Analysis of Language and Concepts
Changing thread since the topic's sufficiently different. I quoted @Sam26 out of order to better organise my response.
Quoting Sam26
So we can agree that more types of things can be analysed than the use of language, so then there are questions of scope - what things can be analysed without the analysis of language use playing a central role? Things like how glasses work, deciding if a building will be stable to wind, whether and how two chemicals may react, whether a drug cures a disease don't seem to require it. I'd generalise there and say that most of the content of the physical sciences does not require the analysis of the use of language to be done successfully.
Social sciences? An issue like "Is it more likely that a person well above median income for their country will vote conservative?" doesn't seem to require much analysis of language use except in clearly setting out what the terms of their analysis mean. "What were the economic impacts of the banker bailouts in 2008?" doesn't seem to require the analysis of language use to answer.
I bring these up because questions in fields can provide philosophical insights or impinge upon philosophical questions; "do special and general relativity impact the A-theory of time?", "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?". Questions in metaphysics and political economy do not seem to require linguistic analysis to play a central role in order to pose them or attempt to answer them.
But this is hardly the "home turf" of linguistic analysis.
Quoting Sam26
Will give a worked example.
Imagine there are two worlds, one in which people are put into income brackets and the income brackets are labelled "classes", lower class, middle class, upper class; working class being some mixture of lower class and middle class; statistical properties of individuals relative to their societal aggregate within (defined) thresh-holds. Another world in which "classes" are posited as structural features of an economy, whereby those people in the working class do not own the product of their labour (definitionally) and the bourgeoise who (definitionally) collectively own the products of working class peoples' labour.
If you want to analyse stuff (do some political economy) using the first concept of class, you'll be doing things like studying the relative proportions of people in each bracket in a society, looking for demographic trends and time changes. If you want to analyse stuff using the second concept of class, you'll be looking at qualitative power differentials and the relative strength and nature of workers' collective bargaining and conditions vs those of the bourgeoise.
In a third world, someone notices that if you aggregate the class income brackets in world one to 99%-tile and >99%-tile, you obtain something structurally very similar to the class analysis in the second world.
The discovery that the 99% and 1% framing of economy does something very similar to the working class and bourgeoise framing of economy isn't something you will be able to get from the analysis of words alone, it relies upon the empirical fact "the richest people own disproportionately more of the property". This is an empirical measure of inequality that impacts both conceptual landscapes (world 1 and world 2) along their intersection.
The interesting thing on a meta level (meta-philosophy I guess) is that it is an empirical fact which drives those landscapes to touch each other in this context, no analysis of language use alone would allow the interpretation of this fact to inform either perspective, the perspectives need a means of internalising the empirical fact based on the resources they have at hand - as a quantitative measure of wealth disparity and as a qualitative indicator of a power differential.
A similar story could be told about the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity and the concept of the present.
The underlying thrust of argument is that discussions in philosophy need not be couched in terms of the analysis of word use, especially when they are dealing with something that interfaces with the real world; like political economy or philosophy of physics.
But maybe the same ideas don't hold for where linguistic analysis historically cut its teeth; somewhere in epistemology (Wittgenstein), philosophy of perception (I remember reading Austin's Sense and Sensibilia but I don't know if it's a particularly celebrated example of linguistic analysis) and in a deflationary regard in metaphysics.
The metaphysics of time example I gave above I think undermines the necessity of using linguistic analysis centrally in metaphysics; no analysis of use conventions changes the nature of time. With philosophy of perception; there's the phenomenological tradition (pace Merleau-Ponty) and embodied cognition (pace Andy Clark) that place much more emphasis on interpreting results from cognitive science and medicine and on sophisticated descriptions of our experiential processes; in these domains, a similar rule of thumb holds; analysing how we use words won't change the nature of our hands and eyes. Even if there are arguments based on the conventions of use, they don't have to play a central role in coming up with and analysing concepts in the field.
Analysis of word use also won't change how society works, to a first approximation anyway, it's extremely unlikely that any philosophical book or paper takes hold sufficiently strongly that it changes the key dynamics it analyses in the short term. The answer to "are more people starving now and why?" doesn't depend much on how you define starving, it depends on how many people don't have enough food or sufficiently limited access to it. Again, if someone is analysing society - doing political economy, something closer to sociology, or even doing social ontology (like Searle), the analysis of words can tell us what we say about the structures, but the function/role that they play in society doesn't depend on the word use. "How do universities produce knowledge and what is its character?" isn't answered with "It depends what you mean by university and knowledge".
