates of corpuscles, and accordingly a sort of motion is communicated to the brain. As a result, sensible ideas are produced in the mind. By contrast, in Kant’s case, ‘things in themselves’ are not known to us, and since space is a form of our sensibility, the idea that things in themselves are in space does not make sense.
...
Now it will be seen that behind Kant’s positing unknowable ‘things in themselves’ and reinterpreting the ordinary external things in space as internal representations, the naturalistic logic of the seventeenth century theories of ideas is tacitly operating. If this were not the case, he would have no reason for regarding the objects of our experience as internal from the start and for grasping them as appearances in contrast to things in themselves. Further, the view that things in themselves ‘affect’ our senses would not make sense without our ordinary experience concerning the causal process of sense perception (or some physical view framed by sophisticating it). That is, it seems that the very framework of Kant’s transcendental idealism could not be established if it were not based on our ordinary experience or more sophisticated physical view.
[/quote]
One great thing about Kant is that he opens up the possibility of thinking the-world-as-it-really is without the assumption of 3 spatial dimensions. All kinds of new models become acceptable. Maybe we are 'really' in Flatland or Lineland or [math] \infty [/math]-land. To me such theories are 'just' instruments, but still he drops the assumption that space is really there. Was he the first? If so, that's impressive indeed. I agree that intutions without concepts are blind, and that's why I make so much of language/community and speak of a socialized neo-Kantianism. While mind depends in one sense on the individual brain, it depends in another sense (just as important for human beings) on learning to speak among others.
The temptation is to emphasize the isolation of our minds as an echo of the physical distance between our brains. But this is to ignore the point of brains, which is to be networked. It's like only understanding the internet from the perspective of individual chromebooks. The chomebooks are for the internet, and the internet depends on chromebooks. A sane human being is plugged in to a language and various social norms. His internal monologue occurs in linguistic conventions he received like the law. And metaphysical versions of mind and matter seem parasitical upon pre-understandings of either in ordinary language.
Yes, I see your point. And I agree with you against the position that denies consciousness. I wonder if Dennett is half-trolling. No bad publicity, etc.
But what about psychology? And even Husserl's phenomenology aimed at objectivity and freedom from bias. If we emphasize that aspect of mind that is most distant from any kind of peer review or experiment, then indeed we take the mind out of serious conversation altogether. Even metaphysicians have no choice but to employ metaphors. I can't say the phenomenal redness of the rose. I can never know that others see red as I see red (or hear the same middle C.) I can say that grass is not red and that stop signs are. I have to enter the public sign system. And yet we all understand something like qualia if we can't compare them. Which is why Dennett will probably sound like a half-troll or clever moist robot himself to most of us.
I'm sure you've seen this, but for others....
[quote=Searle]
To put it as clearly as I can: in his book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack any inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies. ...I regard his view as self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain...Here is the paradox of this exchange: I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication of being consciously and puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How then can I take seriously his claim that consciousness does not really exist?
[/quote]
Yeah what about it? I studied undergrad psych and it was abundantly obvious that the whole field was philosophically fractured. (The only essay I ever failed was my first psych essay, about intelligence testing. On the upside, met my future wife in psych tutorials.)
Husserl's epoche was not aimed exactly at objectivity, but at detachment. They're close, but not the same. Actually comparisons have been made between Husserl's epoche and the Buddhist sunyata, in that both philosophies are concerned with cultivating close awareness of the texture and nature of experience without a sense of attachment. (There’s an essay out there somewhere called Epoche and ??nyat?).
Quoting jjAmEs
But you can't! That's the point! Hence the role and importance of not knowing! And I mean that in the fully Socratic sense.
You asked me what an explanation is, in philosophy. One answer would be: an explanation of why we’re tied in knots. That’s close to Wittgenstein’s attitude, isn’t it? The ladder and the discarding of it. But first we have to climb it, and it’s more than just a verbal matter.
You mentioned Crisis - see if you can find the passage on Descartes. It’s a very perceptive critique. I am meaning to get another copy of that book, it’s kind of a core book.
Have I mentioned Michel Bitbol to you? I was alerted to him by Pierre Normand on this forum.
What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pain, colors and meaning - they have a place in the language game. Whereas the beetle - a hypothetical entity that can't be referenced or talked about - drops out as irrelevant.
So I think its reasonable to talk about pains, colors, etc., as we ordinarily do, and deny the ghostly entities.
Quoting jjAmEs
It seems to me that there should be explanations for these things. I'm not sure how not having satisfactory answers given our present state of knowledge should ever imply that there are no explanations to be had.
Quoting Wayfarer
You frame the problem in terms of a subject/object dualism which, as jjAmEs has also noted, makes it insoluble by definition. So the point at issue is really a conceptual one of naturalism versus dualism.
True enough. Still, in the compendium of practical matters in which humans can agree with each other on an arbitrary set of empirical determinations in accordance with their respective communicative means (if I ask every rational English-speaking body in NYC to point to his foot, they will all point to the same place), there would seem to indeed be a singular deterministic method in place that supports practical matters in general.
Nahhhh......if all humans didn’t have a common thinking method intrinsic to themselves alone, they’d be mere primates.
Anyway....thanks for the perspective.
I doubt that. Some would disobey on principle, some would absentmindedly point elsewhere because they weren't paying attention (not weren't listening, just reacting on instinct), some would point to their hand (thinking they're making a joke), etc...
The more complex you make the instruction, the more challenging the environment you make it in the more varied the results.
Try telling a soldier on active duty to point to his foot, he'll tell you to shut up without even registering what you said. Try telling a person to point to their foot after they've been primed to respond to all commands by pointing to their hand (behavioural priming), they'll point to their hand. I mean, all these experiments have been done, there's tonnes in the literature. People do not consistently respond in a 'rational' manner and the manner in which they do respond differs from 'rational' in predictable ways. You might not like that, maybe it makes us a bit more 'mere primate-like' than you'd prefer, but that's the empirical data. Ignore it if you like, but that would be irrational, wouldn't it?
Quoting Mww
I would say irrefutably not private (per the PLA). Or, to take a broader perspective, we have different ways of conceptualizing mind:
On my view, to interpret a figurative expression as a Cartesian-style mind is a conceptual mistake.
Quoting Mww
The difference is between task and achievement words (which Ryle describes in The Concept of Mind, p131-p135). Cogitation is a task word (which is Ryle's interest in his essay), credence (as with knowledge) is what is acquired or achieved as a result of cogitation. Consider the difference between running a race and winning a race. Winning entails that a race was run. But winning is not reducible to running. Neither is winning an additional task performed to the running. It is instead a logical condition that depends on specific criteria, such as that the runner crossed the finish line before the other runners, followed the rules, etc. So context matters here.
In a similar vein, thinking is a task word. Whereas to have made up one's mind is an achievement phrase.
Quoting Mww
So Ryle's usage here (as an ordinary language philosopher) matches ordinary use.
Cognition: The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
Cogitation: The action of thinking deeply about something; contemplation.
Note how cogitation describes a task - that of thinking about something. Whereas cognition describes an achievement - the knowledge and understanding acquired as the result of thinking about something.
For Alice to cogitate about the tree (Are its leaves really green? Is it an illusion?) is one thing, to cognize that its leaves are green is a (logically) different thing.
Quoting Mww
As you may have also guessed by now, for Ryle (and in ordinary use), understanding denotes an achievement, not a task (nor a faculty or capability).
Alice might not understand why the tree's leaves are green, or what it means for them to be green at a deeper level. But she at least understands that they are green.
[Note that this is from my perspective, of course. Others may dispute that she understands that at all if they think such things are illusions, appearances or secondary qualities. But that is a difference over what is understood, not with how the term understanding is ordinarily used.
A discussion of dualism/naturalism is particularly challenging because there is a whole web of language that is interpreted according to one philosophical premise or the other (and sometimes an entangling mixture of both).]
Quoting Mww
Note that Ryle explicitly rejects the "thought is language" slogan, which belongs to behaviorism. Where language comes in is that we need language to identify thinking at all, which means that it is a public term.
That Le Penseur can think without visible indication is mundane privacy. And in those cases, we might sometimes be mistaken about what he's doing (perhaps he's fallen asleep). But radical privacy would be invisible even to scientists investigating brain activity or physicists describing particle movements. That's the interaction problem of the Cartesian model and why Ryle's ghost in the machine metaphor is apt.
Quoting Mww
And thank you for taking the time to articulate your position and objections. I think we both agree on the importance of a sound philosophical grounding for one's position.
Quoting Mww
On the contrary, Ryle gets it right! And it's such a clear distillation of Ryle's view that I had to requote it. :-)
Quoting Mww
It has nothing to do with Steiner and "occult" in that sense, but his description is apt nonetheless. Note that Ryle's reference is to Descartes (mind/body) and Plato (ideal Forms/natural world).
The transcendentalist - of whom Descartes and Plato are examples for Ryle - frame things in terms of a ghostly other-world and a mechanical or cave-like world of the senses. The reductionist, who Ryle also criticizes there, dismisses the ghost but retains the machine and/or cave metaphor.
Ryle's broader argument is that by rectifying the logical geography here (i.e., rejecting both the ghost and the machine and reallocating the facts marshalled by the transcendentalist and reductionist), the natural world becomes intelligible.
Quoting Mww
Thanks.
Quoting Mww
OK. But isn't that open to the problem of Crusoe attributing bentness to the (straight) stick? Does he "know" it is bent at the time?
Also note that I deny that an object has intrinsic properties. I instead say that the object has form in relation to Alice.
Anyway, my guess is that we're saying the same thing here in our respective terminologies. We can sometimes be mistaken about what we think we know but, in general, need not be.
Quoting Mww
No, I don't agree with that! Though I accept that we sometimes retroactively change the language used to describe a prior experience. For example, Crusoe's experience always involved a straight stick, not a bent stick, even if he had described it as bent at the earlier time.
Quoting Mww
I regard realization there as a logical condition, not a process in time. As an analogy, when Bob crossed the finish line, what was the time lapse between the states of "has not yet won the race" to "has won the race"? The question doesn't really apply since to win is the logical condition of having crossed the finish line first, not a process in time.
Quoting Mww
He's denying a stamp-collecting approach to thinking and saying, either as a catalog of bodily movements or as a catalog of mental activities. Ryle brings in reason in the completion of that sentence where he includes the logical conditions under which thinking and saying occur, "... but some nexus of statable because statement-shaped conditions."
By analogy, we don't find Bob's race win either in his bodily movements or in his or others' private thoughts. It's instead a logical condition that obtains in that scenario (with the context being that a competitive race is being run, there's a start and finish line, there are rules of conduct, etc.).
As I'm reading you, there are surface similarities here to a Kantian-style transendentalism (just as Plato's Forms have surface similarities to Aristotle's forms). The issue is whether reason is apart from nature or a part of nature (suitably expanded to incorporate intentions and purposes).
Quoting Mww
OK, thanks. I take you to be saying that we can conceptualize things however we like (as long as its coherent). If I want to define chairs as having backs and you don't then that's fine. The thing we're looking at doesn't care what we call it or how we categorize it.
So that's fair enough. But I also think there is a give-and-take - some conceptual schemes are natural and well-motivated, others not so much. If I call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?
(And note that it's Ryle - see, naming matters!)
All of which validates the premise that method is a systematic procedure according to rules, but not according to laws. Because there is no promise all humans think about things the same way makes explicit the systematic procedure cannot be predicated on laws, even while a logically deterministic method under which the procedure operates, certainly does not have that restriction.
———————
Quoting Isaac
Agreed, in principle. Which is why the exemplary instruction is as simple as possible. Point-to-foot. Subject/copula/predicate. Unencumbered by manufactured conditionals.
The empirical psychologist will inform me as to the myriad of reasons why the guy won’t point to his foot, but all I want to know is how he understood me when I asked him to.
Crikey, is that all! You know entire textbooks have been written just on the subject of how language is processed? Just distinguishing speech from non-speech involves a complicated feedback mechanism between areas in the auditory cortex. At least five other regions are involved in distinguishing phonemes and breaking out tonal variation. This is all before the message even gets out of the auditory cortex for the first time (yes - the first time, the message gets checked and modified by other feedback mechanisms before it even gets to the temporal cortex where the first stage of syntactic processing takes place)....
The point is, there is a complicated process, it's probably a Bayesian inference model. It's almost certainly not deterministic and it definitely changes depending on the state other areas of the brain are in.
"Point to foot" is definitely not "unencumbered by manufactured conditionals". The words don't even get to the point of being recognised as such without passing through several predictive models, each of which alters the message about what is heard so that it reaches the temporal cortex as the best estimate of what was said, given the context, and that's only if the filtering algorithm from the vorbis even determines that any of it is going to get any of the temporal cortex's precious bandwidth.
If you want to call the whole thing 'rational' thinking without distinguishing any finer category, be my guest, but I'm not sure I see the advantage.
I mostly agree with you. Note however that we are talking about the beetle. To me qualia serve that kind of goal. Maybe what I call 'red' is what you call 'green.' No way to check! And yet I think our language game includes this phenomenal redness. I do see that the sign 'red' has to function independently of this beetle, this pure redness. And I agree that we need an entire sign system and form of life in order to gesture toward it. And we have that system! Which allows us to say that it drops out as irrelevant, which it is for the functioning of the sign.
Quoting Andrew M
The point I was trying to make is perhaps a little strange. I understand explanation to be relational. The world as the entire system of entities and their relationships cannot be put into relation to something outside of it, for there is nothing outside of it by definition.
Sartre wrote on this in Nausea. He's very dramatic about what can also be contemplated coolly.
[quote=Sartre]
I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, wearing their spring clothes. I said, like them, "The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence conceals itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word "being." Or else I was thinking — how can I put it? I was thinking of properties. I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that green was one of the qualities of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature.
...
The word Absurdity is emerging under my pen; a little while ago, in the garden, I couldn't find it, but neither was I looking for it, I didn't need it: I thought without words, on things, with things. Absurdity was not an idea in my head, or the breath of a voice, only this long serpent dead at my feet, this serpent of wood. Serpent or claw or root or vulture's talon, what difference does it make? And without formulating anything clearly, I understood that I had found the clue to existence, the clue to my nauseas, to my own life. In fact, all I could grasp beyond that comes down to this fundamental absurdity. Absurdity: another word. I struggle against words; beneath me there I touched the thing. But I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity. A movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd — in relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium. But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root — there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound, secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
...
This moment was extraordinary. I was there, motionless, paralyzed, plunged in a horrible ecstasy. But at the heart of this ecstasy, something new had just appeared; I understood the nausea, I possessed it. To tell the truth, I did not formulate my discoveries to myself. But I think it would be easy for me to put them in words now. The essential point is contingency. I mean that by definition existence is not [logical] necessity. To exist is simply ... to be there; existences appear, let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce them. Some people, I think, have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a being that was necessary and self-caused. But no necessary being [i.e., God] can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, an appearance which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, and, therefore, perfectly gratuitous. Everything is gratuitous, this park, this city, and myself. When you realize this, your heart turns over and everything begins to float....
[/quote]
http://twren.sites.luc.edu/phil120/ch10/nausea.htm
Quoting Andrew M
Absolutely. No meaningful discourse when the parties all agree with each other. Still, in Ryle, as you say.......
Quoting Andrew M
......to better understand our disagreements is an achievement, which we can then say only evolves by the faculty of understanding being tasked to achieve it.
Such would be a semantic quibble if it weren’t already a theoretical tenet.
—————-
Quoting Andrew M
Agreed, not private (per the PLA), because there is no such thing as a PLA anyway. I meant private insofar as inaccessible except as the necessarily abstract ground for transcendental philosophy. Therein, the mind is conceived as the irreducible condition for all that pure reason seeks for itself.
Commonly, I suppose, and granting the complementary nature of human rationality, that which is ultimately real, and possibly knowable, the object, is incomprehensible without logical juxtaposition to the ultimately not-real, hence only thinkable, the mind.
More commonly, I suppose, mind is what the brain does, which is just about as empty a conception as there could ever be.
Quoting Andrew M
Given this highlighted section: “...Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise...”, I suppose this to be a figurative expression, and if it is, I agree such talk is a conceptual mistake. I don’t talk about or of the mind per se, but rather talk about certain human faculties and their exercise on their own validity and merits alone.
And your different way of conceptualizing mind would be......? Which I take as a different concept of mind, in as much as I think we all conceptualize, as a task, the same way.
————————-
On ordinary language: thanks for the explanations; things are clearer for me with them, with respect to Ryle.
On theoretical terminology: understood, even if I maintain that hardly any of it is necessary. I mean...thinking and thinking deeply being two different things? I don’t see the theoretical benefit in that fine a distinction.
————————-
Quoting Andrew M
The minor objection: the passage itself may be a clear distillation of Ryle, but I don’t get where he thinks Descartes and Plato are transcendentalists.
The major objection: for those I do see as Transcendentalists, or, more properly, transcendental idealists, it must be granted that the “lavishness of the transcendentalist” means the invocation of a priori cognitions and knowledge, and calling such invocation occult-ish and “transcending powers of perception”, is what is not even wrong.
Can you show what the lavishness of the transcendentalist is, that isn’t the advocacy of the a priori, to show what I thought Ryle meant, is incorrect?
Quoting Andrew M
On the other hand, rejecting the alleged ghost and the machine the ghost supposedly lives in, seems to be rejecting the a priori aspect of human reason, and by association, the faculties in which the a priori resides. The intelligibility of the natural world is not the same as knowledge of the natural world, however, and because of that, I reject the notion that the latter is even possible without the former.
You said that the mind was not objective. I'm saying that psychology is a objective-unbiased science of behavior and mind, including 'conscious and unconscious phenomena.' Perhaps you mean that the mind is not an object like a rock or a cloud. Of course I agree. But it is a noun that's tangled up in our sayings and doings. We know things about it and apply that knowledge. It's included in a (probabilistic) causal nexus.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't claim that bracketing == objectivity. I read Husserl as trying to do a supremely scientific kind of philosophy, an ur-science that grounds the others. Objectivity is baked in to this approach. Detachment is of course related to objectivity. Bias is interest. Unbiasedness (objectivity) is disinterestedness. Or we might that the the objective approach is interested in what's 'really' there apart from biased or subjectivity-tainted distortions. Of course we need a subject to experience in the object in the first place. So the scientist is ideally an objective subject, an unbiased subject, who reports things as they are, who sacrifices hypotheses that don't survive testing or criticism. We seem to agree that the phenomenologist cultivates 'close awareness of the texture and nature of experience without a sense of attachment,' and therefore without a bias that distorts the objective.