I think in all these cases, to put a Wittgensteinian spin on it, the background is sufficiently well known and the language games supported within it are sufficiently well travelled that analysing how people use words isn't required to clarify the domain studied; people know what the sense of touch is and universities are. Moreover, inventing concepts to explain things here is important (like, say, Lakatos' "research program" or Foucault's "episteme", or Clark's "extended mind" and Gibson's "affordance"); analysing how things work usually requires some new vocabulary, which stands or falls upon the accuracy and perspicacity it describes its target and the utility it provides in its analysis,
In epistemology, which deals with standards of knowledge and characterisations of it, I can see an argument that looking at the use of the word "know" (per epistemic contextualism) and about whether we can be said (according to conventions of use) to be in a state of justified true belief given some scenario (like Gettier) are necessary components of reasoning here.
So, I think we're left with a picture in which linguistic analysis plays little necessary role in lots of philosophical projects, and even the home turf it emerged in doesn't need to stick to its methods to do good work.
Quoting Sam26
Of course the analysable data goes far beyond just a linguistic analysis. There is a danger in thinking that a linguistic analysis always answers a particular philosophical problem. I tend to use it for two reasons, first, it's where my interests lie, and second, language is the medium used to talk about these problems, especially philosophical problems.
So we can agree that more types of things can be analysed than the use of language, so then there are questions of scope - what things can be analysed without the analysis of language use playing a central role? Things like how glasses work, deciding if a building will be stable to wind, whether and how two chemicals may react, whether a drug cures a disease don't seem to require it. I'd generalise there and say that most of the content of the physical sciences does not require the analysis of the use of language to be done successfully.
Social sciences? An issue like "Is it more likely that a person well above median income for their country will vote conservative?" doesn't seem to require much analysis of language use except in clearly setting out what the terms of their analysis mean. "What were the economic impacts of the banker bailouts in 2008?" doesn't seem to require the analysis of language use to answer.
I bring these up because questions in fields can provide philosophical insights or impinge upon philosophical questions; "do special and general relativity impact the A-theory of time?", "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?". Questions in metaphysics and political economy do not seem to require linguistic analysis to play a central role in order to pose them or attempt to answer them.
But this is hardly the "home turf" of linguistic analysis.
Quoting Sam26
If analyzing concepts isn't a matter of linguistic analysis, then what is it?
Will give a worked example.
Imagine there are two worlds, one in which people are put into income brackets and the income brackets are labelled "classes", lower class, middle class, upper class; working class being some mixture of lower class and middle class; statistical properties of individuals relative to their societal aggregate within (defined) thresh-holds. Another world in which "classes" are posited as structural features of an economy, whereby those people in the working class do not own the product of their labour (definitionally) and the bourgeoise who (definitionally) collectively own the products of working class peoples' labour.
If you want to analyse stuff (do some political economy) using the first concept of class, you'll be doing things like studying the relative proportions of people in each bracket in a society, looking for demographic trends and time changes. If you want to analyse stuff using the second concept of class, you'll be looking at qualitative power differentials and the relative strength and nature of workers' collective bargaining and conditions vs those of the bourgeoise.
In a third world, someone notices that if you aggregate the class income brackets in world one to 99%-tile and >99%-tile, you obtain something structurally very similar to the class analysis in the second world.
The discovery that the 99% and 1% framing of economy does something very similar to the working class and bourgeoise framing of economy isn't something you will be able to get from the analysis of words alone, it relies upon the empirical fact "the richest people own disproportionately more of the property". This is an empirical measure of inequality that impacts both conceptual landscapes (world 1 and world 2) along their intersection.
The interesting thing on a meta level (meta-philosophy I guess) is that it is an empirical fact which drives those landscapes to touch each other in this context, no analysis of language use alone would allow the interpretation of this fact to inform either perspective, the perspectives need a means of internalising the empirical fact based on the resources they have at hand - as a quantitative measure of wealth disparity and as a qualitative indicator of a power differential.
A similar story could be told about the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity and the concept of the present.
The underlying thrust of argument is that discussions in philosophy need not be couched in terms of the analysis of word use, especially when they are dealing with something that interfaces with the real world; like political economy or philosophy of physics.
Concepts by definition are linguistic, and definitions arise through use. Even when someone discovers something new, and thereby discovers a new concept, it's through use that it becomes a norm of language. It's in a culture of language that correct and incorrect uses become manifest. Furthermore, use isn't the be all and end all of the answer, simply because it takes a huge amount of effort sometimes to untangle correct use from incorrect use. This is clearly seen in Wittgenstein's Investigations, and it's clearly seen in On Certainty, which, I believe, is the actual application of Wittgenstein's thoughts in the PI.
But maybe the same ideas don't hold for where linguistic analysis historically cut its teeth; somewhere in epistemology (Wittgenstein), philosophy of perception (I remember reading Austin's Sense and Sensibilia but I don't know if it's a particularly celebrated example of linguistic analysis) and in a deflationary regard in metaphysics.
The metaphysics of time example I gave above I think undermines the necessity of using linguistic analysis centrally in metaphysics; no analysis of use conventions changes the nature of time. With philosophy of perception; there's the phenomenological tradition (pace Merleau-Ponty) and embodied cognition (pace Andy Clark) that place much more emphasis on interpreting results from cognitive science and medicine and on sophisticated descriptions of our experiential processes; in these domains, a similar rule of thumb holds; analysing how we use words won't change the nature of our hands and eyes. Even if there are arguments based on the conventions of use, they don't have to play a central role in coming up with and analysing concepts in the field.
Analysis of word use also won't change how society works, to a first approximation anyway, it's extremely unlikely that any philosophical book or paper takes hold sufficiently strongly that it changes the key dynamics it analyses in the short term. The answer to "are more people starving now and why?" doesn't depend much on how you define starving, it depends on how many people don't have enough food or sufficiently limited access to it. Again, if someone is analysing society - doing political economy, something closer to sociology, or even doing social ontology (like Searle), the analysis of words can tell us what we say about the structures, but the function/role that they play in society doesn't depend on the word use. "How do universities produce knowledge and what is its character?" isn't answered with "It depends what you mean by university and knowledge".
I think in all these cases, to put a Wittgensteinian spin on it, the background is sufficiently well known and the language games supported within it are sufficiently well travelled that analysing how people use words isn't required to clarify the domain studied; people know what the sense of touch is and universities are. Moreover, inventing concepts to explain things here is important (like, say, Lakatos' "research program" or Foucault's "episteme", or Clark's "extended mind" and Gibson's "affordance"); analysing how things work usually requires some new vocabulary, which stands or falls upon the accuracy and perspicacity it describes its target and the utility it provides in its analysis,
In epistemology, which deals with standards of knowledge and characterisations of it, I can see an argument that looking at the use of the word "know" (per epistemic contextualism) and about whether we can be said (according to conventions of use) to be in a state of justified true belief given some scenario (like Gettier) are necessary components of reasoning here.
So, I think we're left with a picture in which linguistic analysis plays little necessary role in lots of philosophical projects, and even the home turf it emerged in doesn't need to stick to its methods to do good work.
Comments (77)
There is much here to agree with, but on the other hand, there are philosophies that grow out of some of the analyses done that need (I believe), in order to be more precise, a Wittgensteinian analysis. For instance, your example, "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?" This, it seems, is a classic example of where a linguistic analysis might be needed. What does it mean to be morally right? What theories of moral right and wrong are we talking about (utilitarian, deontological, or relativistic theories, to name a few)? This would bring up the different uses we have for these words in our culture. That said, much of the time when using these words, we take it for granted that people are referring to the same things, until you press them on the specifics.
I would disagree that "[q]uestions in metaphysics and political economy do not seem to require a linguistic analysis." Especially when discussing the philosophical theories that arise from different belief methodologies. There is a sense, though, where both of us are correct depending on what we are emphasizing. If we are talking about a statistical analysis of income brackets, as you pointed out above, then you're probably right about not needing a linguistic analysis (as per Wittgenstein). It depends on what we're trying to accomplish. However, if we're developing a philosophy as a result of a statistical analysis, we might need a linguistic analysis for precision's sake.
When it comes to epistemology, in many of these subject areas I find a lack of understanding from scientists and lay people alike as to what it means to have knowledge, or what it means to know. They fail to understand the many ways in which we can claim to have knowledge. This can be seen from Wittgenstein's unfinished notes called On Certainty. Epistemological considerations come up in almost all of the subjects you exampled above.