[quote=Husserl]
The greatness of the natural sciences consists in their refusal to be content with an observational empiricism, since for them all descriptions of nature are but methodical procedures for arriving at exact explanations, ultimately physico-chemical explanations. They are of the opinion that 'merely descriptive' sciences tie us to the finitudes of our earthly environing world.4 Mathematically exact natural science, however, embraces with its method the infinites contained in its actualities and real possibilities. It sees in the intuitively given a merely subjective appearance, and it teaches how to investigate intersubjective ('objective') nature itself with systematic approximation on the basis of elements and laws that are unconditionally universal. At the same time, such exact science teaches how to explain all intuitively pre-given concretions, whether men, or animals, or heavenly bodies, by an appeal to what is ultimate, i.e., how to induce from the appearances, which are the data in any factual case, future possibilities and probabilities, and to do this with a universality and exactitude that surpasses any empiricism limited to intuition. The consistent development of exact sciences in modern times has been a true revolution in the technical mastery of nature.
In the humanistic sciences the methodological situation (in the sense already quite intelligible to us) is unfortunately quite different, and this for internal reasons. Human spirituality is, it is true, based on the human physis, each individually human soul-life is founded on corporeality, and thus too each community on the bodies of the individual human beings who are its members. If, then, as is done in the sphere of nature, a really exact explanation and consequently a similarly extensive scientific practical application is to become possible for the phenomena belonging to the humanistic sciences, then must the practitioners of the humanistic sciences consider not only the spirit as spirit but must also go back to its bodily foundations, and by employing the exact sciences of physics and chemistry, carry through their explanations. The attempt to do this, however, has been unsuccessful (and in the foreseeable future there is no remedy to be had) due to the complexity of the exact psycho-physical research needed in the case of individual human beings, to say nothing of the great historical communities.
If the world were constructed of two, so to speak, equal spheres of reality - nature and spirit - neither with a preferential position methodologically and factually, the situation would be different. But only nature can be handled as a self-contained world; only natural science can with complete consistency abstract from all that is spirit and consider nature purely as nature. On the other side such a consistent abstraction from nature does not, for the practitioner of humanistic science who is interested purely in the spiritual, lead to a self-contained 'world', a world whose interrelationships are purely spiritual, that could be the theme of a pure and universal humanistic science, parallel to pure natural science. Animal spirituality, that of the human and animal 'souls', to which all other spirituality is referred, is in each individual instance causally based on corporeality. It is thus understandable that the practitioner of humanistic science, interested solely in the spiritual as such, gets no further than the descriptive, than a historical record of spirit, and thus remains tied to intuitive finitudes. Every example manifests this. A historian, for example, cannot, after all, treat the history of ancient Greece without taking into consideration the physical geography of ancient Greece; he cannot treat its architecture without considering the materiality of its buildings, etc., etc. That seems clear enough.
[/quote]
While we can and have abstract a mechanical nature from the total human situation (the early materialists were especially impressive in this regard), we can't abstract pure spirit from the total situation and leave behind the brain and the environment. 'Spirit' or culture is at the top and depends on everything below it. Whatever your misgivings about psychology, the mind and consciousness are already understood practically-technologically in a nexus that includes nature. Certain molecules change consciousness. We give the dying as much morphine as they want, for their comfort, which we gauge indirectly via expression and conversation. Violence, accident, and disease apparent end consciousness altogether, at least in the usual sense. We bury and cremate corpses.
To switch themes, we have
[quote=Husserl]
This rough sketch will gain in completeness and intelligibility as we examine more closely the historical origin of philosophical and scientific man and thereby clarify the sense of Europe and, consequently, the new type of historicity that through this sort of development distinguishes itself from history in general.23
First, let us elucidate the remarkable character of philosophy as it unfolds in ever-new special sciences. Let us contrast it with other forms of culture already present in prescientific man, in his artefacts, his agriculture, his architecture, etc. All manifest classes of cultural products along with the proper methods for insuring their successful production. Still, they have a transitory existence in their environing world. Scientific achievements, on the other hand, once the method of insuring their successful creation has been attained, have an entirely different mode of being, an entirely different temporality. They do not wear out, they are imperishable. Repeated creation does not produce something similar, at best something similarly useful. Rather, no matter how many times the same person or any number of persons repeat these achievements, they remain exactly identical, identical in sense and in value. Persons united together in actual mutual understanding can only experience what their respective fellows have produced in the same manner as identical with what they have produced themselves. In a word, what scientific activity achieves is not real but ideal.
[/quote]
We see that the ideal realm depends upon the possibility of perfect iteration. This is its atemporality. Generations come and go like leaves, but certain cognitions are imperishable because each new generation can enjoy them. The flame leaps from melting candle to melting candle. This is the realm of the forms, the book of the forms that can even be extended by works of genius/revelation. This is a 'god' that mortals can incarnate or participate in through science/philosophy.
This last quote echos what you said earlier, I think.
[quote=Husserl]
In the focus on the environing world, a constantly objective attitude, everything spiritual appeared to be based on physical corporeality. Thus an application of the mode of thought proper to natural science was obvious. For this reason we already find in the early stages Democritean materialism and determinism.47 However, the greatest minds recoiled from this and also from any newer style of psychophysics (Psychophysik). Since Socrates, man is made thematic precisely as human, man with his spiritual life in society. Man retains an orientation to the objective world, but with the advent of Plato and Aristotle this world becomes the great theme of investigations. At this point a remarkable cleavage makes itself felt: the human belongs to the universe of objective facts, but as persons, as egos, men have goals, aims. They have norms for tradition, truth norms - eternal norms. Though the development proceeded haltingly in ancient times, still it was not lost. Let us make the leap to so-called 'modern' times. With glowing enthusiasm the infinite task of a mathematical knowledge of nature and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinary successes of natural knowledge are now to be extended to knowledge of the spirit. Reason had proved its power in nature. 'As the sun is one all-illuminating and warming sun, so too is reason one' (Descartes). The method of natural science must also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spirit is real and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. With this the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantly dualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality -only split in two- embraces the one world; the sense of rational explanation is everywhere the same, but in such a way that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in which it can be universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-contained search for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychology or theory of spirit beginning with the ego in psychical self-experience and extending to the other psyche. The way that must be traveled is the external one, the path of physics and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, of the common will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like, are romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of concepts that have a proper sense only in the individual personal sphere. Spiritual being is fragmentary. To the question regarding the source of all these difficulties the following answer is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysical interpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naïve one-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of the spirit as reality (Realitat), presumably a real (realen) annex to bodies and having its supposedly spatiotemporal being within nature, is an absurdity.
[/quote]
All quotes from here: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html
This also sounds like Heidegger. The 'subject' should not be treated like a present-at-hand piece of nature. While this may be a good approach for curing cancer, it's inferior approach for figuring out who-not-what we are and who-not-what we should be.
Perhaps you mean that a philosophical explanation unties knots. Or helps the fly out of the bottle. I like that. And a related idea is that philosophy offers and criticizes general frameworks (like what counts as science and philosophy in the first place.) The ladder metaphor is great, too. Flies in bottles, disposable ladders...these metaphors are 20th century [s]theology[/s] ur-science.
On the issue of the subject, it seems that isolating some strictly metaphysical or non-empirical subject is equivalent to saving philosophy as metaphysics. To me the 'I' has its meaning within an entire system of signs and conventions for their use. That's why Husserl/Derrida on repetition are so important. Plato's realm of forms can be naturalized. Sharing in language is sharing in norms of intelligibility. To me this embodied sign-system is an operating system that we can't get behind, an abyssal ground. 'It is there, like the world.' The intuition is that pure literal meaning is grasped by the subject as a [s]sense-organ[/s] meaning-eye. This meaning-eye is the same in all of us, and it allows us all to grasp the same set of pure, literal meaning. If we talk to ourselves, the phonemes don't matter. Such words might be ambiguous to those who overhear us or read our diary, but in the moment of speaking we know exactly what we mean. Of course such pure literal meaning must be translatable in principle. Eternal, universal knowledge cannot be trapped in English or French, etc. Is this not the non-empirical object of philosophy? This immaterial meaning-organ and its immaterial meanings? (Or are there just immaterial meanings among which the meaning-organ is an explanatory posit, a convenient noun to tie a bundle of thoughts to a body and the word 'I' which must correspond to a spiritual object?)
[quote=Bohr]
The experimental practice presupposes a certain pre-scientific practice of description, which establishes the norm for experimental measurement apparatus, and consequently what counts as scientific experience.
[/quote]
[quote=Husserl]
The investigator of nature, however, does not make it clear to himself that the constant foundation of his admittedly subjective thinking activity is the environing world of life. This latter is constantly presupposed as the basic working area, in which alone his questions and his methodology make sense.
...
In so far as the intuitive environing world, purely subjective as it is, is forgotten in the scientific thematic, the working subject is also forgotten, and the scientist is not studied.
...
It is true, of course, that since Kant we have a special theory of knowledge, and on the other hand there is psychology, which with its claims to scientific exactitude wants to be the universal fundamental science of the spirit. Still, our hope for real rationality, i.e., for real insight, is disappointed here as elsewhere.
[/quote]
What counts as real insight? If certain knots are untied, if prediction and control is increased, then progress is made. But there is an itch for something ultimate, it seems. To plug directly into the mystical Logos. And yet I agree with Derrida that we don't know exactly what we are talking about, or at least that the perfect presence (here before me and now) of clear literal meaning is a or the central myth of philosophy, which isn't to deny it a certain truth or worth.
See this
Thanks for the link. It encouraged me to find a pdf of Consciousness Explained --easily foundvia googling.
Here are some clarifying quotes:
[quote=Dennett]
There is the lurking suspicion that the most attractive feature of mind stuff is its promise of being so mysterious that it keeps science at bay forever.
This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, its most disqualifying features and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up (as in Figure 2.4, page 38).
[/quote]
On this point I side more with Dennet, While I think there is a certain necessary contingency with respect to the world as a whole, in all other cases we can and do look for useful relationships. Inasmuch as dualism 'smells' like a god-of-the-gaps strategy, it is offputting to those who want more insight and power, which is to say knowledge. Dualism also connects perhaps to preserving philosophy as an armchair science of the spiritual, just as Kant 'had to deny knowledge to make room for faith.
This quote makes it clear that Dennett does after all believe in consciousness.
[quote=Dennett]
So let's take a brief tour of the phenomenological garden, just to satisfy ourselves that we know what we are talking about (even if we don't yet know the ultimate nature of these things). It will be a deliberately superficial introductory tour, a matter of pointing and saying a few informative words, and raising a few questions, before we get down to serious theorizing in the rest of the book. Since I will soon be mounting radical challenges to everyday thinking, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was simply ignorant of all the wonderful things that inhabit other people's minds. Our phenom is divided into three parts: (1) experiences of the "external" world, such as sights, sounds, smells, slippery and scratchy feelings, feelings of heat and cold, and of the positions of our limbs; (2) experiences of the purely "internal' world, such as fantasy images, the inner sights and sounds of daydreaming and talking to yourself, recollections, bright ideas, and sudden hunches; and (3) experiences of emotion or "affect" (to use the awkward term favored by psychologists), ranging from bodily pains, tickles, and "sensations" of hunger and thirst, through intermediate emotional storms of anger, joy, hatred, embarrassment, lust, astonishment, to the least corporeal visitations of pride, anxiety, regret, ironic detachment, rue, awe, icy calm.
[/quote]
But Dennett asks for trouble.
[quote=Dennett]
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for, is materialism: there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter — the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology — and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain. According to the materialists, we can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same physical principles, laws, and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition, and growth. It is one of the main burdens of this book to explain consciousness without ever giving in to the siren song of dualism.
[/quote]
This is a monistic materialism, it seems to me. I find it just as metaphysical as dualism. The 'physical' is just as slippery and caught up in a system of signs as the 'mental.' The physical/mental distinction and an everyday loose dualism are both quite useful. They prove their value as instruments. But I agree with Dennett that science and philosophy should generally seek knowledge and pierce that which seems mysterious and sacred.
Quoting Andrew M
Nahhh...., Robbie has experience of sticks on the ground and branches in trees, so he knows normally sticks aren’t bent in the way they seem when half i/half out of the water. He’ll just think that’s the weirdest stick he’s ever seen. Upon perceiving the stick without its illusory appearance, he’ll understand why it looked so weird. The bent stick isn’t a very good example anyway, because their illusion are so easily remedied, and anything easily remedied isn’t really a problem. The illusion of sunrise is much better, because it took so long to remedy, and because we thought of the sun as actually rising/setting for so long, we still use the terminology for it in common understandings.
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Not so sure, myself. I don’t know what it means for an object to have form in relation to a perceiver. What is the relationship between your form and my properties?
——————-
Quoting Andrew M
Then you are forced to admit to naming things, or at least to admit it is not a problem to name things, about which you know nothing whatsoever. In addition, you’ll find yourself unable to explain how it is that, sittin’ ‘round the dinner table as a kid, you didn’t understand what it meant when your parents talked about balancing the checkbook.
You’re talking about language in the sense of stringing symbols together to form a communication. I’m talking about the relation between a conception we think and the symbolism assigned that makes language possible. Because the same thing can be said in many different languages across cultures, and because the same thing can be said in exactly the same language regardless of culture, re: mathematics, and....as if that wasn’t enough...the same symbolism across cultures can indicate very different things, re: football, then it is readily apparent that experience of the thing being talked about, grounds the symbolism for talking about it.
Disclaimer: I detest language philosophy; its what professionals do because all the cool stuff’s been done already and they can’t think of a way to improve on it.
——————-
Quoting Andrew M
Understood, and I can see that as a logical condition. What would you say to this: all human thought is singular and successive. If such should be the case, then change in subjective condition (Bob racing, Bob winning) is necessarily a process in time.
——————-
Quoting Andrew M
See....I didn’t catch any of that from the passage. And I couldn’t unpack that last part at all. And I don’t understand “stamp-collecting”.
——————
Quoting Andrew M
No fair. We already know tails from legs. But if the very first naming of that wispy thing hanging off the south end of a north-bound horse was “leg”, or whatever.....that’s what we’d be calling it today, and all horses would have but one leg.
What is a conceptual scheme?
Sorry about pluralizing your buddy.
OK, but if you are not going to support any claim that there are two radically different substances or realms or dimensions, or whatever term you want to use, to reality, then you are pretty much left with some kind of monism, no?
And if what science can deal with is, by definition, only the physical, and there is no other substance, realm or dimension, then a monistic materialism would seem to logically follow.
Of course we can do the Kantian move and say that we don't, and can't, know what that which appears to us as the physical "really is in itself"; but since that can never be known it is irrelevant to our inquiries, unless we want to illegitimately use it to reify our spiritualist fantasias (in other words practice traditional metaphysics and theology which are the very things Kant is working against).
(I am aware that Kant offers what he sees as practical reasons for believing in God, Freedom and Immortality, but that is a separate entirely ethical issue and has nothing to do with what we are justified in thinking regarding either ontology or metaphysics).
I also acknowledge that there can be a profound aesthetic dimension to "spiritualist fantasias", but again that fact says nothing about what we ought to believe regarding metaphysics or ontology.
Because, as Husserl explains in Crisis of European Sciences, Descartes' depiction of 'res cogitans' leads to it being characterised as a literal substance, something that objectively exists (or doesn't exist). Whereas I say that because you can never get outside consciousness, then it is never amongst the things that exist. It doesn't exist anywhere at all, certainly not 'in' brains or 'in' minds.
That is why I keep referring back to the passage in the Upanisad about the 'unknowability of Brahman'. 'The eye cannot see itself, it can only see another'. This is also at the basis of an article by Michel Bitbol, 'It is not known but it is the knower'. This requires a radical re-orientation in order to grasp it, something like a gestalt shift (and I'm sure the inventors of gestalt had just this kind of perspective in mind.
Quoting Janus
Take it up with John Searle, then.
Dennett is not an eliminativist (listen to the interview with Sean Carroll I linked) and nor does he deny that we have what we call "first person experiences"; he's not that stupid. What he says is that those experiences are not what we think they are.
I find it incredible that after all these years you are still indulging in this kind of ignorant Dennett-bashing, while continuing to fail to provide a shred of evidence from Dennett's own words to support what you are claiming.
:grin:
Consciousness understood in this way is like being itself. As someone once muttered, being is not itself an entity. Human existence is its there.
[quote=Sartre]
Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
[/quote]
Or (this is more what you are saying, I think) Wittgenstein:
[quote=Wittgenstein TLP 5.62 on]
https://ia801901.us.archive.org/4/items/jstor-2011942/2011942.pdf
In fact what solipsism means, is quite correct, only it cannot be said, but it shows itself. That the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which only I understand) mean the limits of my world.
The world and life are one.
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing. If I wrote a book “The world as I found it”, I should also have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made.
The subject does not belong to the world but it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be noted? You say that this case is altogether like that of the eye and the field of sight. But you do not really see the eye. And from nothing in the field of sight can it be concluded that it is seen from an eye.
…
This is connected with the fact that no part of our experience is also a priori. Everything we see could also be otherwise. Everything we can describe at all could also be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori.
Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
There is therefore really a sense in which in philosophy we can talk of a non-psychological I. The I occurs in philosophy through the fact that the “world is my world”. The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world.
[/quote]
'I am my world.' 'Limit' is harder to parse. Consciousness is just being. Except we have reasons to use it in more practical ways. My headache is not your headache, etc. Where I am, death is not. Where death is, I am not. In other words, we have good reasons to treat consciousness as a kind of object in a brain, which can be soothed with aspirin or kind words. We have reasons to bring consciousness into the causal nexus, even if a more metaphysical approach would shrink it to a dimensionless point or go all the way and see that it's completely transparent and in fact just being, the 'there' itself.
Personally I don't find it that hard to grasp, but, like you, I've been reading crazy philosophers for a long time.
In some ways, you yourself as saying consciousness doesn't exist (as an object), which echoes William James.
I like his approach:
[quote=W James]
“As ‘subjective’ we say that the experience represents; as ‘objective’ it is represented. What represents and what is represented is here numerically the same; but we must remember that no dualism of being represented and representing resides in the experience per se. In its pure state, or when isolated, there is not self-splintering of it into consciousness and what the consciousness if ‘of.’ Its subjectivity and objectivity are functional attributes solely, realized only when the experience is ‘taken.’ i.e., talked of twice, considered along with its two differing contexts respectively but anew retrospective experience, of which that whole past complication now forms the fresh content.”
[/quote]
More generally, I like how Richard Bernstein interprets him:
[quote=Bernstein]
[James believes that philosophers] misunderstood their own conceptual distinctions. They have mistaken distinctions, which are useful and important for particular purposes, for the concrete reality of experience itself. They have been guilty of what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” and James calls “vicious intellectualism.” It is a fallacy that occurs when we mistake some abstraction or conceptual distinction (which is important for specific intellectual purposes) for the concrete reality of experience itself. It is a fallacy that according to Whitehead, James, and Bergson has had disastrous consequences for a philosophic understanding of the world. Abstractions are important; we cannot think without them. But abstractions are abstractions from a concrete reality.
[/quote]
The mental/physical distinction is useful and sensible in many contexts. And in these useful contexts there is no chasm. The surgery didn't hurt because I was giving general anesthesia. We constantly invoke a causal nexus that includes both the mental and the physical. Meta-physicians who insist on making these distinctions absolute and foundational rather than instrumental and subject to revision create new, unnecessary problems.
Both quotes from:
http://faculty.fiu.edu/~hauptli/James'DoesConsciousnessExistandTheContinuityofExperience.htm
Right! Precisely! I've been trying to make this point. Very good sources and quotes, I will spend some time on that last one in particular. Thanks.
I understand why someone might see it that way, but I don't. My dodge is to not insist on treating various useful distinctions as absolute. No need to officially be a dualist or a monist. Instead we operate in concrete contexts, employing our linguistic knowhow in particular situations. I'm impressed by Saussure's notion of relational identity. Derrida took it and ran with it, but much of what I love in Derrida is also in Saussure.
[quote=link]
Saussure argued that signs only make sense as part of a formal, generalized and abstract system. His conception of meaning was purely structural and relational rather than referential: primacy is given to relationships rather than to things (the meaning of signs was seen as lying in their systematic relation to each other rather than deriving from any inherent features of signifiers or any reference to material things). Saussure did not define signs in terms of some essential or intrinsic nature. For Saussure, signs refer primarily to each other. Within the language system, ‘everything depends on relations’ (Saussure 1983, 121). No sign makes sense on its own but only in relation to other signs. Both signifier and signified are purely relational entities (ibid., 118). This notion can be hard to understand since we may feel that an individual word such as ‘tree’ does have some meaning for us, but Saussure’s argument is that its meaning depends on its relation to other words within the system (such as ‘bush’).
...
Saussure emphasized in particular negative, oppositional differences between signs. He argued that ‘concepts . . . are defined not positively, in terms of their content, but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each most exactly is being whatever the others are not’ (Saussure 1983, 115; my emphasis).
[/quote]
https://slavicgf.sitehost.iu.edu/assignments/Chandler_ch1_pt1.pdf
[quote=Saussure]
The notion of value . . . shows us that it is a great mistake to consider a sign as nothing more than the combination of a certain sound and a certain concept. To think of a sign as nothing more would be to isolate it from the system to which it belongs. It would be to suppose that a start could be made with individual signs, and a system constructed by putting them together. On the contrary, the system as a united whole is the starting point, from which it becomes possible, by a process of analysis, to identify its constituent elements.
[/quote]
[quote=Flores]
For Saussure, there are no objects (words/texts/others) that carry inherent, autonomous, "positive" meaning: there are only points of view whose meanings depend on their interrelatedness: Saussure states that "in language there are only differences without positive terms" (LT 88). Signifiers (sound images) and signifieds (concepts/meanings) are not fixed and universal and do not simply reflect or represent prior categories (the world/ideas/forms): language articulates or makes such categories and concepts possible. Because there is no necessary or inherent relation between words and objects, the relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (e.g., similar meanings correspond in practice rather than in some natural or essential way to different words across languages or across time as words change). Yet because the sign's structure is arbitrary, it is subject both to history and to a synchronic study of its relational function within a signifying system (la langue) that is not arbitrary but conventional and socially constructed. To explain a signifying action (individual utterance, speech act, parole) is therefore to relate it to the underlying system of norms (conventions/practices) that makes it possible: hence, a structural rather than a strictly causal explanation (synchronic rather than diachronic/historical).
[/quote]
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~sflores/saussure.html
I suppose I'm guilty of a kind of structural holism, but I'm not at all against ten thousand less metaphysical and scientific attempts to explain consciousness, etc. From an instrumentalist point of view, we want prediction, control, and of course the criticism, construction, and destruction of stragetic frameworks within which such is possible. And of course we want the technology of morale (orienting myths, etc.)
Awesome! I'm glad to understand you and to have provided helpful links.
If one insists on identifying what science deals with as the physical, then perhaps. I still find that too metaphysical, though I guess the 'physical' is a codeword for an anti-metaphysical attitude that I can relate to.
[quote=Wittgenstein On Certainty]
35. But can’t it be imagined that there should be no physical objects? I don’t know. And yet “there are physical objects” is nonsense. Is it supposed to be an empirical proposition?—And is this an empirical proposition: “There seem to be physical objects”?
36. “A is a physical object” is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn’t yet understand either what “A” means, or what “physical object” means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and “physical object” is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity, …) And that is why no such proposition as: “There are physical objects” can be formulated. Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn.
...
476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books,
sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.
Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a
unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding
question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence
of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?
477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition
exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the
opposite?
For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?
478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a
mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
[/quote]
https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/files/wittgenstein-on-certainty.pdf
I'm tempted to say that metaphysics believes and traffics in the fantasy of context-independent meanings, as if 'mental' or 'physical' out of all context were much worth talking about.
'The mind is [just] the brain' is a nice aphorism if the point is to explain the mind as much as possible in terms of the brain, but it's also a bit trollish. Exaggeration, click-bait?
Quoting Janus
I like that you mention Kant's belief in God, Freedom, and Immortality. Perhaps such beliefs motivated to some degree his distance from Locke. I also agree that Kant was working against traditional metaphysics and theology. My own POV is maybe a kind of naturalized and socialized post-Kantianism. For me, the spiritual dimension is also roughly aesthetic. At the same time, that is in my view a kind of ontological-metaphysical commitment. 'Spirituality is [just] thoughts, metaphors, feelings, rituals.' I mostly agree, but that 'just' is not some neutral judgment. As I see it, my atheism is not perfectly justified or justifiable. Top-level frameworks are perhaps always leaps to some degree. And the 'we' of science tacitly involves some commitment to a rationality that is something like a spiritual project. (I embrace this project, but that too could be worked into a causal nexus or metaphorical top-level vision of reality.)
Surely science deals with the material or physical world, though; the world as revealed to us by the senses (or augmented senses)? What else could it deal with?
I walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what’s going on in your brain right now?
Or, I walk up to a guy, show him a Rorschach, ask him.....what does this look like to you.
Which question will he answer?
Humans don’t express thought in terms of brain mechanics. Even though natural law is its ground, the human does not think in terms of charge, spin, quantum number, activation potential and such. So the advantage to calling the whole thing rational thought, is the absolute impossibility of individual comprehensions in particular and thereby meaningful communication in general given from it, in any other terms.
Either. It depends on whether they know the answer to the first. A neuroscientist or a psychologist might answer the first. A student would certainly answer the first if it was asked in a lecture about computational neuroscience.
It's still contextual.
Quoting Mww
I have tried several times, honestly, but I'm afraid I still don't know what you're saying here, sorry.
No worries, s’all good. My fault for posing somewhat vague scenarios, in the interest of reductionist simplicity.
I will offer that you are guilty of a Ignoratio Elenchi for giving correct technical answers to what was, for all intents and purposes, a strictly non-technical question. So you are right of course, but under unwarranted conditions.
Again....my fault. Can’t blame a guy for being correct.
I'm not treating any distinction as absolute. What we have been discussing is the question as to what can plausibly, coherently and consistently be said regarding the ontological question about whether there are different kinds of fundamental "stuff". Derrida rejects metaphysics and ontology altogether unless I am mistaken, so the question for him would have no definite meaning; and this makes your reference to him irrelevant to the context of this discussion, as far as I can see.
The salient point is: we know there is physical, material "stuff", "for us" at least, because that is what science can observe, measure and model. Do we know (in any kind of analogous inter-subjective way) that there is any other kind of "stuff"? Spiritual or mental stuff, for example? Do we even have any idea what it could mean for there to be such "stuff" ("stuff" that could be inter-subjectively dealt with in determinate ways as we do with physical "stuff")?
As I have already said we don't know how to answer any question that asks whether there is any kind of stuff at all in any absolute "in itself" sense, but that is irrelevant to the question under discussion, which is concerned with what we can justifiably say relative to our inter-subjectove experience of things.
I believe Wayf was criticized for not quoting Dennett. Perhaps you should quote Derrida to support your notion of his rejection of 'metaphysics and ontology altogether.' While I don't claim to be a expert on his work, I've read enough of it (in English translation) to see how badly he tends to be caricatured.
I will requote for your convenience what I quoted before.
[quote=Derrida]
In order for my "written communication" to retain it function as writing, i.e., its readability, it must remain readable despite the absolute disappearance of any receiver, determined in general. My communication must be repeatable -- iterable -- in the absolute absence of the receiver or of any empirically determinable collectivity of receivers. Such iterability...structures the mark of writing itself, no matter what particular type of writing is involved (whether pictographical, hieroglyphic, ideographic, phonetic, alphabetic, to cite the old categories). A writing that is not structurally readable -- iterable -- beyond the death of the addressee would not be writing.
...
What holds for the receiver holds also, for the same reasons, for the sender or the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. When I say "my future disappearance", it is in order to render this proposition more immediately acceptable. I ought to be able to say my disappearance, pure and simple, my nonpresence in general, for instance the nonpresence of my intention of saying something meaningful , of my wish to communicate, from the emission or production of the mark. For a writing to be a writing it must continue to "act" and to be readable even when what is called the author of the writing no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed, be it because of a temporary absence, because he is dead or, more generally, because he has not employed his absolutely actual and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his desire to say what he means, in order to sustain what seems to be written "in his name. " One could repeat at this point the analysis outlined above this time with regard to the addressee. The situation of the writer and of the underwriter is, concerning the written text, basically the same as that of the reader. This essential drift bearing on writing as an iterative structure, cut off from all absolute responsibility, from consciousness as the ultimate authority, orphaned and separated at birth from the assistance of its father, is precisely what Plato condemns in the Phaedrus. If Plato's gesture is, as I believe, the philosophical movement par excellence, one can measure what is at stake here.
[/quote]
How am I applying this in our context? The point is that we don't look into our souls or the realm of forms to find some magical meaning that corresponds to 'mental' or 'physical.' Both signs are caught up in social conventions, ways they tend to be and are intelligibly used in various contexts. The vice of philosophers is the fantasy of the celestial dictionary, crammed with one [s]size[/s] definition fits all (contexts.) And we also then need the subject as meaning-organ to scoop up all of these essences of Pure Mind. An alternative approach is understand 'subject' and 'meaning' as more signs in the system.
Quoting Janus
Note that you use 'stuff.' Then you use 'for us.' All this takes us right back into metaphysical confusion. There is 'stuff' ---for us. ' It's all physical.' 'Ah, but it's physical for us. So it's all mental!' And then you imply that science can only observe 'physical' stuff, but that would make psychology (which claims to study behavior and mind) and Dennett's work impossible too --unless we are back to the caricature of Dennett denying consciousness. Then there's sociology. Physics isn't all of science. More practically, aspirin and Novocain are judged/tested in terms of the 'mental.' We include both 'mind' and 'matter' in our explanatory causal nexus all of the time. 'The surgery didn't hurt because they put me under.' And as Husserl & Bohr note in quotes above, science only makes sense in a life-world that includes ordinary language.
You also ask whether we have any idea of what other kind of stuff than the 'physical' there could be or what we could mean by that. But then you use 'intersubjectively' without hesitation, as if this didn't invoke that other kind of stuff at least in a loose way.
Quoting Janus
'Our intersubjective experience of things' is already loaded with idealism. So the real world is the intersection of our 'dreamworlds'? Or (where I think we agree) 'intersubjective' hints at social conventions , norms of intelligibility and epistemic norms. It's only in terms of such norms that they can be questioned and modified (Neurath's boat.) And it's only in terms of ordinary talk about 'mind' and 'matter' (largely a matter of blind skill that is trained into us) can be rarefied into metaphysical exaggeration: 'All is mental' or 'the mind is the brain.' To some degree we can make our tacit skill in navigating social conventions and life itself explicit. But it's not clear that we need to figure out the cosmic truths of the 'mental' and 'physical' and 'the thing-in-itself' outside of all contexts.
As to there being or not being mental "stuff": remember the point I made was that there is no determinate mental "stuff". Of course we can and do say there is mental stuff going on, and we seem to naturally and unreflectively fall into a dualist mode in imagining that there is some immaterial substance involved in the mental stuff we say is going on. But if the indeterminate mental stuff going on is really just an emergent property or attribute of the the determinate physical stuff (which given what we know, seems most reasonable), then we have no need of, or rational justification for, dualistic metaphysics.
I didn't pay that much attention to this passage when first cited (as Derrida is not on my reading list), however on re-reading it, I think I can see the point.
When he says that 'To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive' I think what he's wanting to argue is that symbolic communication (of any kind) must have real meaning, or a real reference, if it is not simply idiosyncratic to the one who generates it. (Note - the root of 'idiot' is the same as 'idiosyncratic', i.e. someone who cannot be understood by anyone else or who speaks in a language that only he understands).
In other words, he's arguing that for writing to be writing, it has to have real meaning, i.e. meaning that is not simply dependent on the minds of either the writer or reader. So even though it can only be interpreted by a mind capable of reading, it is not dependent on that mind, but has a reality of its own.
Am I getting close?
As I understand him, I agree with you that symbolic communication cannot by purely idiomatic, and this is close to Wittgenstein's denial of private language. In this special sense, the community is prior to the individual subject as speaker of the language. 'Language speaks the subject' means, as I read it, that the 'subject' is one more sign caught up in norms of intelligibility.
But Derrida argues against a pure ideality. And the system of language is more important than the individual sign. I'll quote from a translator's intro to one of Derrida's classic and early works, Speech and Phenomenon.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8261/6adfe3d796df144ba6e3ef8300e160c54635.pdf
[quote= link]
Following Saussure, Derrida maintains that linguistic meaning is not so much the product of an explicit meaning-intention as it is the arbitrary configuration of differences between signs. Meaning derives from the distance that extends between one particular sign and the system of other signs in linguistic use. It is this differential character of signs which must first be reckoned with, and this results from conventions existing within language; it is not a matter of meaning-intentions that supervene from without. There is no meaning, no signified content, that stands above and is free from this play of differences. Nor could meaning withstand the continuous shifting of differences, the continuous sedimenting of traces, as some ideal identity. For Derrida, there is only a likeness or sameness to meaning, which is constituted across the history of everchanging usage. Absolute objectivity, therefore, could never be claimed for meaning (yet for Husserl, the highest degree of objectivity is that of absolute ideality, the perfect identity of an omnitemporal meaning). What is striking in Derrida's claim is the objection that linguistic meaning can never be completely present. There can never be an absolutely signified content, an absolutely identical or univocal meaning in language. All these values are denied to meaning once we admit its dependence upon nonpresent elements. Meaning can never be isolated or held in abstraction from its context, e.g., its linguistic, semiotic, or historical context. Each such context, for example, is a system of reference, a system of signifiers, whose function and reality point beyond the present. What is signified in the present, then, necessarily includes the differentiating and nonpresent system of signifiers in its very meaning. We can only assemble and recall the traces of what went before; we stand within language, not outside it.
[/quote]
We might say that there is a system of quasi-forms (signifieds), but its ideality is not pure and the system is subject to modification. Historicity & finitude. We stand within the talk of our time, not outside, though we try. That (present) signs are largely their differences from other (nonpresent) signs becomes more concrete if one reads in more detail from Saussure. Surprises follow from the arbitrary nature of the sign. But it goes back to Aristotle, who is quoted in the intro.
[quote= Aristotle in De Interpretatione]
A name is a spoken sound significant by convention, without time, none of whose parts is significant in separation. .. . I say 'by convention' because no name is a name naturally but only when it has become a symbol. Even inarticulate [agrammatoi] noises (of beasts, for instance) do indeed reveal something, yet none of them is a name.
[/quote]
Here is more of the subject being 'spoken by language' (a 'product' of the sign system).
From the same book:https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8261/6adfe3d796df144ba6e3ef8300e160c54635.pdf
[quote=Derrida]
When I say /, even in solitary speech, can I give my statement meaning without implying, there as always, the possible absence of the object of speech—in this case, myself? When I tell myself "I am," this expression, like any other according to Husserl, has the status of speech only if it is intelligible in the absence of its object, in the absence of intuitive presence—here, in the absence of myself. Moreover, it is in this way that the ergo sum is introduced into the philosophical tradition and that a discourse about the transcendental ego is possible. Whether or not I have a present intuition of myself, "I" expresses something; whether or not I am alive, I am 'means something'
[/quote]
I also requote Culler in this new context, for there is no perfect repetition.
[quote=Culler]
What Freud, Saussure and Durkheim seem to have recognized is that social sciences could make little progress until society was considered a reality in itself: a set of institutions or systems which are more than the contingent manifestations of the spirit or the sum of individual activities. It is as though they had asked: “what makes individual experience possible? what enables men to perceive not just physical objects but objects with a meaning? what enables them to communicate and act meaningfully?” And the answer which they postulated was social institutions which, though formed by human activities, are the conditions of experience. To understand individual experience one must study the social norms which make it possible.
[/quote]
links quoted in previous post
That what I vaguely mean by 'socialized Kantianism.' The story of anti-realism largely moves in this direction.
Here's Jameson's emphasis on the holism involved.
[quote=Jameson]
It is not so much the individual word or sentence that ‘stands for’ or ‘reflects’ the individual object or event in the real world, but rather that the entire system of signs, the entire field of the langue, lies parallel to reality itself; that it is the totality of systematic language, in other words, which is analogous to whatever organized structures exist in the world of reality, and that our understanding proceeds from one whole or Gestalt to the other, rather than on a one-to-one basis.
[/quote]
https://slavicgf.sitehost.iu.edu/assignments/Chandler_ch1_pt1.pdf
I think Saussure is wrong on that. I'm sure both modes are employed. It would make little sense to do it one way or the other. A bush is just a parametric variant of a linguistic tree concept, so there is no need to instantiate one as a negative of the other b/c they are in fact on a continuum of the same parametric variables on the same model (e.g., has roots, trunk, branches, leaves, etc.) where the bush might be a shorter, wider, more leaf/branching density, less trunk thickness, etc.
how would Saussure (et. al.) refute my above positive meaning of a linguistic tree vs bush concepts?
Fair enough.
Quoting Janus
Fair enough. I think we agree on that point. But I don't see why there should be some kind of determinate physical stuff either. (I don't really want to say that 'there is not determinate stuff' but that other approaches seem more promising.)
Quoting Janus
To be clear, I'm not defending a dualistic metaphysics. Personally I'm not crazy about the 'really just as emergent property.' It's still too metaphysical. Better to say perhaps that treating mind as a function of matter in certain contexts is useful. I like the spirit of the empiricists. I love Hobbes.
I understand your point, but expressing such a continuum would require an infinite number of signs. To be sure, individual human beings might have trouble choosing between 'bush' or 'shrub' in a particular situation. The boundary might be undecidable. The quote below might clarify the issue (difference between the system and its use.)
I think a better argument against Saussure is our intuitive notion that individual signs hook up to individual intuitive content. But I don't think Saussure would deny it. Instead he stressed what might not be obvious to a non-linguist. (I'm not a linguist. I'm just studying Saussure lately and finding it illuminating.)