If there is something above that you think I failed to address, please press the point.
Quick question, is starving a feeling or it an actual physiological process? Is it different from being hungry? At what point does hunger turn into starvation? If someone with plenty of access to food is just too lazy or depressed to eat and skip a few meals have then are they starving? Could someone living in an area with a shortage of food have adjusted to the conditions and no longer have the constant sensation of hunger? Moreover, is the data really giving us the 100% honest picture of their situation?
(A1) The only methodology in philosophy that makes in all topics and subtopics is linguistic analysis.
Because there are topics in which it is not necessary.
Quoting Sam26
We've had a brief discussion about it being useful for clarity; and we've conducted the discussion in pragmatic terms in general. It's a truism that clarity is certainly desirable when writing on a topic, but it does not seem a sufficient reason to render linguistic analysis necessary for discussing that topic; even if such a topic would benefit from it, that does not establish that it is required to discuss the topic at all.
Given that, what seems a more interesting discussion topic is are three related issues:
(B1) What circumstances necessitate adopting linguistic analysis as a philosophical methodology?
(B2) What does it mean that linguistic analysis is necessary for analysing a topic?
(B3) Does the necessity of linguistic analysis for a topic say anything about the topic's nature?
In the spirit of being clear, by linguistic analysis I mean a method of doing philosophy that focusses upon the its topic by analysing examples of word use surrounding the topic; including observed patterns of inference using the words; and from those examples and word use analysis makes speculative claims about the topic of study or critical remarks regarding previous work (or patterns of inference and claims).
An example of a critical remark in Wittgenstein (from On Certainty) is undermining Moore's use of "Here is a hand" as an item of knowledge, because any statement which could count as knowledge must be able to be doubted, and in the circumstances of Moore's utterance it could not doubted that he had a hand, so he could not know that he had a hand.
Or Austin on the argument from illusion (against an argument for perceptual anti-realism):
Undermining the claim that the bent stick is illusionary.
An example of a speculative claim in Wittgenstein (from Philosophical Investigations) is that discourse/language use consists of language games that have no necessary structural similarity in virtue of being uses of language; but language games (and classes of language games) may have structural similarities at any level of detail. Moreover, philosophy allegedly takes methods of explanation and description that work well in one language game and transfers them to others in which they do not apply.
Speculative claim from Austin in Sense and Sensibilia (setting out interpretive guidelines for use of the word "real"):
I hope that the characterisation of linguistic analysis (and examples) are agreeable. Given that:
Seeing as you reacted to the question "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?" strongly, affirming that it is a classic example for linguistic analysis, what was it about the question that made you believe it was necessary (if you believed it was necessary) to approach it through that lens?
And moreover, to what extent are these features generalisable? Can you use them more abstractly as indicators that linguistic analysis is necessary (or profitable) in a circumstance? And moreover, if that is true, how can you transfer those indicators to philosophical discussion more generally?
It's certainly the case that it's a truism to say that we need to be clear when we write, especially writing from a philosophical perspective; and generally it's the case when writing about anything. However, there's something unique about Wittgenstein's (and Austin for the matter) later philosophy that lends itself to the clarification of meaning that we've rarely seen before. And, it's in this sense that clarity for me takes on a whole new study. These kinds of discussions are needed because it's easy to overblow the significance of any advancement. Wittgenstein's later works are an advancement in philosophical thinking, viz., clarity of meaning.
We both seem to agree that in order for people to have discussions, at least on an everyday level, this kind of analysis is not necessarily needed for us to communicate. People communicate all the time without ever hearing of Wittgenstein or Austin, or without ever understanding some of their methods of linguistic analysis.
Quoting fdrake
Books could be written trying to answer these three questions. Nevertheless, they are good questions.
First, one needs a good understanding of the methods employed by Wittgenstein and Austin in order to be able to recognize when to apply them; just as a scientist recognizes when to employ the scientific method. Second, one needs to recognize the context (philosophical discussions, and the depth of those discussions) that might permit such a discussion. On the other hand, sometimes when talking about meaning, one can interject some of these methods into simple discussions. Depends on how adept you are, and how well you understand the methodology.
As I understand it, in this context, it would mean that a clarification of meaning is required that would help resolve an argument, or at least clarify a philosophical problem. These kinds of issues arise all the time, especially in a philosophical forum. Rarely are there threads where such clarifications would not benefit the discussion.