[quote=link]
Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speaking") are linguistic terms distinguished by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics. Langue encompasses the abstract, systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system; it is independent of, and pre-exists, individual users. Langue involves the principles of language, without which no meaningful utterance, "parole", would be possible. Parole refers to the concrete instances of the use of langue. This is the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject.[1] Saussure did not concern himself overly with parole; however, the structure of langue is revealed through the study of parole.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_and_parole
I disagree, at least b/c in reality/practice there are a very finite set of linguistic object categories. I think you misunderstand my linguistic continuum to be like a number line. It is a quantized parametric continuum with a cloud of parametric variances (or fuzzy linguistic membership degree labels) separating adjacent sub-categories on the multi-dimensional linguistic model. Also, it is quite easy for a cNN to be trained to learn the hyper-planes that separate/clusters into the various object categories, and those could be linguistically labelled as such.
Quoting jjAmEs
indeed, b/c they mean the same thing! :grin:
Definition of bush. (Entry 1 of 8) 1a : shrub especially : a low densely branched shrub. b : a close thicket of shrubs suggesting a single plant. 2 : a large uncleared or sparsely settled area (as in Australia) usually scrub-covered or forested : wilderness —usually used with the.
Quoting jjAmEs
I don't understand. Seems way too vague to be useful. can you pls clarify in concrete terms, example(s) like I did mine.
[quote= Saussure]
A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept [signified] and a sound pattern [signifier]. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a ‘material’ element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.
[/quote]
To make this concrete and to amplify it, consider that voices vary. The word 'fish' sounds different as different individuals pronounce it. We can recognize a friend's voice over the telephone for instance. So it's not just that the sound 'image' is immaterial. It also has to be classified.
And then handwriting also varies. We don't all write zipcodes on envelopes the same way. Software can be trained to classify handwritten digits. Add to this the arbitrariness of the sign (what sound or shape we use doesn't matter) and the 'immateriality' of language becomes vivid. All the same it needs a medium.
Here's a great video by a great maker of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk
Perhaps this 'immateriality' of language has tempted us to think of an immaterial subject.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
That sounds like you agreeing! My point was/is that we use a finite set of signs. Perhaps re-read and see if it makes more sense. And I know about such classifiers. Funny you mention them. I just used them as an example in my previous post.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
I'll share a link with you. It's pointless to debate Saussure without you looking into him and getting the big picture. Also, if you read over the last few pages of this thread, you'll have some context. Without that context, of course it's vague! And that's one of the points made in this thread, that context is crucial. (And I also don't want to repeat all the stuff I've already said on this thread and clog it up.)
https://slavicgf.sitehost.iu.edu/assignments/Chandler_ch1_pt1.pdf
not true. a sound pattern, after being converted to its electrical wave analog, is broken up into all kinds of meaningful physical features, many of which are well known (e.g., Hz, power, envelope, wavelets, harmonics, echos, reverb, etc., etc.). all of those parametric features can be captured as non-verbal linguistic labels, some of which can later aggregate into verbal linguistic meanings. As such, verbal linguistic meanings are not necessarily based on signs from the raw sensory signal, but actual sensor features (like the visual example for leaves on the tree are not signs of leaves but observed pixel analog pattern of tree leaves). the simplest (yet still highly simplified) example is sound hits the ear, the tapered cochlea does an effective FFT the hairs at the end detect the high pitches and generate corresponding electrical signal, auditory circuits detect the high Hz signal content and trigger a non-verbal concept of high pitch is present and a verbal circuit for the word 'high pitch' is bound to and triggered by this pathway being stimulated. So, when the person said that sound has 'high pitch' they are not relating to a sign of the 'high pitch' in the sound but an actual measurement transducer into an abstract verbal linguistic analog. How would Saussure counter this actual way things work in our brain, documented for such simple cases.
not in my above example.
Quoting jjAmEs
this is just variance around central linguistic/visual model. There is nothing 'immaterial' about it. You just find the center of the training cluster and establish a linguistic category variance boundary (e.g., 1 standard deviation) to achieve a certain maximum error rate and you still have language based on actual raw data that is just characterized to be tolerant to parametric variation. Nothing to do with signs or abstractions creating immateriality. Please clarify further where my thinking is wrong there.
Quoting jjAmEs
OK. thx. I'll read it over soon and come back to you understandings, pros/cons. However, based on our above exchange, I'm not expecting it to overcome my counter examples...
how is that agreeing b/c sounds like you critiqued me arguing the opposite: " but expressing such a continuum would require an infinite number of signs." I answered the continuum is quantized into fuzzy categories so very finite.
What is reason? How do we know what things mean? Especially ambiguous things - handwritten things, ambiguous signs? We make judgments, we say ‘this means that’. And that can never have a materialist explanation. Materialism only ever talks in terms of physical causality - that’s what materialism means. But ‘cause’ in a rational sense, in the sense deployed by reason and language, comprises solely the relations between ideas. That’s why you can represent the same idea in completely diverse ways.
Exactly the thing I’m NOT talking about. “Makes language possible” should have indicated I’m talking about the necessary a priori presuppositions for a particular human physical activity, not the enactment of it by means of its various indices.
(Repeat disclaimer here)
Sorry, but I've started reading your cite of Pierce, and, off-the-bat, the opener already tells me that it fails to overcome my above counter examples; e.g., my linguistic "High pitch" example. No sign was involved in that pathway from sound to word. Semiotics seems to be much more about dogma, and its ardent supports much more interested in being in the cult of that dogma than seeking the reality of how practical cognitive systems can and do robustly work. Until a Semiotics supporter logically and sensible overcomes my counter examples, I'll pay little respect/credence for it as a viable explanatory principle.
Can you (anyone) overcome my above concrete and simple counter examples?
see:
" Distinctively, we make meanings through our
creation and interpretation of ‘signs’. Indeed, according to Peirce, ‘we think only in
signs’ (Peirce 1931–58, 2.302). Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odours,
flavours, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs
only when we invest them with meaning. ‘Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a
sign’, declares Peirce (ibid., 2.172). Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets
it as ‘signifying’ something – referring to or standing for something other than itself. We
interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of
conventions. It is this meaningful use of signs which is at the heart of the concerns of
semiotics."
The next paragraph actually uses sound as their example. See below . In my above example, one of the cochlear hairs/nerves will detect and convert a specific frequency, say 10 KHz, and say the neural circuits, up the abstraction chain to verbal, assign a verbal linguistic word of 'High Pitch" to signify the 10KHz detection . The fact that verbal communication is done using symbols does not mean that the word "High Pitch" is purely ‘psychological’ having no material substance analog for which is represents exists in the external world b/c conveying 'I hear a High Pitch" is equal to the physical fact that a 10 KHz sound wave impacted your ear. They are one and the same, grounded in the physical existence, not some sign/symbol of some psychological impression.
I read that whole chapter and am not impressed. Saussure’s original framework was clearly not workable or realistic, and his modern supporters fix only the most obvious flaws (e.g., admitting the signified can also be a physical object/event, not just a sign of a sign).
Again, can you (anyone) overcome my above concrete and simple counter examples? Seems pretty nonsensical to me otherwise.
----------------
the fact that it is some times more efficient to say what something is not does not mean/prove that it is always done that way in the brain. Often simpler to positively identify; e.g., color Red has such and such value ranges, vs. Red is not an infinite list of other colors.
re "signs. He argued that ‘concepts . . . are defined not positively, in terms of their content,
but negatively by contrast with other items in the same system. What characterizes each
most exactly is being whatever the others are not’ (Saussure 1983, 115; my emphasis).
This notion may initially seem mystifying if not perverse, but the concept of negative
differentiation becomes clearer if we consider how we might teach someone who did not
share our language what we mean by the term ‘red’. We would be unlikely to make our
point by simply showing that person a range of different objects which all happened to be
red – we would be probably do better to single out a red object from a sets of objects
which were identical in all respects except colour."
------------------------------------------
My cited passages where I see fails my counter examples:
"A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept
[signified] and a sound pattern [signifier]. The sound pattern is not actually a
sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s
psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his
senses. This sound pattern may be called a ‘material’ element only in that it is the
representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept. (Saussure 1983, 66)
For Saussure, both the signifier (the ‘sound pattern’) and the signified (the concept) were
purely ‘psychological’ (ibid., 12, 14–15, 66). Both were non-material form rather than
substance. Figure 1.2 may help to clarify this aspect of Saussure’s own model.
Nowadays, while the basic ‘Saussurean’ model is commonly adopted, it tends to be a
more materialistic model than that of Saussure himself. The signifier is now commonly
interpreted as the material (or physical) form of the sign – it is something which can be
seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted – as with Roman Jakobson’s signans, which he
described as the external and perceptible part of the sign (Jakobson 1963b, 111; 1984b,
98).
....
As for the signified, Umberto Eco notes that it is somewhere between ‘a mental
image, a concept and a psychological reality’ (Eco 1976, 14–15). Most commentators
who adopt Saussure’s model still treat the signified as a mental construct, although they
often note that it may nevertheless refer indirectly to things in the world. Saussure’s
original model of the sign ‘brackets the referent’, excluding reference to objects existing
in the world – somewhat ironically for one who defined semiotics as ‘a science which
studies the role of signs as part of social life’ (Saussure 1983, "
From my perspective, 'matter' and 'mind' are two more signs employed in our life-world or form of life. What you call 'reason' sounds like what I call being-in-language-with-others.
https://teachlearn.pagesperso-orange.fr/Heidlang.pdf
[quote=Heidegger]
Man is said to have language by nature. It is held that man, in distinction from plant and animal, is the living being capable of speech. This statement does not mean only that, along with other faculties, man also possesses the faculty of speech. It means to say that only speech enables man to be the living being he is as man. It is as one who speaks that man is-man. These are Wilhelm von Humboldt's words. Yet it remains to consider what it is to be called-man.
[/quote]
He eventually quotes Haman.
[quote=Haman]
If I were as eloquent as Demosthenes I would yet have to do nothing more than repeat a single word three times: reason is language, logos. I gnaw at this marrow-bone and will gnaw myself to death over it. There still remains a darkness, always, over this depth for me; I am still waiting for an apocalyptic angel with a key to this abyss.
[/quote]
Then comments:
[quote=Heidegger]
For Hamann, this abyss consists in the fact that reason is language. Hamann returns to language in his attempt to say what reason is. His glance, aimed at reason, falls into the depths of an abyss. Does this abyss consist only in the fact that reason resides in language, or is language itself the abyss? We speak of an abyss where the ground falls away and a ground is lacking to us, where we seek the ground and set out to arrive at a ground, to get to the bottom of something. But we do not ask now what reason may be; here we reflect immediately on language and take as our main clue the curious statement, "Language is language." This statement does not lead us to something else in which language is grounded. Nor does it say anything about whether language itself may be a ground for something else. The sentence, "Language is language," leaves us to hover over an abyss as long as we endure what it says.
[/quote]
To me the tautology language is language aims it emphasizing its primacy. An idealist might pose nature as derivative of 'spirit,' and the focus on language and the social is adjacent to idealism. A linguistic community can develop a tradition of explaining part of the world 'mechanically.' This part of the world, nature, ends up threatening 'spirit' as thinkers note that 'atoms and void' or their modern equivalent must somehow be the substratum of the human organism. So 'nature' is a creation of 'spirit' (a reasoning life-world-sharing community) and yet 'spirit' is (from a certain potent explanatory perspective) an epiphenomenon of nature. This gives us something like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip . But only perhaps if we insist that certain sentences remain forceful and true outside of all contexts. The world is 'really' mind or the world is 'really' matter. There's this stuff called 'meaning' or 'matter' that we are suppose to construct everything else out of. But language is neither/both, one might say. One is never done exploring this abyss.
[quote=Wittgenstein]
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
...
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.
[/quote]
I think you are missing the argument for the 'immateriality' of the sign. Let's record 100 different Americans speaking the word 'calculator.' No two of those Americans will say calculator in exactly the same way. The vibrations in the air will differ in each case. Yet we are also experts at recognizing the 'same' word in an 'infinity' of possible vocalizations. That sameness is 'ideal.'
Or consider a classifier for handwritten digits. There are many ways to write a 7. None of these are the official or perfect way. The classifier learns from labelled examples to simulate the human ability of finding the ideally same in the concretely different.
A second issue is the supposed physicality of 10 KHz sound. That mathematics is projected on the physical seems natural enough, but mathematics has the same kind of 'ideality' or 'immateriality' discussed above. To be clear, I'm not trying to derive the physical from the mental/ideal or the mental/ideal from the physical. I'm just trying to point out the complexity of the situation. I do not believe that the so-called 'physical' is as simple as some would like.
It's fine with me if you have no use for it. I suspect that dogma are functioning with your perspective as well. I find the idea of some perfectly neutral and presuppositionless perspective highly suspect.
I agree that disciplines concerned with prediction and control might not need much from semiotics or philosophy. A person can use the word 'physical' with a certain naivety (from my perspective) and still do important work, precisely because metaphysical concerns are often detached from differences that make a (practical) difference.
But anti-philosophy doesn't untie but merely cuts knots.
What is this center? The center of a category? Let's say you want to sort examples into 10 categories. It's that notion of the category that would be 'immaterial.' How is the category physical ? To reiterate, this is less about a defense of spooky objects than it is a challenge to the complacent use of 'physical.' In general I don't think we know exactly what we mean by words. We instead employ a know-how that was trained into us. So for me it's not obvious that there is some clean division between purely mental and purely physical realms. What we may share is a suspicion of traditional metaphysics. Where we may differ is that I know what 'idealists' are trying to point (the 'element of thought' in which tokens like 'physical' have any purchase in the first place.)
The word 'physical' is a token within our being-in-language-with-others and being-in-the-world Even if we can profitably understand the 'life world' as founded on the physical (which of course we can and do), this kind of reductive understanding depends on what it reduces. For practical purposes, one can be philosophically lazy and embrace the 'physical' as what 'really' is. Why this is fine is IMV simply because the technology works. We might not know whether reality is 'ultimately' so-called mind or so-called matter or whether 'reality is really made of X' is a bogus approach in the first place. We can live and die without resolution of these fancy metaphysical issues. There's money and power in tech that works. Primarily practical animals are impatient with the 'pure' or merely theoretical tensions in concept systems. Philosophers are itchy artists, unreasonably reasonable, perhaps 'uselessly' fussy. To make this more concrete (the earlier point):
[quote=link]
Husserl’s most important point here, which I think is not explicitly made in the present collection, is that the standpoint or attitude that gives us the life-world (whether the same as the natural attitude of Ideas, I or not) is not just another one of the various possible standpoints on the world. Husserl’s view is that the world must first be given to us, experienced by us, in some “natural,” pre-theoretical, way and that only on the basis of that pre-given world can we adopt more specific standpoints from which we may examine the world. (See Crisis, §34e.)
Majer and Føllesdal do emphasize the pre-givenness of the life-world as the background, usually unarticulated and unthematized, against which all our human activities are carried out and without which they would be impossible. Majer, relating Husserl’s ideas to those of David Hilbert and Hermann Weyl, emphasizes that even the activities involved in doing science presuppose an “irreducible fundament” (Weyl’s term) of ordinary, pre-theoretical, abilities. He quotes Weyl: “In physics, when we perform measurements and their necessary operations, we manipulate boards, wires, screws, cog-wheels, point and scale. We move here on the same level of understanding and action as the cabinet-maker or the mechanic in his workshop.” (Quoted by Majer, p. 58.) "’Lebenswelt‘," says Majer, "means a mode of life in which no theoretical knowledge is required, but only some practical abilities of understanding and acting are supposed, like those of the craftsman" (p. 58). These practical abilities — e.g., to use chalk to write symbols on a blackboard, to use a scale for measuring — are enablers of science as a cultural product, and it is the practical rather than the theoretical characteristics of chalk and scale, e.g., that explains their role here. Føllesdal and Friedman note, too, that it is the life-world that provides the ultimate justification for the claims of science: these claims rise or fall on how well predictions match up with life-world experience.
[/quote]
[quote=Husserl]
The contrast between the subjectivity of the life-world and the “objective,” the “true” world, lies in the fact that the latter is a theoretical-logical substruction … of something that is in principle not perceivable, in principle not experienceable in its own proper being, whereas the subjective, in the life-world, is distinguished in all respects precisely by its being actually experienceable.
[/quote]
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/science-and-the-life-world-essays-on-husserl-s-crisis-of-european-sciences/
We don't experience electrons directly. They are theoretical entities that somehow are what is 'really' there. But I prefer instrumentalism. We have ways of talking that allow us to create useful technology. The issue of what is 'really' this or that seems secondary, except as it plays a role in worldviews (technologies of morale like religion or attachment to universal rationality and humanism.)
All I'm saying is that there is, for all intents and purposes, determinate physical stuff, it's an epistemological claim, and I'm not trying to support any metaphysical claim beyond that or even that any such claim would be coherent.
It's about what we know (in the everyday, not in some absolutely certain, sense); we know there is physical stuff and that we can measure it, model it, theorize and make predictions about it. There is no analogous situation with any mysterious mental stuff that cannot be understood to consist in physical processes; i.e. neural structures and networks, and so on).
None of this diminishes in any way what we can feel in aesthetic, poetic or spiritual ways. We cannot understand (fully, at least) how such experiences are possible for physical systems, but that ignorance does give us any justification for believing in any mystical stuff, any justification for metaphysical dualism in other words.
Now I may have or have had experiences which lead me to believe in such mystical ideas, or at least entertain them as ideas, but such experiences can never be offered as inter-subjectively justifiable statements about some matters of fact or other.
That's all I've been trying to point out.
Sure. I know what you are getting at, and I agree. We have prediction and control, technology. Ordinary language deals with this stuff successfully, practically. No one has to know exactly what 'physical' is supposed to mean in order to employ the sign in context to get things done.
Quoting Janus
My point is that mental stuff is quotidian, and we deal with it in the same casual way. Science also deals with it.
[quote=Wiki]
Linguistics is the scientific study of language.[1] It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context.[2] Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning.[3]
[/quote]
In particular, signs are not material/physical. The notion of the same word being used by different humans with different physical vocalizations is already 'immaterial.' I gave an informal argument for this above. Even just counting employs the ideal identity of different objects.
We can and do have a science of form and meaning. Indeed, science exists within something like form and meaning. Our models themselves are conceptual and mathematical and not physical, even if they are (only sometimes) about what we conveniently if vaguely categorize as physical. The temptation seems to be to identify the physical with that which we can talk objectively about. I don't think the reduction of objectivity to (physical) objects works. To be objective is to be unbiased, 'not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.'
Quoting Janus
I agree. I'd just add that our position is not some neutral position. Others can and have taken such feelings for justifications. That we exclude such 'justifications' as invalid says something about our own commitments. Our ontological prejudices (our pre-grasp of the situation) tend to understand the 'spiritual' in terms of mundane things like feelings, thoughts, myths. (Or I think we agree here.) I'd probably stress the sociality of the 'spiritual,' and include my own anti-metaphysical biases as an expression of a Baconian (anti-)spirtuality. The reason for being skeptical about 'mystical' stuff is (to overstate it) because it does not give us reliable technology, including techniques for reliable prediction. Instead the 'mystical stuff' is more like a technology of morale --it works if and because you believe in it. In contrast, we have a more objective science that works whether or not one believes in it. We distrust it at our own risk.
Quoting Janus
We are basically on the same page on this particular issue. The essence seems to be that 'spirituality' is private matter. What's interesting is that such a view is public/dominant form of spirituality. Politics is applied religion, in other words, and the privatization of religion (which I am fine with) is the triumph of a particular (metaphorically) spiritual view.
Yes, but as a hypothetical entity. We can talk about ghosts as hypothetical entities as well, but we should resist the temptation to treat them as real.
Quoting jjAmEs
I call fire engines 'red' - what do you call them? ;-)
What you're referring to, of course, is how something appears to you. But in this case, it's more or less certain that things appear differently to each of us, at least to some degree, since a lot of things can affect that. We can appreciate this when we wear sunglasses.
So we can investigate what those conditions might be, from the reflective surfaces to the lighting conditions to the physical composition of our eyes and brains. In each case we're investigating real things, not hypothetical entities.
So none of this is a reason to treat how something appears to us as an entity itself. That's just sense-data which brings its own notorious problems. It's like treating the "bent"-stick-in-water as an entity in its own right.
Quoting Mww
Sure. However the semantic quibble for me is the assigning of agency to a faculty...
Quoting Mww
... and also here, the assigning of agency to (pure) reason. Only a human being is "tasked to achieve" something or "seeks for itself".
Your "except" above marks off our different approaches. You say mind is private because rationality transcends nature. I say mind is public because rationality is immanent in nature (and is thus observable). This is an example of reallocating facts - Ryle's logical cartography.
Quoting Mww
It's a reductionist slogan and, as you note, an empty conception.
Quoting Mww
I agree with the provided Bennett and Hacker quote, "Talk of the mind, one might say, is merely a convenient facon de parler, a way of speaking about certain human faculties and their exercise...". Whereas I reject the Cartesian-style conception of mind (and subject).
Quoting Mww
No, that's not the distinction. The distinction is between thinking (e.g., about a math problem) and the conclusion one reaches as the result of thinking (e.g., that 2+2=4).
So Alice might cognize that 2+2=4 after much cogitation. And note that she couldn't cognize that 2+2=5, since it's false - to cognize something imples that one has been successful - an achievement. Whereas Alice can nonetheless cogitate about two plus two equaling five or one hand clapping if that's her thing.
Put differently, it's like the difference between trying to find your keys (the task or process) and finding your keys (the achievement).
Quoting Mww
Where he says, "Our Reductionist had begun by assailing Cartesian and Platonic extravagances on the basis of what can be, in an ordinary way, observed."
Those extravagences (the "lavishness of the transcendentalist") are Descartes' res cogitans and Plato's ideal Forms.
Quoting Mww
Ryle mentions Kant earlier on:
Quoting Gilbert Ryle - Thinking and Saying
Hume reduces thinking to constant conjunctions. In response, Kant transcendentalizes thinking. Ryle suggests instead that thinking "is saying things to [one]self with a special governing purpose". That's a natural definition that is neither reducible to just talking to oneself nor appeals to anything that transcends what is observable.
Note that Ryle recognizes purpose (and logic and reason) as immanent in this world. Not in a reductionist sense (Nothing But, the machine) nor in a transcendent sense (Something Else As Well, the ghost).
Quoting Mww
Yes, knowledge is not possible without intelligibility. So the point at issue is whether that's because the conditions of experience transcend the natural world or because they are immanent in it.
For Kant, the a priori imposes controls on "the pryings of introspection". For Ryle, logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences and observations.
We're talking about the same thing, but just allocating them to different places.
Quoting Mww
Fair enough.
Quoting Mww
On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or invariant. We get a sense of how things can vary for different observers from, for example, color perception studies in animals and relativistic physics (reference frames).
Quoting Mww
Perhaps we're at cross purposes here - I don't understand what you're arguing above.
All I'm saying is that someone, somewhere, has to observe a tree (i.e., experience something) before people can meaningfully talk about trees (i.e., have language about something).
Edit: On rereading, I see that I misread your initial comment. We do agree that language always presupposes experience. Sorry about that!
Quoting Mww
I would deny that Bob racing and Bob winning are subjective conditions or thoughts at all, they instead take place in the world. Bob racing is a process that occurs over a period of time. Whereas Bob winning is a condition that obtains at a single point in time.
Quoting Mww
By stamp-collecting, I mean a purposeless sequence of actions. When Alice is looking for her keys, that does not consist of merely looking here and looking there (the Nothing But story). Instead Alice has a purpose that explains her looking, namely, that of finding her keys.
Now that purpose is not transcendent to her looking as a separate mental action (the Something Else As Well story), that purpose is instead immanent in her looking and is what makes her actions intelligible to others.
Quoting Mww
A way of thinking about the world.
In my contrived example, it would be a model of a horse as having four legs and a tail and an alternative model of a horse having five legs.
In science, it would include heliocentrism v. geocentrism, and classical physics v. quantum physics.
In the context of this thread, dualism and naturalism are different conceptual schemes.
Quoting Mww
I disagree with that. I can think of practical situations where knowledge is formed from information that is not intelligible; that is, I do not believe that it is a requirement that the info is capable of being understood or comprehended by the cognitive agent, it only matters, for example, that the info in question can be pattern matched and associated (even correlated) with something useful or meaningful or reduces the entropy of something else.
sure. Pattern/event/object 'A' is observed and found to occur semi-periodically; however, 'A' is not understood in any way, we can only detect its occurrence (think like a sub-atomic particle in an accelerator collision). We notice that most of the time shortly after 'A' is observed occurring a desirable, yet otherwise completely temporally unpredictable, resource/object 'B' will be available for a brief moment. Having knowledge of this causal association we prepare ourselves to take advantage of 'B', and right after detecting 'A" we were, finally, able to acquire 'B'. 'A' is like a sign, we don't have to know what the sign says or means, we just have to uniquely recognize that pattern which we don't understand (pattern matching, no comprehension needed).
I gave you one, actually.
see Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
so, we detected presence of a particle having a collision pattern like a Higgs boson would have with very high probability, so we conclude we have knowledge now that the theoretical Higgs field exists to give gravity to particles, never knowing or understanding what that Higgs particle really was, only that something having that mass/energy exists was enough it gain knowledge.
makes sense?
I don't think what the blare of a trumpet sounds like is all that comparable to a ghost. As for the word 'real,' that's a can of worms in itself. Out of all context, 'real' has no clear meaning at all. In this context, I think you inferring that the 'beetle' does not exist simply because it's 'invisible' in a certain way to language.
Quoting Andrew M
As I suggested to Wayf, the sign 'red' functions because we call the same things red. That is necessary and sufficient to ground the concept, it seems. At the same time, we have the word 'quale' to point at what almost escapes the language game. Paintings, music...these aren't just what we can say about them. To be sure, it looks impossible to be objective or scientific about qualia --more or less by definition. I assume non-sociopathically that you are not a moist robot and 'experience' life, no matter the constraints of what you can fit into ideal public intelligibility.
[quote="Andrew M;377599" ]
What you're referring to, of course, is how something appears to you. But in this case, it's more or less certain that things appear differently to each of us, at least to some degree, since a lot of things can affect that. We can appreciate this when we wear sunglasses.[/quote]
It seems to me by the first part of your post that 'how something appears to [me]' is not supposed to exist at all (is a hypothetical entity, like a ghost.) This 'we' seems to embrace the almost automatic transcendental pretense, which is that our inner lives share in the same structure. It's hard for me to believe that you and other human beings see the redness of the rose differently than me, though I don't see any proof could ever be given for or against. I also assume that when you put on sunglasses that the world looks dimmer to you, but that is talk of ghosts!
Quoting Andrew M
I like where you are coming from here. I haven't studied Ryle, but I find something like this in my favorite thinkers. I don't think there is clean break between the mental and the physical or between the self and others.
Yes and that's a fair example.
We have enough knowledge to formulate theories and make predictions even while lacking a deeper understanding about what is going on. On the other hand, the search for a theory of everything does presuppose that the world is intelligible, even if we can't make sense of it right now.
Yes, to say that we can hear the blare of a trumpet (and compare it with other sounds) is perfectly fine. It's the positing of qualia as a mind-dependent substance or property between us and the world that's the problem. That's the ghost.
Quoting jjAmEs
The word "appears" is ordinarily used when we are qualifying a statement in some way. For example, that the stick appears bent (when partially submerged in water). That's consistent with the stick being straight and it doesn't imply that there are bent-stick qualia. Similarly, if I said that the rose appeared pink, I'm speaking in a qualified way that suggests that it might not be pink in normal circumstances. Otherwise I would have just said that the rose was pink.
That's all ordinary use and perfectly fine. However in certain philosophical uses, an "appearance" becomes an entity in its own right that plays a "middleman" role in perception and experience. That's the ghost.
Sorry, but I would not tend to agree with that statement either. I do not think that intelligibility is primal when it comes to building knowledge. I expect utility is more primal because it requires less energy/work/knowledge to enable us to reduce/increase certain entropy as desired to achieve desired outcomes.
For example, quantum particles and their behavior is completely intelligible to us; however, we can develop and detect statistical (math) generalizations that predict their observed behavior good enough to use them in useful devices/methods or to predict when/where they may occur with what likelihood and at what energy level, all w/ little to know understanding of what they really are about.
I would tend to agree with that belief. In my current model, consciousness is an emergent 3rd entity that forms as a dynamic standing wave resonating with those as its boundary conditions. I am also leaning towards our internal consciousness being (maybe slightly) different than our social consciousness being (maybe slightly) different than our mind-body consciousness. So, Kant's cogito 'thinking' is far too simplistic, and misleading, to reason on what/if the internal "I" consciousness exists simply by virtue of his social consciousness questioning it, b/c they are possibly (likely) independent consciousness states, in my model. So, any reasoning applied to them might be like comparing apples to oranges to conclude bananas.
Reading back over I see that I somehow managed to completely misread your comment. We do agree that experience always comes before language.
I think its called "monism" as opposed to dualism.
It may be that people are driven more by utility than understanding. But that doesn't imply that that the universe can't be understood.
Quoting Theory of everything - Wikipedia
Note the terms "all-encompassing" and "fully explains". The universe can only be fully explained if it is intelligible.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
I assume you meant to say unintelligible there.
Quoting Sir Philo Sophia
That's true. But note that the proliferation of quantum interpretations also shows that people seek a deeper understanding of what is going on (beyond shut-up-and-calculate). And a complete explanation would also have utility.
Quoting Andrew M
The only way we couldn’t be agreeing, is if your use of the experience of a particular object followed by meaningful talk of it, is not agreeable with my use of the universal objects of all experience followed by meaningful talk of any of them. Or, for you, observation is not connected to experience, maybe?
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Point to....agreed, if “point to” means manually indicate a physical reality;
Has form......ok, but in relation to an observer is too ambiguous. In relation to can mean internal relation or external relation. Because you have stipulated pointing to, which implies external to the observer, dialectical consistency suggests form is external to the observer as well.
Is the externality of form because you speak from a doctrine of nominalism, insofar as form as a universal representation in intuition is denied? That’s fine, and because I speak from a conceptualist perspective, the root of our dissimilar epistemological metaphysics is given.
—————-
Quoting Andrew M
Then apparently, you have no reason to think Bob is thinking about racing and winning, as he goes about his worldly event, which you wouldn’t, if you deny subjective conditions. The only way to deny subjective conditions is to deny subjectivity, and by association, you must deny yourself as being a thinking subject. Hmmm.....who am I talking to, again?
——————
Quoting Andrew M
Oh. Thought so, just making sure. You know.....human understanding does that all by itself, without having to create a name for it. That’s its job, after all. Synthesize certain concepts in direct relation to observations. Of course, because of experience, a horse will have four legs, and a horse of any other alternative conceptual scheme won’t be a horse.
Quoting Andrew M
So theory became epistemological domain became conceptual scheme. I’m all for leaving well enough alone, myself.
————
Addendum: after hitting “post comment”, I see you’ve addressed the first of my easy parts. I don’t just erase it so you know I saw the original.
Thanks
Quoting Andrew M
I understand how assigning agency to a faculty sounds kinda hincky, but really....we only have two choices, within our current knowledge base. One is pure cognitive neuroscience, in which the brain is analyzed to a fare-thee-well but doesn’t tell us what we really want to know; the other is, we think our own cognitive, albeit speculative, metaphysics, which tells us exactly what we want to know, but has no means of empirical justification. The latter in general having been around grappling with the human experience a hellava lot longer than the former, but the former in general effecting the human experience with a hellava lot more power over a significantly lesser time than the latter, puts us into the cross-hairs of a major intellectual conundrum.
The use personal pronouns in the content of our communications merely from the demands of language, gives no logical ground for their origin. Agency is assigned to a faculty in cognitive metaphysics for the expressed purpose of giving that logical ground for the origin of that which the pronouns represent, and that for the excruciatingly simple reason that cognitive neuroscience doesn’t have the means for it.
Now, it is the common notion that pure empiricism is content to wait for its proper knowledge, while metaphysics creates its own, which is the kindly way of saying science is reluctant to invoke magic to get what it wants, while thumbing its collective nose at metaphysics for having no such trepidation. But what pure empiricism overlooks, is the fact that its logic is exactly the same logic employed by the speculative philosopher, and even if the empirical logic is practical, having real objects in its content, and the metaphysical logic is abstract, having merely possible objects in its content, it is still logic. So the reductionist attitude is that the scientist frowns on the metaphysician because the metaphysician can prove his theoretical tenets using a logical methodology, but the pure empiricist has nothing he can prove at all, still being stuck in the exploratory/experimental quagmire of his theoretical domain, notwithstanding his logical methodology, with respect to the assignment of agency.
All that being said, the hinckiness is quite evident, if one is inclined to insist there actually are faculties to which assigning anything at all makes sense. We both know there is no such thing as, e.g., a real, measurable faculty of representation, or a faculty that thinks, or that reason does things for itself. These are either mere figures of speech predicated entirely on the necessity for some arbitrary form of mutual interconnectivity. Or, if you wish.....
“....So since we could witness none of the things John Doe is doing were the required acts of having ideas, abstracting, making judgements, or passing from premise to conclusion, it would seem to be necessary to locate these actions on the boards of a stage to which only he had access. (...) The imputed episodes appeared to be impenetrably “internal” because they were genuinely unwitnessable. But they were genuinely unwitnessable because they were mythical. They were causal hypothesis substituted for functional descriptions of the elements of published theories ....”
(Ryle, 1949, pg 318)
Nevertheless, there are two instance where it is perfectly legitimate to insist on something, re: everybody thinks, and, no science is ever done that isn’t first thought. Put those two together, in a proper, logically consistent, theoretical system, and hinckiness disappears, justified by those very mythical, albeit quite causal, hypotheses.
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Quoting Andrew M
For humans anyway, to say experience transcends the natural world, is a contradiction, if it is the case that the conditions of experience are necessarily given from it. Kantian epistemology takes for granted the principles, which govern the conditions of experience, can be nothing but immanent, that is to say, strictly limited to the natural world......
“...we shall call those principles the application of which is confined entirely within the limits of possible experience, immanent; those, on the other hand, which transgress these limits, we shall call transcendent principles....”
(CPR, A296)
.....for no other reason than we ourselves determine the principles and we belong to the natural world. Nature being, of course, merely the manifold of occassions from which the principles can be thought. That things happen Nature is given; how things happen in Nature is determined solely by the investigating agency, the intelligibility of the former grounded explicitly in the a priori logical functions subsisting in the latter.
Quoting Andrew M
Why is introspection not one of those unwitnessable, imputed episodes mentioned above? That he uses it as a causal hypothetical sorta detracts from his chastisement of the “...great epistemologists Locke, Hume and Kant....”, doesn’t it? That’s fine, though; we all need words, concepts, and language to get our points across no matter the era of our theories.
I get the gist, though. It is pure reason that imposes controls on the extravagances of private cognition, and pure reason is always a priori, so.....close enough.
While I agree with Ryle that logical conditions are implicit in our practical experiences, the a priori has nothing to do with practical experience. I mean....that’s its distinction, having nothing to do with experience. So to reconcile, it must be that Ryle thinks logical conditions are themselves a priori, but if so, they cannot be implicit, but must be explicit. That is, logical conditions must be necessary, not just implied. We know this, because sometimes our observations contradict extant experience, and if the logical conditions weren’t already established, we wouldn’t have the means to recognize the contradiction.
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Quoting Andrew M
Thinking has a special governing purpose, but only an analytic, language, philosopher would call it saying things to oneself. While it may be a “natural” definition, it is only so for that very constant conjunction we use all the time without ever realizing that’s exactly what we DON’T do. We don’t speak when we think; we speak when we express what we think.
“....Thought is cognition by means of conceptions...”.
(CPR B94)
Why does that which is unobservable have to be transcendent? If the theoretical wavefunction collapse is unobservable in and of itself, is it therefore transcendent? Seems rather intellectually inconsistent, to categorically reject the unobservable in speculative metaphysics, yet glorify it in empirical physics.
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Quoting Andrew M
OK, sorry, but you specifically mentioned thinking and thinking deeply, so I just ran with it.
Quoting Andrew M
After much cogitation: Alice, assuming she already knows how to count, cogitates by assembling blocks by series of two’s, successfully achieves the cognizing of four by counting the totality of the series. So she couldn’t cognize five, because, according to you and Ryle, the logical conditions implicit in the observation, in this case, the counting, prevent it, but she could still cogitate it.
Alice barely knows how to count. How does she know about logical conditions? Kant has the answer; what does Ryle say?
Fun’s over.
(Sigh)
Quoting Mww
Yes it indicates a physical reality. Note that I reject an internal/external (or subject/object) dualism, so no such ambiguity arises on my model.
Quoting Mww
My position on universals is Aristotle's immanent realism. As against Nominalism and Platonic Realism in which we see, as Ryle puts it, "an Occam and a Plato skid into their opposite ditches".
Quoting Mww
He presumably would be, but need not be. Whether Bob wins the race or not depends on whether he crosses the finish line first, not on what he's thinking about.
Quoting Mww
As I've mentioned, I reject subject/object dualism. Minds don't think, human beings do.
To the fun stuff...
Quoting Mww
I agree with everything you say about "pure cognitive neuroscience" and "pure empiricism". You're making Ryle's point for him against the Reductionists. But, as discussed, I also reject Transcendentalism - they're two sides of the same dualist coin.
The third choice I'm suggesting assigns agency to the human being, not to an idealist mind nor to a materialist brain. Since you mention metaphysics, note that this third approach is found not just in ordinary language but also in Aristotle where particulars are the locus of activity (and also of cause and effect). A particular is not the material object of the Reductionist (e.g., Democritus), it is a matter/form compound (per hylomorphism). That precludes the need for the idealist subject of the Transcendentalist (e.g., Plato) since the form (morphe or eidos) of every particular takes on that role. So it's a holistic approach rather than a dualistic approach.