Yes, from Wittgenstein's early philosophy to his later philosophy, he has concentrated on how it is that we mean something by this or that word, or by this or that statement/proposition. Thus, if one could sum up Wittgenstein's philosophy as a whole, its been one devoted to understanding meaning.
Quoting fdrake
I can see why you might want me to react to the moral question, but since my main work has been in the area of epistemology, I think it would be appropriate to answer the question in terms of my epistemological background, as meager as it might be.
In just about every subject the question of knowing arises. What does it mean to know (I use JTB as a generalizable definition), and how has Wittgenstein's methods helped to clarify what it means to know? This, it seems to me, is paramount if we want to claim that we know anything. If we look at use in terms of knowing we see that there is at least five ways of justifying a belief (remember we are applying Wittgenstein's methods, we are looking at use).
1) Linguistic training, which is a very basic justification of the use of words, i.e., it agrees with correct public usage. It's a matter of learning how to use words within a particular language. A child learns that's Mom or Dad because they were taught that's Mom or Dad. Later they will learn to use words like cup, water, dog, cat, etc. How does a child know that's a dog? Because it was taught that's a dog. How do we know they know? We observe how they use the words. They surely don't give us a definition.
2) Pure reason, pure logic, so a proposition is true due to its logical structure. It's called a tautology. For example, "Either Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the U.S., or he wasn't the 16th president of the U.S." This statement is true due to its logical structure. The logical structure of the statement is "X or not X." Any proposition of this form is always true.
3) The third way of justifying a belief is through sensory experience. You can know the car is blue by looking at it, that the apple is sweet by tasting it, that someone is playing a trumpet by hearing it, that the table top is smooth by feeling it, etc.
4) The fourth way of justifying a belief is through inference, argument, or proof. A belief is inferred from other propositions (e.g. inductive and deductive reasoning) or evidence.
5) The fifth way of justifying a belief is through testimony. We very often learn things from those who are in a position to know. Much of what we know comes from the testimony of others. In fact, there is a massive amount of information that comes to us through testimony. Can we doubt most of this information? No. Why? Because the very tools for understanding the world around us, our words and concepts, come from others. If we doubted most of it, we would be reduced to silence. Our culture and other cultures succeed because of the truthfulness of most of what is conveyed to us. This is not to say that we should trust everything we read or hear, because sometimes there are good reasons to doubt what is said or written.
I think it's clear how these uses are generalizable, and I think it's clear how each of these can be used to further explain what it means to know. As you can see, knowing is not restricted to any one subject (e.g. science). Moreover, most of what we know is not known with absolute certainty. Very often people classify knowledge as knowing with absolute certainty. If this was the case there wouldn't be much that we could claim to know. You couldn't even claim to know algebra if you got less than perfect scores on all your tests. As it is, we can get a B, or even a C, and claim to know algebra. Thus, knowledge extends to what is probable or likely the case.
I think I've answered some of your questions.
In fact all of Wittgenstein militates against treating linguistic analysis as 'only' analysis of language, insisting that when carried out properly, linguistic analysis is precisely analysis of both world and language, in lock-step. It's the seperation of the two that causes problems: Wittgensteinian 'lingusitic analysis' throws language open into the world, and does not set language 'against' the world.
Insofar as linguistic analysis can be understood to be an autonomous practice, its remit is entirely negative: it acts like rails at the bowling alley, making sure that what counts as the object of analysis remains unequivocal. So it's entirely the case that when "the background is sufficiently well known and the language games supported within it are sufficiently well travelled ... analysing how people use words isn't required to clarify the domain studied" - the exception being when we lose track of the motivations and purposes behind the uses of concepts and start reifying them (to take an example from the PI: when 'stand roughly here' becomes decoupled from the purpose of 'being able to find you again when I come back' and we engage in the fool's errand of trying to delimit the scope of 'here' in precise terms in order to understand what it means).
So it's also exactly right that linguistic analysis "plays little necessary role in lots of philosophical projects" precisely because rigorous thinkers will be well aware of the motivations behind their uses of words. 'Linguistic analysis' is simply the minimal level of competence required to engage in any philosophy whatsoever. Wittgenstein's merit was simply to have explicated and thematized it. But it's entirely overblown to think that linguistic analysis is some kind of 'alternative' to philosophising in the main.