Per Aristotle, science investigates the nature of things. And his philosophy of nature explicates the logic of this investigation. Which also, as it happens, reflects back onto and includes the investigator (i.e., the human being themselves is a hylomorphic particular that can be investigated like any other particular).
To reiterate, dualism maintains a separation between subject and object. Whereas with hylomorphism, form and matter are inseparable aspects of every object.
Quoting Mww
Just when I thought we were going to agree, Kant adds an "on the other hand"!
This is where I say that we don't need the "on the other hand", and you will then say that things would be unintelligible (lacking the necessary resources to ground things). But Ryle discusses this:
This gets back to the earlier example of Bob winning the race. Contra both the Reductionist and the Transcendentalist, Bob winning the race is on the roster of observables.
Quoting Mww
The way I would put it is that those logical conditions are themselves discoverable (or, sometimes, negotiable). Bob might think that he has won the race, but then fails the subsequent drug test. He is disqualified even if he was unaware that that particular drug was on the ban list. So ours and his model for what it means to win the race can be subsequently revised. In which case we would retroactively change the language we use to describe Bob's race outcome - we thought he had won, but he hadn't. A metaphor here is that we are continually modifying the (logical) spectacles through which we view the world. Or, our experience of the world is like being on a boat that is continually being rebuilt while on the open sea. This applies not just to a human-created competition as is the case here, but generally to theories about the world (e.g., geocentrism / heliocentrism).
Quoting Mww
Ryle isn't saying that we verbally utter words when thinking. He is saying that thinking is the utilization of language (with a governing purpose). So we can certainly think without speaking. But it's also possible to speak without thinking. And to speak thoughtfully, and to think out loud. Again, just one action - two aren't necessary (though one could also think for a while, then speak).
Quoting Mww
The issue is that the unobservable is indistinguishable from a ghost. Ryle is arguing that the roster of observables is too short if it excludes thinking. We can observe that Le Penseur is thinking.
Quoting Mww
Some interpretations say that wavefunction collapse is an illusion, others that the wavefunction isn't real. So maybe not the best example for making your point. ;-)
Quoting Mww
The logical conditions are implicit in the language Alice uses to communicate and solve practical problems (whether in ordinary or specialized contexts). However she may not be able to explicitly articulate those logical conditions since that would require additional reflection and analysis, itself a skill.
It is similar to being able to play tennis without necessarily being able to theoretically explain what one is doing (as a coach would be able to do).
What was Kant's answer? That Alice automatically knows the logical conditions because they are a priori?
But we do know what it means, just as much as we know what any category means. The usual objection
is that we don't know what it "really" means, whatever that means.
Quoting jjAmEs
Science only deals with it insofar as it is believed to manifest as observable behavior or neural process, though, and that is not what we seem, by default as it were, to imagine the mental to be. We actually don't have any positive conception of the mental; it is usually defined merely apophatically (emptily) as "not physical".
Quoting jjAmEs
Signs are always in material/physical form. We do call notions of identity "immaterial" but they are really only formal approximations; nothing is ever "really identical" to anything else.
Quoting jjAmEs
Yes I'd agree with you that it is only in those terms that we can have any positive conception of the so-called spiritual.
Quoting jjAmEs
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. If you mean that although spirituality (faith) is a matter for the individual, nonetheless forms of spirituality, spiritual life, are never "private' but socially evolved, then I'd agree.
I am very disappointed in being sent to wiki.
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I get that hylomorphism attributes both matter and form to objects, such that form is relieved of its usefulness in minds. But I don’t get how that falsifies subject/object dualism itself. Aristotle grants that we think, for even the very opening paragraph of “Physics”, “...we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles...”, makes human thought explicit, of whatever kind it may be. As great length has been given in “Physics” to objects, and gives authority on the primacy of being of them and the relations between constituencies in them, it follows that such ontological predicates of objects are moot, if not irrelevant, if the reality of objects, whatever their constituency, is already presupposed. But referring to the quoted assertion, still leaves “we do not think we know a thing....”, which immediately invokes a subject/object dualism, insofar as there must be he who thinks himself acquainted with conditions and principles, and that to which the conditions and principles belong. So, yes, the internal/external dualism is eliminated by attributing form to objects proper, but eliminating internal/external dualism does not eliminate the subject/object dualism.
Of course, further examination of primary conditions and first principles, when found to be a functional acquaintance of the investigative agency himself, the necessity for subject/object dualism is given.
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Quoting Andrew M
No objections. Mind is nothing but an abstract placeholder, a euphemism for that which serves as the logical means for terminating the speculative tendency towards infinite regress. It’s just a common word for a transcendental idea. We could speak for hours without ever once mentioning the word, all the while having the idea as the silent ground.
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Quoting Andrew M
Given your inclination towards intentionality, wouldn’t you agree that if Bob is in the race, then he is racing, and if he is in fact racing, he thereby intends to win? If he’s even in the race presupposes he intends to win, otherwise he’d just be a member of a group going from point A to point B, but from that alone, or that in relation to a standard of some sort, it couldn’t be said he is racing.
So granting he is thinking about racing because he’s in the race, and he’s thinking about winning because that’s the intent of racing, then wouldn’t you also grant he has different ideas about one as opposed to the other? And if he has different ideas, he must have different thoughts, and if he has different thoughts, he must have different subjective conditions which facilitate one in succession to the other.
No, he need not be. But not much reason to be there if he isn’t. And he is there, so.......
I'm not arguing that it falsifies it. It's a different approach that has no use for it. For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's knowledge of them.
So, for example, the Earth orbited the Sun a billion years ago, well before life emerged to know about it. Thus there were particulars (objects) at that time, but no subjects.
Quoting Mww
What infinite regress? Is mind required for the Earth to orbit the Sun?
Quoting Mww
It's not so simple since "race/racing" can have different senses depending on the context. In our example, Bob is ostensively in a race. But if he doesn't intend to win then, as you say, he's not really racing, he's doing something else (e.g., pretending to race).
So, for example, Bob could have run in a race that he intentionally lost (e.g., he was being paid to lose) or unintentionally won (e.g., he was being paid to lose but the lead runner collapsed or was disqualified).
Quoting Mww
We can characterize Bob's actions in different ways, but there isn't a requirement that an action be preceded by a thought, or needs a thought at all (people sometimes do things without thinking). If there were a requirement then, since that thought is itself an action, it must be preceded by a further thought. And so on in infinite regress. As it happens, this is Ryle's regress argument. (And note Kant's anticipation of the argument.)
Bob's intention to race is immanent in his running (form and matter are inseparable) which is, in principle, observable. His intention isn't something over and above the running itself (which would be to separate form from matter).
Maybe....I dunno. Each of those doctrines have so many branches, there probably are some that interact as opposites of a dualism. I do favor methodological reduction, and transcendental philosophy, but I don’t have much to do with Transcendentalism the self-contained intellectual movement, except for Emerson and Thoreau, and that mostly from our common culture.
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Quoting Andrew M
And if agency, that is, rationality, morality, consciousness, intellect, are all predicated on either mind or brain, how is agency accounted for if not by those?
Quoting Andrew M
The modern subject/object dualism does not concern itself with the dual nature of real objects in the world. In transcendental philosophy, and perhaps post-medieval systems in general, the subject is he who considers the relationship between himself and those objects. In Aristotle, subject is what is being talked about, in which case the real physical object is the subject of discussion, and he talks about object as subject in at least two different ways, one in “Categories” and the other in “Physics”. All well and good, but not the same kind of subject/object dualism of the moderns.
Quoting Andrew M
This puts the particular right back into the purview of the the moderns, insofar as particulars are real objects, whether known from experience or not, and further allocates subject as a knowing being instead of the object of discussion.
Quoting Andrew M
Ok, no problem. Where is the subject in hylomorphism? If it is true Aristotle speaks of object as subject, and attributes both form and matter to the subjects he’s speaking about......where is the speaker? You said before he was treated as any other object, so it appears all those human agency predicates are merely particulars of some certain substance. Even if that gives us what they are, it does nothing to tell us how they work, and how they relate to each other in order to work together such that “agency” has any meaning.
Yes, one kind of modern dualism does maintain a separation between subject and object, but they are in no way to be considered the same kind of thing, as hylomorphism makes of every object including the subject of modern dualism.
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Quoting Andrew M
Yes, absolutely. That isn’t the “other hand”, however, which resides in what does winning the race mean, over and above the merely empirical observation of it? As Aristotle himself says...we don’t care so much for what we know as for what we don’t. And Ryle is right that the empiricists list of observables gets smaller and smaller, winning is just one thing after all, and experiments usually give one result, yet eyeballs can see the multiplicity of observables in entire cosmological space available to it, while the rationalists list of unverifiables gets longer, which is your argument against e.g., appearances on one hand and other mythical “causal hypotheses” on the other.
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Quoting Andrew M
I meant to speak is to use language, and the use of language does not necessarily include verbalizing. I should have said “we don’t use language when we think....”, which was implied by the CPR quote “thought is cognition by means of concepts”. As such, I reject that thinking is the utilization of language, while granting that thinking has a governing purpose, re: proper relations of concepts in order for cognitions not to contradict themselves. And even if that is an unverifiable in itself, it can manifest as an observable when we get around to actually verbalizing.
Man, just wait til things like schema, and phenomena, and spontaneity come up........no wonder Ryle scoffs at unverifiables, huh????
Quoting Andrew M
Yeah, he got a lot of mileage out of that ghost thing, didn’t he? Sure we may observe that he is thinking. Doesn’t matter, though, really; observation of the manifestation of thought is not the thought process itself. We are still entitled to ask “why did you do that?” after observing what he did.
I’m having trouble understanding how it is at all possible to deny the private subject of human rationality.
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Quoting Andrew M
Sure it is, if the transcendent is merely the unobservable, which I got from your, “transcends what is observable...”. Being illusory or even unreal satisfies being unobservable, but is that sufficient for transcendent? Being impossible as empirical phenomena is transcendent, but that which is illusory is not so impossible. And your ol’ nemesis “appearance” certainly isn’t real, but most certainly is an empirical phenomenon, under at least one metaphysical theory. I picked the wavefunction because it is mathematically real, albeit unobservable in itself, hence questions whether or not it is transcendent.
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Quoting Andrew M
Of course not. Some productive rational methodology is necessary for us to understand that and how the Earth orbits the Sun, and any other empirical observation. The mind serves to terminate infinite regress in the series of possibilities in the sphere of transcendental imaginables. Because the sphere of possible experience is immeasurable, requires us to set limits in our methods somewhere, otherwise we have no apodeictic ground for our knowledge. No matter the arbitrariness of what the kind or form the limit has, the setting of one is necessary.
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Quoting Andrew M
Which gets pretty close to the whole point: looking at it top down, if it is true there are many different senses of a thing, wouldn’t we seek a common ground for all of them? On the other hand, bottom up, wouldn’t we already have a common ground, in order to see the difference in senses of things? And because we can look at things either way, or rather, some things present themselves in one way or the other, wouldn’t we already have the capacity to understand them however they present themselves?
How that all happens seems to be of much more importance than the non-duality of objects, and we shouldn’t allow our disinterest to be enable by mere unverifiables.
Kant’s answer is that Alice doesn’t know a damn thing about logical conditions, as they are insinuated in Ryle. Alice’s entire cognitive faculty is absolutely predicated on them, of which she has not the slightest conscious notion.
Idle musings:
Odd, isn’t it? That Ryle goes to such great lengths to deny the ghost, but allows for the “silent ghostiness”?
“...the technical trick of conducting our thinking in auditory word-images, instead of spoken words, does indeed secure secrecy for our thinking…”(1).......
..........although auditory word/images I would be disinclined to call a technical trick. It is, instead, exactly how the human system operates. And aligning secrecy with a ghost, or occult, that is to say, otherwise inaccessible internality, is far too pejorative a conclusion. Not to mention, the “ghost” disappears immediately upon profitable argument contra substance dualism, re: Ryle’s “category mistake”, while allowing property dualism to remain relatively unaffected. At least til them ordinary language folks latch aholta vit.
If we grant that the supremacy of the human aptitude is for knowledge acquisition, and by that if we arrive at knowledge, we should wish our knowledge to be as certain as possible and we should wish to understand what our knowledge actually entails. The best way to arrive at knowledge certainty, and to best way to understand what our knowledge certainty means, is to base the acquisition system for it on the only conditions which grant lawful authority, which is always certain in itself......logic.
From here it is clear that logical conditions, of which Alice has not the slightest notion, are the methodological processes of human thought, that follow a logical series. She has no notion because they all occur in the steps of the process that Ryle calls “occult”, and you have called unverifiable. While this may all be the case, nothing is taken away from the those conditions being logical, even if we are unaware of them.
“....But modelling thinking on processes (...) which can be broken down into ingredient processes which have been coordinated in a certain way is a mistake…. “(2).
Not sure why not. If we start with this for a fact, and if we end up with that for a fact, we have every right to suppose the excluded middle that supports the end in keeping with the beginning.
“..."there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate" (3)
(1) Ryle, 1949a
(2) Ryle 1951b
(3) Metaphysics, 4,7
They are literally predicated on human beings. It is human beings that are rational, moral, etc., not minds or brains. A brain is a part of a human being, not the whole; a mind is an abstraction over a human being, and not concrete. Whereas a human being is a concrete particular that is the locus of agency.
Quoting Mww
That specific subject/object language usage is modern, yes. But the same essential dualism is found in Plato (as ideal Forms/natural world).
Aristotle rejected that dualism and while he had his own conception of subjects and objects, they were not as duals. Instead, for Aristotle, objects were the subjects of predication (Categories) and, in the case of particulars, the subjects of change (Physics).
Quoting Mww
OK. So if we were just discussing a synonym for "knowing being" (in the ordinary sense of human beings as distinguished from rocks or trees, say) then there would be no philosophical issue. But the problem is that it also brings with it the Cartesian sense of subject/object, internal/external, rational/empirical and so on.
Quoting Mww
In that instance, Aristotle is the speaker - a person that is a subject of predication, change and agency.
To find out and investigate the nature of hylomorphic particulars - whether human beings, trees or rocks - is the role of the natural sciences.
Quoting Mww
Winning the race doesn't mean anything over and above what is entailed by the observation of it. Ryle's point is that there no empirical-observation/rational-thinking divide. Instead observation, for human beings, includes the rational. Alice sees that Bob won the race. An eagle flying overhead does not, despite having sharper eyes. Alice sees more because she is rational.
That is what I mean by holistic. Instead of a dualistic "physical" seeing + "transcendent" rationality, it's instead just a richer form of seeing.
Quoting Mww
English-speakers use the word "snow" to talk about snow. German-speakers use the word "schnee" to talk about snow. So we can abstract away the language-specific words and simply talk about the (abstract) concept of snow.
So concepts have a natural grounding in language use. Which is to say, we have the concept of snow when we are able to employ the word "snow" (or "schnee").
On that understanding, I agree with the CPR quote.
Quoting Mww
I have no problem with them, at least in their ordinary sense. Should I?
Quoting Mww
I fully agree. We should also expect that the answer is open to natural investigation, not dependent on a radical privacy.
Quoting Mww
OK. It's a different way of allocating the facts that has no use for a private subject. Analogous to how a heliocentrist has no use for a geocentric center, even though it seems essential under that theory.
Quoting Mww
As it happens, wavefunction collapse isn't mathematically well-defined. It's more of the nature of, well, we observed this electron spin here which is described by that bit of the wavefunction there, so let's just throw away those other bits of the wavefunction that don't seem to fit anymore. Except we reserve the right to put them back again if we're doing a Wigner-style experiment. You get the idea.
So transcendent (i.e., not naturally grounded)? It would seem so.
Quoting Mww
I think we start with the particulars that we ordinarily observe. We develop rules and processes as we go along. If we discover a wrong claim, we fix it and move on. If there seems to be something wrong with the rules or processes themselves, then we fix them and move on. It starts with practical concerns and builds theory around that, not the other way around - namely, building an arbitrary theory and shoehorning experience into that. The practical approach is not apodeictic (it's instead provisional), but neither is it arbitrary.
Quoting Mww
Sure, but that common ground might be more subtle than it first appears. There might be a family resemblance between uses of a term rather than necessary and sufficient conditions. I see this as an empirical endeavor - we can have hypotheses about how language terms function and relate to other terms, and we can test those hypotheses and revise if need be. So to have the capacity to understand something doesn't mean that it will be understood the first time - it may require a lot of investigation.
I agree that we 'don't know what we really mean' when we use the phrase 'don't know what we really mean.' The assumption I am questioning here is that 'physical' and 'mental' refer to clear concepts. That we can offer imperfect definitions is clear, but I suggest that improvising definitions is quite secondary to the use of these words in ten million contexts.
Quoting Janus
I like to understand science as the theory of technology that works whether one believes in it or not.
And then science depends on ordinary language, so science deals with the mental in a quotidian way at the sub-scientific level so that the scientific level is possible. Bohr saw this. Husserl focused on it.
I don't think that the mental is defined as you say except perhaps by certain philosophers in a metaphysical mode. Let's check the dictionary.
mental : relating to the mind.
mind : the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
physical :relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.
So it's actually physical that's defined as the negative here, perhaps because human conversation prioritizes the social.
Quoting Janus
This is an important thing for us to agree on. Our dispute on secondary matters is perhaps the narcissism of small differences.
Quoting Janus
I agree that faith is a matter for the individual, but I'm stressing that that principle itself involves a faith that does not understand itself as a private issue. People with many different faiths can share this faith that religion is a private matter and go to war to keep it that way (against a tyranny of this or that religion imposed as a public religion.)
It's easy to overlook that the faith in faith being a private matter is itself a dominant public matter, which is to say a kind of meta-religion that is enforced by the government of a 'free' people. For instance, I expect the state to defend me against religious fanatics who violate my rights for should-be-private religious reasons. As a rough approximation, I'm suggesting that living religion is potentially violent. That religion is something we shouldn't fight about is a meta-religion that we have fought and will continue to fight about.
This blends with your second point. This meta-religion of religious freedom has evolved socially, just like all the traditional religions that it dominates in certain places and times.
Thanks!
Quoting Mww
Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation. The ghost only makes an appearance when that privacy is separated out from the natural world (whether in a transcendent realm per Plato or in a substantial mind per Descartes).
Quoting Mww
Property dualism still retains mental phenomena, mental causation, and radical privacy. So it's subject to the same criticisms made by Ryle and others.
Quoting Mww
It's worth noting that Aristotle purposed logic in a different manner to modern logic. For Aristotle, logic concerns entities (onta) that are the subject of predication, not simply formal sentences. Since the most fundamental entitities for Aristotle were observable concrete particulars such as human beings or trees (those things that aren't predicated of anything else), and those things are also subjects of change, contingency is unavoidably present from the beginning.
Quoting Mww
So as suggested above, that is also contested since Aristotle applied logic on the basis of observable distinctions, not idealizations. My outline of concepts in my previous post would be an example of that approach (which starts from what is observed - in this instance, people using language).
Quoting Mww
So as I see it, that would be shoehorning what is observed into what is theorized - in effect, it's the template or mold. That is, if one defines what thought or rationality is up front and in an idealized/transcendent sense, then that frames the way that everything else is understood. So substance or property dualism is the "necessary" consequence. No surprises there.
Whereas Aristotle starts from what is observed and develops logical principles and theory around that (including the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle that you appeal to).
I think "physical" is a clear concept, though. It is "what can be sensed, detected by instruments, and measured".
Quoting jjAmEs
I think science is much more than that. I think it is the best method for understanding how things work and are.
Science doesn't deal directly with the mental, as I see it, (unless you count psychoanalysis and phenomenology as sciences).
Quoting jjAmEs
Yes, but what is the mind? According to science the mind is a function of the brain; so we are back to physical investigations in order to understand anything definite about the mind. This is not to say we cannot have, for example, metaphorical or poetic understandings of the mind (or even the brain) but they do not yeild the same kind of knowledge as physical investigations can.
I agree that, in the context of so-called "folk" understandings of the mind, the physical is "defined in the negative" or more accurately as derivative of the mind; insofar as it is defined as "what can be sensed and measured" and it is understood under that paradigm that it is always a mind which measures. But we can equally say that it is the body/brain which measures; that it is something physical which measures something physical, and there is no contradiction in that. If it were really something non-physical doing the measuring then that would be dualism.
Quoting jjAmEs
I agree that the emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual is a relatively modern phenomenon, and as such it is a public, socially mediated phenomenon. But there is also no purely rational justification for any institution's right to enforce, or even coerce, individual's beliefs and allegiances when it comes to matters of faith.
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Quoting Andrew M
Yeah, but Abbooootttt!!! You can’t have agency without the human, true enough, but you can have the human without agency, so one is different than the other. Besides, we were asking after the necessary accountability of agency, under the assumption of its presence, not the merely sufficient conditions in the form of a physical vessel in which its presence is not absolutely given.
“...Yet to say that it is the soul which is angry is as inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul. The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed...”(1)
We don’t really care that a human is rational or moral, insofar as those are reasonable expectations pursuant to his kind of creature; we want to know how he got that way. Or better yet....how he didn’t.
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Quoting Andrew M
But Aristotle doesn’t seem to differentiate “knowing being” from plain ol’ objects, in that he treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates. Re: the same, e.g., category “substance” of things being the same “substance” of soul, along with “movement” and “essence”. So there wouldn’t be a philosophical issue under those conditions. Problem is, we have the capacity to ask why we are actually NOT exactly like all other objects, which is the issue Descartes brought to the table....
“....The absolute distinction of mind and body is, besides, confirmed in this Second Meditation, by showing that we cannot conceive body unless as divisible; while, on the other hand, mind cannot be conceived unless as indivisible....”(2)
....and is best exemplified in Kant....
“...This relation, then, does not exist because I accompany every representation with consciousness, but because I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations....”(3)
....where “this relation” is intended, within the context of the entire section therein, as the absolute and altogether necessary distinction between the subject (conscious that) and object (conscious of), which is the ground of the difference between us and other objects. In effect, Aristotle denies a distinction, Descartes warrants the distinction, Kant identifies the distinction.
Done deal!!!!!
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Quoting Andrew M
Do you see the contradiction? If there is no observational/rational divide, how does Alice see more than she merely observes?
It’s not difficult, actually. The proposition “Bob is running in a race” is a synthetic judgement, insofar as the conception of running and racing does not contain the conception of winning, for, as you have already noted, the race may not end or all the racers may be disqualified, ad infinitum. Therefore, there absolutely is an observational/rational divide, as soon as it is recognized that additional conceptions are required for additional understandings of any given empirical occasion. In order to understand winning, one must have already understood the race to be over. Therefore, the former is conditioned by the latter, which is an a priori rational judgement of an empirical occassion.
Think of it this way: in principle you cannot get to 10, when all you have is a 4 on one hand and a 6 on the other, with nothing else given whatsoever.
Quoting Andrew M
Which I understand, but at the same time consider to be a categorical error, in that a richer form of seeing is better known as understanding. And understanding is certainly not seeing in any sense, regardless of how convention wishes upon us the less philosophically taxing.
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Quoting Andrew M
Yes, but that natural ground is properly called understanding, in which the conception is already given. I understand what you mean when you pick up a handful of schnee because I already know what snow is, and you are showing me exactly the same thing in your hand. But I don’t understand schnee because of the word “schnee”; I understand it from the extant conception that schnee represents.
I would rather think language use has its natural ground in the commonality of conceptions. Conceptions are always antecedent to talk of them. Right? I mean......how can we talk of that which we have not yet conceived?
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Quoting Andrew M
Oh absolutely. The scientific method writ large.
Quoting Andrew M
Yep. No objections there. There are, however, things that are not provisional, that are apodeictic. Because there are two of those kinds of knowing things, the provisional and the certain.....how do we assure ourselves we aren’t confusing one of them for the other? If the answer to that is to start over, first we have to realize a manifest false knowledge, then we have to determine where to start over from. Then we have to determine why starting over from here is more or better justified then starting over from there. How do we stop this potential infinite regress? Because we are certain we know some things, the infinite regress must have its termination.
In addition, you said the observational approach is provisional, which is irrefutably correct given the principle of induction for empirical conditions, then it follows that the apodeictic cannot be empirical given the principle of contradiction, re: that which is provisional cannot be at the same time be certain.
That which is not empirical is necessarily rational or transcendent. That which is transcendent can have no empirical proofs, but that which is rational, may be susceptible to empirical proofs, depending on its content.
The empirical/rational duality is inescapable with respect to the human cognitive system.
(1) On The Soul, I,4 in Smith, Oxford, 1931
(2) Meditations, Synopsis, in Veitch, St. Andrews, ca. 1854 (MIT, 1901)
(3) CPR B133 in Kemp Smith, 1929
I am not aware of any natural investigation, or, which is the same thing, investigation using natural means, that has any chance of showing our private thinking. That our experimental equipment cannot show the word-images used for our thought, and our word-images are never given in terms of elementary particles, suggests natural investigation is very far removed from internal privacy.
I suppose philosophy is a natural investigation, and our private thinking is certain open to that. As long as we expect no empirical proofs from such philosophy, we should be ok.
Quoting Andrew M
Cool. So I don’t have to worry about it; I make no attempt to isolate my private thinking from the natural world. I understand there are, or at least were, a multitude of those holding with subjectivity as sufficient causality for the world. I say...a viral POX on them!!!
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Quoting Andrew M
That would be the case, except that’s not quite the system I advocate. I start with the observed up front, then theorize to an end in which the observed is understood. The theory includes definitions of thought and rationality and all that, but it isn’t up front. It isn’t the starting point. If anything, I’d be shoehorning the theory between the observation and its end. Still, the theory would be a template, I’ll give you that, and it certainly attempts to frame everything in relation to the observation itself, and at the same time serves as warrant for property dualism, not as a consequence, but as a necessary antecedent condition.
Jusqu’à la prochaine fois.....
Things that are certain are so only by definition, as I see it, which is obviously a matter of language.
What prevents me from attempting to put A and B in the same place at the same time, then discovering the impossibility of it?
I might need language to present the scenario to you, but I don’t need definitions or language for the doing of it.
Yes? No? Maybe?
Actually, all I know from experience, is that if I try to put some A and some B in the same place at the same time, either A will displace B or B will displace A. The apodeictic certainty of an intrinsic impossibility, within the existential confines of the induction principle, such that no A and no B can ever be in the same place at the same time, is only given a priori, hence sans linguistic appeal.
I grant conceptual appeal, or mediation if you wish, for human thought is impossible without it, even if such conceptual appeal is merely to the pure categories. I don’t need appeal to the conception of particular objects for the conception of a supposed universal principle, even if I do need appeal to particular conceptions to prove it.
Quoting Andrew M
Is Bob really speaking in the "third-person"? Isn't Bob speaking from his own perspective ("Alice" instead of "I" as having the toothache)? Is Bob talking about his perspective or about Alice's tooth? Is Bob and Alice's perspectives an objective state of affairs (they are real and exist in the world) that we can talk about just like we can talk about apples and trees? Both Alice and Bob are saying the same thing (objective) "subjectively". How about the "subjective" experience of hearing the sounds from Alice's mouth, "My tooth hurts."?
How can Bob acquire objective information subjectively?
Does "Alice's tooth hurts" exhaust the pain Alice feels? If we know that Alice's tooth hurts, what new information would the experience of the pain Alice experiences provide someone else about Alice's state that Alice couldn't just state with words?
When Alice falls asleep does her tooth still hurt? Why or why not? Where does the pain go if the problem is still there and we can predict that Alice will experience her tooth hurting when she wakes up?
But what if space were "layered" such that two or more things could be superimposed over one another at the same place and time. That would not seem to be a priori impossible, only impossible in the kind of space and time which we experience and understand.
So, I take your point that this intuition of the impossibility of two things being in the same place at the same time could be independent of language, but I would argue that it is a habit of thought developed a posteriori from experience, no given a priori.
We both know how easy it is to fulfill our possibilities merely from our imagination. Reminds me of my all time favorite truism:
“....I can think what I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself...”
(footnote Bxxvii)
Thus, if space is layered, it contradicts the standing hypothesis of cosmic isomorphism, and all standing empirical science lands in the circular file.
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Quoting Janus
How Hume-ian of you!! Nothing wrong with that, don’t get me wrong; it does seem that way to us nowadays, because everybody comes by that knowledge by being taught the principle, rather than originating it for themselves. But somebody, somewhere, got the ball rolling, which serves as proof of the possibility of a priori cognitions. And proved Hume wrong.
Compromise: mediation by linguistic appeal upon the condition of being taught; mediation by conceptual appeal alone, absent language appeal, upon the condition of original thought.
Ok, so everything is information. What does that do for us? What are we to do with that information? Is it sufficient from the fact everything is information, that no metaphysical arguments remain?
My point was more that space could have been layered, and that our so-called a priori intuitions are based on prior experience. In other words, they would different if we happened to be experiencing a layered world.
Quoting Mww
Someone first made explicit what we all know from experience. If that is all there is to "a priori cognition", then I would agree. But I would tend to call it an a posteriori cognition, because it relies on experience and on the kind of experience, that is it relies on what is experienced.
Quoting Mww
I am not sure what you mean by "original thought". If you mean merely that a thought is original if it is the first occurrence of that thought, then I agree. But if you are suggesting some unfathomable inspiration due to the nature of a transcendental ego or something like that, then no.
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I agree that it's useful in some contexts to think of the mind as a function of the brain. At the same time, note that you are arguing this point in language, in the mental realm. I've been stressing that the linguistic realm is a social realm. Let us consider sociology and political science. And then of course psychology explicitly deals with consciousness in its own right (excepting behaviorists who attempt a fascinating kind of ideological purity.)
Quoting Janus
Roughly I think we agree that the physical is category of especially uncontroversial phenomena, if we forget how difficult modern science is. It takes years of training to understand it, so most people just trust those associated with technology they can't deny. (No one has seen a quark. If memory serves, their discoverer/inventor was an instrumentalist about them at first but slow became more of a realist as the instrument performed well.)
We can say that the body/brain measures, but this seems like a contortion in the name of an unnecessary physicalism. I'm questioning the project of declaring 'X is what is really there.' I do this from a position of a (necessarily) vague structural holism. I'm not against reductionism in particular contexts, but I think metaphysical reductionism doesn't serve much of a purpose now. Except maybe as a cultural marker. I'm in the awkward position of being pro-science and anti-woo and at the same time finding anti-realist arguments (as presented, for instance, in A Thing of This World) convincing.
The idea seems to be that physics is a kind of root or ground science, and it's not an absurd idea. But physics is a historical socio-linguistic practice, an evolved system of technology ( including techniques of theory-editing and calculation) While the success of physics tempts philosophers toward a monism of the physical, physics itself is 'non-physical.' It's a realm of ghosts like 'energy' and 'force' that command our respect. Its intelligibility depends on a life-world that exceeds and includes it as one human practice among others in a complicated system. One can say that society is made of the 'physical,' but one can equally emphasize that 'physical' is one sign among others within a social system. We don't need to promote one explanatory practice to a position of ontological authority --thought perhaps 'philosophy' points better than 'physics' to our itch and attempt to do so.
On science: my approach is a substitute for falsifiability, which sounds good at first. But one can always tweak the structure as a whole or doubt the experiment. That's why I suggest understanding science as technology works independently of one's belief in it. This excludes religion, which works only if one believes in it. It also focuses on power, which IMV more accurately captures the prestige of science as 'magic' that actually works and allows me to post this message and communicate almost instantly to many potential if not actual readers.
I agree. At the same time I'd include the notion of the 'purely rational' as itself quasi-spiritual.
I agree with your critique of strict dualism. I suggest that some philosophers have tried to transform a casual, loose distinction into a sharp, absolute distinction. If I dream that a lion is chasing me, that is 'mind' for practical reasons. Once I wake up, I don't need to organize my life to defend against lions. But the cancer diagnosed as the doctor's office is 'matter' because it's (practically speaking) killing me whether I am thinking of it or not.
The problems arise when we understand this (and other distinctions) as more than just historically evolved 'instruments.'
The 'information' approach is still a little vague. If you could define what you mean by it, that would help me. If it's the stuff of information theory, then your theory sounds like a mathematical ontology.
What does saying everything is "matter", or everything is "mind" do for us? It gives us a name to use to refer to the substance of reality so that we may communicate the idea of the substance of reality. It solves the problems of dualism - primarily the problem where dualists are unable to answer the question of how matter and mind interact.
To say that everything is "matter" is to say that consciousness is just an arrangement of matter, but there seems to be a difference in what matter is (at least the way we perceive matter) and what mind is. How do we really know what matter is like independent of perceiving it? For example, we perceive matter as solid, but are told by scientists that it is mostly empty space.
To say that everything is "mind" is to engage in anthropomorphic projections. Saying that reality is "mind-like" is a little better, but still hints at anthropomorphism. "Information" seems to be a better term to use to refer to the substance of reality.
Quoting jjAmEs
I'm talking about your mind - it's substance and arrangement. Your mind is an arrangement of information. Now, how does matter (if matter is not an arrangement of information, but of atoms) interact with that?
Yes, and from which is given, that because circumferences and diameters were already objects of experience, the relationship between them being pi does not immediately follow from them alone.
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Quoting Janus
Nahhh....not going there. The transcendental ego doesn’t have a nature and it doesn’t inspire. It is merely the means to identify consciousness.....make the case that we are in possession of the means to even cognize it. You are quite correct, and even more metaphysically astute, in recognizing the transcendental ego gives no manifold of representations, which makes explicit no content of thought is at all possible from it.
You could say the notion is quasi-spiritual; but the salient point is that only the purely rational is (in principle at least) free of prejudice or bias. And to be free of prejudice and bias in dealing with other humans would seem to be the highest ideal commonly aspired to cross-culturally.
Quoting Mww
That's true.It seems to follow from their nature coupled with the nature of our relationship with them, and also, obviously, the general nature of us humans.
Does anybody these days still think everything is matter or everything is mind? Doesn’t seem all that logical to me. That is not to say dualists don’t still walk the Earth, but I rather think they are of the mind and matter kind, not one or the other.
And the metaphysician is at no more loss to explain the interaction between mind and matter than the hard scientist, so as long as they are equal in their ignorance, no harm is done in theorizing about it. Which has been done for millennia, and even if nothing substantial has come from it, nothing particularly detrimental has either.
Is there a reference-able standing theory in support of the notion that information is everything?
To me the 'purely rational' just is the cross-cultural. This is the God's eye perspective, contingently (and accurately, perhaps) associated with Western philosophy and science. This is the 'transcendental pretense.' This is humanism. Husserl wrote some powerful passages on this.
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html
I quote a passage that connects more with our mind and matter discussion, but the first part of the essay discusses the birth of what I call the transcendental pretense (God's eye view or idealized objective or transcultural view.) The 'transcultural' perspective is (strangely) a particular kind of culture, a piece that would dominate the whole.
[quote=Husserl]
How, then, did the intoxicating success of this discovery of physical infinity affect the scientific mastery of the realm of spirit? In the focus on the environing world, a constantly objective attitude, everything spiritual appeared to be based on physical corporeality. Thus an application of the mode of thought proper to natural science was obvious. For this reason we already find in the early stages Democritean materialism and determinism.47 However, the greatest minds recoiled from this and also from any newer style of psychophysics (Psychophysik). Since Socrates, man is made thematic precisely as human, man with his spiritual life in society. Man retains an orientation to the objective world, but with the advent of Plato and Aristotle this world becomes the great theme of investigations. At this point a remarkable cleavage makes itself felt: the human belongs to the universe of objective facts, but as persons, as egos, men have goals, aims. They have norms for tradition, truth norms - eternal norms. Though the development proceeded haltingly in ancient times, still it was not lost. Let us make the leap to so-called 'modern' times. With glowing enthusiasm the infinite task of a mathematical knowledge of nature and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinary successes of natural knowledge are now to be extended to knowledge of the spirit. Reason had proved its power in nature. 'As the sun is one all-illuminating and warming sun, so too is reason one' (Descartes).48 The method of natural science must also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spirit is real49 and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. With this the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantly dualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality -only split in two- embraces the one world; the sense of rational explanation is everywhere the same, but in such a way that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in which it can be universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-contained search for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychology or theory of spirit beginning with the ego in psychical self-experience and extending to the other psyche.50 The way that must be traveled is the external one, the path of physics and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, of the common will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like, are romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of concepts that have a proper sense only in the individual personal sphere. Spiritual being is fragmentary. To the question regarding the source of all these difficulties the following answer is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysical interpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naïve one-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of the spirit as reality (Realitat), presumably a real (realen) annex to bodies and having its supposedly spatiotemporal being within nature, is an absurdity.
At this point, however, it is important for our problem of the crisis to show how it is that the 'modern age', that has for centuries been so proud of its successes in theory and practice, has itself finally fallen into a growing dissatisfaction and must even look upon its own situation as distressful. Want has invaded all the sciences, most recently as a want of method. Moreover, the want that grips us Europeans, even though it is not understood, involves very many persons.51
There are all sorts of problems that stem from naïveté, according to which objectivistic science holds what it calls the objective world to be the totality of what is, without paying any attention to the fact that no objective science can do justice to the subjectivity that achieves science. One who has been trained in the natural sciences finds it self-evident that whatever is merely subjective must be eliminated and that the method of natural science, formulated according to a subjective mode of representation, is objectively determined. In the same manner he seeks what is objectively true for the psychic too. By the same token, it is taken for granted that the subjective, eliminated by the physical scientist, is, precisely as psychic, to be investigated in psychology and of course in psychophysical psychology. The investigator of nature, however, does not make it clear to himself that the constant foundation of his admittedly subjective thinking activity is the environing world of life. This latter is constantly presupposed as the basic working area, in which alone his questions and his methodology make sense. Where, at the present time, is that powerful bit of method that leads from the intuitive environing world to the idealizing of mathematics and its interpretation as objective being, subjected to criticism and clarification? Einstein's revolutionary changes concern the formulas wherein idealized and naïvely objectivized nature (physis) is treated. But regarding the question of how formulas or mathematical objectification in general are given a sense based on life and the intuitive environing world, of this we hear nothing. Thus Einstein does nothing to reformulate the space and time in which our actual life takes place.