It seems to me that what takes primacy in judgement, when one considers those choices of methodology that as a whole, are known as Linguistic Analysis, is only the extent of their need to render clear, what meanings had been expressed within the set context, that lies in question. That is to say, whether circumstances require for clearness that one must define, explicitly, the sum of those meanings which were granted through some form of statement, or proposition, is dependent upon whether one has any ((pre-existing)) measure of familiarity with what is meant thereby, and furthermore, whether such understanding is sufficient to allow one to infer, based also upon the associated environment of usage, the object of reference, and the relationship between each; by the latter phrase I speak of the relations that govern meaning, and the ways in which this correlates with the object to which one chooses to refer in the case of any statement, in particular. While I acknowledge that there are times at which it may prove needless, that one endeavor to actively reflect upon the significance of what one expresses, and thus, that the object thereof can in fact be intuited by any other in passing, without its fullest content being first brought to a level of conscious thought, and awareness; recognition ought to be made, also, that the quality of being acquainted therewith, to know incontrovertibly what one is to convey, in meaning, presupposes a past familiarity with the context, and general foreground in which said statement, or line of phrase, is to appear at all. This same condition is present, also, with respect to those other manners of expression, which demand of one separate aptitudes, to be understood, and are, in both their appearance and effect, confined to equally separate domains of thought; as distinct from the previous.
Quoting fdrake
The fact upon which I came to expound, previously, leads one to the implication that what claim you have set forth in argument, cannot be generalized. By which I wish to emphasize that oftentimes there is encountered, in the case of most, a dearth of understanding, and consequently the inability to identify, or at all attest to those meanings presented to one in such a way as to be detached from the events of which one's life, tends to consist. Which is to state, without cause for equivocation, that the truths of our world, and the course by which one seeks out greater understanding, are relegated within the lives of many, to a position of the second-order, and seldom fall within the field of one's foremost concerns. When one bears in mind instances of this sort, then, as they occur generally, not strictly as one conceives of them in the sense of the ideal, one is confronted with the certainty of other's ignorance, which precludes one from expressing the query, or statement, at hand, while ensuring that the meaning thereof, be preserved, and understood, wholly.
It is a prime requisite that the conditions of one's inquiry, the finer elements of what notion is considered, be imparted a character of wholesomeness, and defined in their furthest depth; and, most importantly, be recognized as such, by all involved in their study, and pursuit. To fail in the establishment of any mutual-ground for the understanding, at the outset, is to commit oneself to the path of error, before having even begun. For the sake of preventing such misinterpretations, or at least, to deprive them of what sway they might otherwise hold, those fields of study which have achieved for themselves an air of legitimacy, and fullness, and which demonstrate a similar character in their predictions, carry also an inclusion of certain terms that by consensus, have a degree of particularity, and certitude in their meanings, and apply only within the bounds of select contexts, that have themselves been agreed upon by virtue of the same conventions as those described. i.e 'Terms Of Anatomy', and the like. Though, I digress that in any event, one's efforts can be complemented by the benefits in precision, and exactness in thought, that such a methodology confers. Confusion grows most emergent, I believe, only insofar as these qualities are neglected.
Consider the following; https://oregonstate.edu/instruction/bb317/scientifictheories.html
This model of meaning is explicitly rejected by Wittgenstein, so I'll only say that whatever its merits, it is not what is in question when discussing linguistic analysis as per the OP.
Quoting StreetlightX
If the remit of linguistic analysis is a critical imperative that intervenes upon already established philosophical questions, arguments and claims, it seems to me that the application of the imperative should have some conceptual structure. While it seems the case that linguistic analysis could be used irrespective of the topic of the discussion, the applicability of linguistic analysis as a critique may still place constraints upon what it may analyse. If you'll permit a clumsy form-content schema, linguistic analysis has universal applicability in terms of discussed content (we may always make the kind of errors and confusions it highlights), but perhaps its intervention is necessary only when the discussion takes a certain form.
I have in mind an analogy between Kant's critique of metaphysics and the doctrine of transcendental illusion. Roughly, a transcendental illusion is an error of reasoning where a confusion occurs between necessary relations between concepts and necessary relations between things. What is particularly interesting here is that transcendental illusions are internal to the concept of reason; reasoning generates transcendental illusions through a tendency to take the objects as they are analysed as the objects themselves. The content of the transcendental illusion; what it concerns; is irrelevant to the character of the formal error of reasoning.