[/quote]
You're not paying attention to what I'm saying and you post is incoherent. Let's slow down a bit and start from scratch.
Quoting MwwAnyone who thinks that everything is matter, mind or information would be a monist.
If you think there is both matter and mind, then you'd be a dualist.
If you think that there is both matter and mind, then you have to explain how matter and mind interact.
If you think that that everything is matter or mind, or information then you don't have to explain how different substances interact. The same substance interacts through causation. If you are a dualist, then you have a problem explaining causation.
So, if they are of the mind AND matter kind, then they are a dualist. If they are of the mind OR matter OR information kind, then they are a monist - get it?
Quoting Mww
Well sure, if the hard scientist and the metaphysician is a dualist, then they are at a loss to explan the interaction between matter and mind. Ignorance is the harm. Socrates said that knowledge is the greatest good and ignorance is the greatest evil. It basically comes down to whether or not you believe that reality is composed of one substance or more than one. Then you need to explain how different substances interact.
Take visual depth as an example. What is your visual depth composed of - neurons, atoms, mind, information, etc.? When I experience visual depth, I don't experience matter (neurons, atoms). I experience a feeling of being informed. Visual depth informs me of how the world is arranged relative to the location of my eyes.
Does visual depth exist outside of minds? Does a tree have visual depth? Probably not because it doesn't have eyes, but is there a mind-like state-of-affairs that is what it is to be the tree? Or is the tree made of matter and there is no mind-like substance of the tree? If the latter, then how does the matter of the tree interact with the matter of the mind for you to claim that you experience a tree? When we say that we "experience" are we not really saying that we are informed?
Quoting Mww
Why do so many people on this forum plead to some authority? Was there a reference-able standing theory when Darwin proposed his theory of natural selection? No, his theory was the basis of a new idea that had no reference-able prior theories. It was based on his own observations of nature over several years. Instead of worrying about what some other human (who is in no better a situation than you or I in figuring out the relationship between mind and matter) thinks, focus on what I am saying.
Thanks! I'm likewise enjoying the exchange of ideas.
Quoting Mww
So a general account would presumably be a question for the natural sciences. For example, an explanation of the evolution of (rational) human beings from earlier non-rational animals.
But it seems you're instead asking the conditions under which a person is rational, or moral, etc., since a human need not always act in those ways. Which brings us to the Aristotle quote...
Quoting Mww
So an initial observation: nous is the Greek term translated as mind there, which is also often translated as intellect. It should be understood to name an activity, not a Cartesian-style mind:
Quoting Maggie Ross
To continue the quote:
Quoting On the Soul, Book I, Part 4 (Smith)
Note the implied sense of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover there.
So going back to the concrete example from earlier, Alice perceiving that Bob won the race was an intelligent act - she perceived something that the sharp-eyed eagle flying overhead was incapable of perceiving. Similarly, a young child at the event may not yet have learned about competitive racing, thus would also not perceive that Bob had won. Nor, as indicated by the quote above, an old man whose eyes or intellectual apprehension had sufficiently declined.
So Alice's understanding depended on her perceptual capabilities and experience. But those specific dependencies can also be abstracted away. Anyone with eyes (or ears) and the intellectual capability could understand what Alice understood - that Bob won the race. In this way, Alice (and anyone else so situated) is thinking of things just as the Unmoved Mover would think them, i.e., as they are, eternally.
But note that there is no transcendent understanding implied here. Just the everyday kind requiring experience and observation. So Aristotle's Unmoved Mover can be understood as immanent in intelligent activity (which human beings exercise, at least sometimes), not transcendent to or separated from it.
[BTW, note that Aristotle's Unmoved Mover and its connection to the active intellect (if any) is an area of active research and controversy in Aristotelian interpretation.]
Quoting Mww
That's right. For Aristotle, a knowing being is an object or being (that can't be predicated of anything else), just as a tree is. They are not duals.
Quoting Mww
Just to clarify, Aristotle is not denying subjects as conscious objects (say). He's denying that subjects (as conscious objects) and objects are duals. For example, for Aristotle human beings are rational animals. The "rational" predicate distinguishes us from other (non-rational) animals, but we remain a kind of animal. So the way to think of it is that humans are a more developed animal, not a being with an animal aspect and a rational aspect.
So that's how Aristotle and Descartes differ here. And what Kant is following up on.
Quoting Mww
She doesn't. Separating sensory perception and rationality is an abstract and after-the-fact exercise. Alice didn't observe something and then infer that Bob won the race - she simply observed that he won the race (contra both the Reductionist and Duplicationist who wrongly think the same thing has been observed regardless of whether Bob won or not).
Quoting Mww
Racing does contain the conception of winning - it's the governing purpose. But there may be defeaters, as you note, that would preclude an event from being a race.
Running does not contain a conception of winning. But it contains other conditions whose absence would preclude the event from being a run. Or preclude the scenario from even being an event. And we could similarly go through any term used to describe the scenario and note its conditions (assuming we could do so accurately). But if Alice had to make separate judgments about all of this, as opposed to just observing things (with the option of retroactively changing her representation of things if need be), it would lead to infinite regress.
Which is to say, we can get to 10. But our hypothesis for how we got there might be a work in progress.
Quoting Mww
Language enables us to think about and understand things that we haven't directly seen. But language use itself is an acquired skill that depends on sensory perception and practical experience. There's no view from nowhere, so to speak.
Quoting Mww
People don't always know what they're talking about. But when they do, it's normally the thing (snow) that is being talked about, not the concept (of snow). Per the anti-Duplicationist theme, a concept isn't separate from talk of the thing, although we can distinguish them in an abstract sense. Put differently, to be able to talk competently about snow just is to have the concept of snow.
Quoting Mww
What would some examples be?
As far as I can tell, the apodeictic are formalisms (from math or logic, say) that we apply in specific circumstances. But whether they usefully apply or not in a given circumstance is a contingent matter.
It seems to me that what matters is not that things are apodeictic, but that they are applicable to the problems at hand.
Quoting Mww
As I see it, things we might call certain are themselves empirical. Even the law of non-contradiction had to be discovered/posited and used before becoming conventional (and it still is disputed in some applications, such as with paraconsistent logics, so the arguments for and against are still being made).
Also I'm not clear on why there would be an infinite regress. As I see it, we make provisional claims and hypotheses (which can include formal specifications). If there is a mismatch between hypothesis and experiment, then we have learnt something new which then feeds back into our hypotheses and experiments.
Quoting Mww
Well we can always ask a person what they're thinking if we need to. That seems a natural approach. But we don't have to have to regard their reports as certain. People can sometimes lie, be mistaken, be inarticulate, confused or delusional, exaggerate, etc. And we can test these things.
Quoting Mww
OK! We agree!
My proposal is that meanings are behaviors or ways of doing things. We don't need the qualia/sensations to mean. The qualia/sensations are experienced and expressed, not said. But that does not solve the object-subject relationship. It's just about relating my feelings or senses to what I do. And so I become meaningful. But I don't dissolve my problem of the relationship of my consciousness with what I signify and the world. I just transfer it to the problem of meaning.
Note: if you start with Derrida, I'm out. He's a words imbrogiatore.
Quoting Andrew M
I rather think rationality and morality are the two outstanding hallmarks of the human animal, or, the two conditions under which animals in general are reducible to the human animal. From here, however a human acts always presupposes the condition under which such act is given. In other words, because one is human, he is necessarily rational and moral, the manifestations of it being given merely from the subjectivity of the individual. It is clear from that, that irrational or immoral is nothing but a relative judgement between agent and observer of the agent. So, yes and no....I ask after the principles underlaying the executive authority these human conditions enable, but not why a human acts as he does, for a valid logical theory of the former sufficiently explains the latter.
Quoting Andrew M
With a less antiquated substitution, in that man does this with his reason, it can still be better to avoid saying reason pities or learns or thinks, but still leaves unexplained how a man does his pitying or learning or thinking, as manifest in his rationality and morality, by means of his reason. It would seem agency is going to have to be assigned somewhere in a dedicated system, whether in soul or reason, and it seems it will necessarily either be an active faculty in itself, re: personality, or at least ground the validity of positing the notion of one, re: understanding, in order to give the very necessary human conditions we started with, any real meaning.
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Quoting Andrew M
Quoting Mww
So here we have two things you’ve denied: assigning agency to a faculty, and using Aristotle to refute the Cartesian mind. In the first, correct me if I’m wrong, but you objected to my assertion that understanding is the named thinking faculty, yet here you seem to grant that the intellect names a mental activity. So either intellect is not a faculty or thinking is not an activity. And in the second, Aristotle himself asserts mind as substance, just as Descartes. So either Descartes is talking about mind as indivisible matter (which he isn’t) or they are employing the conception of substance differently. But substance is fundamental for both, Aristotle as a category, Descartes as a continuance, hence refutation, of Aristotle’s final cause.
Besides, it is really confusing: mind (intellect) implanted within the soul makes the soul of higher rank in the mental echelon, but it has already been said it is better not to let soul do anything important in the human animal. All this just doesn’t work at all for me, which is why I favor a metaphysics which attributes to man that which Aristotle doesn't develop for him, and that which Descartes develops, but seriously misfigures.
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Me: But Aristotle doesn’t seem to differentiate “knowing being” from plain ol’ objects, in that he treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates.
You: That's right. For Aristotle, a knowing being is an object or being (that can't be predicated of anything else), just as a tree is. They are not duals. Just to clarify, Aristotle is not denying subjects as conscious objects (say). He's denying that subjects (as conscious objects) and objects are duals.
Subjects as conscious objects.....
I can only get to subject as conscious object if I think an object that is then the subject of my thought. That of which I think is the subject of my thought. And the subject of which I am consciously thinking is the object I’m thinking about. Apparently, the thing of my perception is both conscious object and extant object, one mental in my head and the very same as physical in the world. If this is the case, then optical illusions are necessarily impossible, yet they are not. An irreconcilable contradiction. So...subjects as conscious objects must have some other meaning that has escaped me.
Subjects (as conscious objects).......
I suppose this to mean the current notion of knowing being, similar to the Descartes’ ”cogito”, refined by the Kantian “unity of apperception” which is represented by the equivalent of Descartes’ ”cogito”, re: the thinking subject.
Can’t be predicated of anything else......
As in the proposition, “this object is a tree”, tree cannot be a predicate of anything but object? So “this river is a tree” is false, “this dump truck is a tree” is false.....like that? OK, I can live with that. But “this pine is a tree”, “this maple is a tree”....are not false propositions, even if tree is the predicate of subjects that is not “object”. So how do we get from a universal propositional subject (“object”) to particular propositional subjects (“river”, dump truck”, “pine”, “oak”) such that “tree” can be a valid predicate of all of them? Well, ok, fine. Aristotle treats them all alike, insofar as they are all conditioned by the same set of predicates: all objects are substance, all objects are extended....so “river”, “dump truck”, “pine”, “oak” are equal as subjects in a proposition, to which tree cannot be predicate of anything but them all alike, and then of course, with the further conceptual additions given from experience, we know some propositional subjects, re” “river”, etc., make the proposition false, while maintaining the non-dualism of tree and river both being conscious objects.
A knowing being is an object or being that cannot be predicated of anything else.......
Putting all these together, I get that the knowing being can be a subject (as conscious object), cannot be predicated of anything else, and is not in itself a dual.
“....The thought, "These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me," is accordingly just the same as, "I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them"; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious. Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuitions, as given a priori, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedes a priori all determinate thought. But the conjunction of representations into a conception is not to be found in objects themselves, nor can it be, as it were, borrowed from them and taken up into the understanding by perception, but it is on the contrary an operation of the understanding itself, which is nothing more than the faculty of conjoining a priori and of bringing the variety of given representations under the unity of apperception. This principle is the highest in all human cognition...”
(1787, B134-5)
All that being said, it doesn’t make much sense to affiliate the thinking subject with subject (as conscious object), because we, as everyday, individual, conscious humans, don’t have a notion of ourselves as an object of which we are conscious. When we think, that’s all we’re doing, meaning we don’t associate the thinking immediately with the thinker. We only do that in a post hoc discussion about what we’re doing when we think. Thus, we see it is quite reasonable to distinguish the thinking subject from the thought object: we think about something, but it isn’t ourselves, so it absolutely must be something not ourselves, which is the same as the object of our thinking. This also shows that Aristotle’s treating the thinking subject as an object, isn’t sufficient to explain the human system.
And....added bonus.....we are now capable of articulating “....(rather that) it is the man who does this with his soul...”, again, substituting reason for soul.
Disclaimer: I don’t claim intimate knowledge of Aristotle, so......patience?
Quoting Andrew M
My point was that Alice doesn’t see anything because she is rational; she sees because she has eyes. If Alice sees more because she is rational, what she sees must be other than what she observes. But then you say she doesn’t see more than she observes, which begs the question.....what more can she see just but being rational? And even if there is no empirical/rational divide, what was Ryle’s point?
Quoting Andrew M
So is this the point Ryle is making? That Alice makes no inference connecting winning and running? Does anyone actually hold with that? Ya know, doncha.......if Alice makes no inference, that is the same as denying Alice her rational capacity for judgement? Does anyone think Alice makes no judgements?
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Quoting Andrew M
I’d go with competition as the governing purpose, hence the conception of performance is contained in the conception of racing. In this way, one could, say, race against a clock. And in the case of a personal best, there isn’t a winner, while there is still performance.
Quoting Andrew M
Agreed. And whether one is running solo along the side of the road, or one happens to be running in an organized event along with other like-runners......he’s only putting one foot in front of the other.
Quoting Andrew M
Sure...a work in progress, which is what synthetic propositions indicate, but not a hypothetical. We can get to 10 by simply counting, or, we can get to ten by synthesizing the 4 and the 6 we started with. The point being, it is the same rational procedure as racing/winning. Just as 10 is not contained by a 4 and a 6, winning is not contained by racing.
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Quoting Andrew M
Agreed. Another way to put it is, the definition satisfies the validity of the conception. To talk competently about snow presupposes the conception of it, and the manner in which understanding thinks a particular phenomenon, is its definition from which the conception follows as a judgement. In this way, no matter the language, the conceptions are all identical across the human rational spectrum.
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Quoting Andrew M
Agreed, but the only way to test is to already know what the differences in the test results mean, which presupposes a set of criteria. If we want our criteria to set some standard, we need some certainty from it. Because there is no apodeictic certainty under empirical conditions, we are left with what form certainty would have if we could find it in the empirical world. And where does the form of certainty live? In pure logic. And where does pure logic live? In human judgement, which is itself the conclusion of reason.
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Quoting Andrew M
Maybe things we might call certain are empirical, but if I’m interested in that which I know to be universally and necessarily certain, I won’t look to things that might be called certain.
Quoting Andrew M
Different spaces are coexistent but never successive; different times are successive but never coexistent; space and time are not conceptions, but are intuitions; existence has no object; there are no empirical proofs via induction; every change must have a cause; human error is in judgement of sensations, never in the receptivity of them; moral judgement presupposes an autonomous will.
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Quoting Andrew M
We agree philosophy is a great mental exercise, and we agree philosophy is generally as diverse as those who partake in it. I’m withholding agreement with respect to Ryle, analytic arguments and every language philosopher ever born or ever to be born.
That doesn't seem right. While human beings have a general capacity to be rational and moral, people can fail to act rationally or morally in some situations, even by their own standards.
Quoting Mww
Thinking is an activity. But, as with any activity, it is the human being that thinks, not a faculty.
Quoting Mww
They are employing the conception of substance differently. See below.
Quoting Mww
Part of the interpretive problem is that Aristotle uses language terms for thinking (and related activities) that are distinct from the modern philosophical use of the word "mind". In the context of the passage we're looking at, Aristotle distinguishes between discursive thinking (dianoia which Joe Sachs translates as "thinking things through") and contemplative thinking (noesis). As Sachs puts it:
He then goes on to say:
So, for Aristotle, one aspect of the intellect (nous) is thinking things through (dianoia). An example might be solving a jigsaw puzzle. That is an intellectual human activity that involves motion and change. Another aspect of the intellect is contemplation (noesis), which here would be thinking of the jigsaw puzzle as a completed whole. This latter aspect is the governing purpose that isn't tied to this or that contingent person or process. So the first aspect of thinking progresses in time (which Aristotle associates with the human soul or psyche), while the second aspect of thinking is restful and unchanging (which Aristotle associates with the world-soul or divinity). A point to note is that, for Aristotle, this contemplative state is something that humans can achieve at times. Whereas the Unmoved Mover is permanently in this state.
Quoting Mww
Just to clarify, I should have said that a particular, substantial being cannot be predicated of anything else. For example, neither Socrates nor the specific tree I'm currently pointing at. These kinds of beings were the most fundamental for Aristotle, and what he sought to explain.
I think my trying to explain this using subject/object language, given modern philosophical associations, isn't working very well. So I will instead say that both Socrates and the tree are beings. Each are inseparable form/matter composites (per hylomorphism). Now the form of Socrates is very different to the form of a tree. But in neither case should form be equated with mind nor understood in a dualist subject/object sense. Instead the nature of each being should be investigated on its own terms.
Quoting Mww
So it seems to me that Kant is doing here just what Aristotle is doing with the Unmoved Mover (and active intellect). However instead of assuming a separate subject and object in a Cartesian sense, Aristotle conceptualizes a universal being that subsumes the beings we perceive (including trees and human beings). So the "conjunction of representations into a conception" describes the universal being and can, in principle, be understood by human beings (per metaphysics). The way to get to this understanding is by abstracting from perception (i.e., the universal is abstracted from the particular).
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Quoting Mww
Yes, Alice makes judgments, but an observation need not require a further judgment. With experience, higher-level observations become automatic. It's a bit like memorizing one's times tables. You just give an answer, you don't perform a calculation every time. Similarly Alice sees that Bob wins the race, she doesn't have to think about it.
This also relates back to the twofoldness of thinking that Sachs described earlier (and even Kahneman's fast thinking/slow thinking). Instead of a process in time in which Alice thinks things through to arrive at a conclusion, she simply observes things as they are (at least in this race example). Of course, just as with the times tables recall, Alice's brain is active. But that lower-level brain description is a matter for science, Alice herself is not making an inference, even if we can construct a post hoc chain of inferences ourselves to explain Alice's behavior.
Quoting Mww
I agree that our tests presuppose a set of criteria. But the test criteria itself might be flawed and need changing. So deciding on test criteria is itself an empirical and experiential endeavor. For Aristotle, logic itself was an empirical matter, the rules for which emerge from our interactions and experiences in the world.
Thanks for your comments regarding apodeictic certainty, understood.