Continuing the analogy, a linguistic analysis will often reveal (or purports to reveal) that the terms an argument is articulated in are subject to an internal tension; and it is the internal tension which ultimately gives the argument its force, rather than the structure of the argument and the truth of its premises.
As an example, Austin's analysis of the argument from illusion (for perceptual anti-realism, specifically used to argue for sense-datum theories). The original argument goes like: we see a stick half submerged in water, it appears bent. The stick has not really bent as immersion in the water does not bend it. The bending of the stick in the water is equivalent, insofar as it generates a perception, to seeing a stick really bent in that manner. Since a perception of the stick appearing to bend in water is sensorially equivalent to a perception of the stick bending outside water in precisely the same way, we do not see reality as it is; we see appearances, construable as sense data.
Austin intervenes in the argument by, among other things, pointing out that it is fully consistent to say "Yes, we see a stick which appears bent", undermining the equivocation of appearance and perception used to establish the equivalence of the "really bent stick" perception from the "bent stick in water" appearance (there's more to the argument of course).
The internal tension highlighted is the elision of perception and appearance through a shifting of vocabulary, which when criticised dispels the force of the argument by revealing unstated, implausible premises.
In terms of the analogy, the unstated conceptual connection (of equivalence) between appearance and perception motivates the object based equivalence between two hypothetical appearance-perceptions; the stick bent in water, and the stick bent out of water in precisely the same manner of bending. The (conceptual) equivalence between appearance and perception transforms into an (object based) equivalence between perceptions in the two considered cases.
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Sam26
At the same time as acting as a form of criticism, there appears to be content which is leveraged in those criticisms that is of a positive character. The critical imperatives allow us to disconnect ideas, but there are also ideas which become connected by applying the criticism. When Austin shows us the sentence "I see a stick which appears to be bent", as a valid and literal instance of "I see", it suggests that judgements can co-occur naturally within acts of perception; we see the stick as bent, but we also judge that the stick is bent during the act of seeing.
Wittgenstein has commitments of a similar form, specifically, the claim that "if we can't speak of doubt, we can't speak of knowledge", or in another phrasing; if knowledge of X is part of a language game, then doubting claims regarding X must be too. In order to leverage this positive content methodologically, it must be stipulated to hold in the considered circumstances. Negation of an argument must be done using some premises or else it is baseless.
This is interesting, as it makes a positive claim about the world shielded behind a critical intervention; whenever the critical intervention regarding knowledge and doubt is applied to a topic [hide=*](or more generally, any instance of the principle of bipolarity; if it can be true it must mean something for it to able to be false, "The Paris meter stick is 1 meter long" if false is meaningless, therefore...)[/hide], the topic is treated as equivalent to one in which the described connection between knowledge and doubt holds.
If we abstract one level, to what the character of this intervention says, in the background it imagines an equivalence between what is being talked about and intervened on and the kind of construction (language games) in which it holds. Without explicating the character of the kind of language game in which the knowledge-doubt one holds (just all ones involving knowledge and doubt...). In what circumstances does such a connection hold? Perhaps it can only be seen through examples, perhaps as @Banno would usually say the circumstances can't be explicated, they can only be shown. These are both issues.
Quoting StreetlightX
So relying upon such a connection by virtue of seeing it as relevant alone construes language and world as something which is given and self interpreting; it is some way or the other, and if this is not seen in the case being analysed, that is a problem of someone's understanding rather than a problem of the methodology. In broad terms, the applicability of connections like Wittgenstein's knowledge-doubt one rests upon a privileged domain in which terms are imbued their meaning, and a connection to this domain is only ensured if you follow the pattern of argument in the knowledge-doubt (or like) analysis. It stops being a methodology using language, and reifies a particular interpretation of language as language, without the mechanisms of contextualisation that it espouses. Linguistic analysis comes (or can come) to police sense rather than clarify it.
I really enjoyed reading Austin's analysis when I was in college, and would recommend Sense and Sensibilia to anyone interested in the issues being discussed in this and other threads like this.
Quoting fdrake
Austin's analysis is a good example of how such arguments can shed light on linguistic confusions. You're right to point these out.
In the context of this thread, Linguistic analysis should not be isolated from the confusions of meaning that often occur when stating one's ideas. Moreover, the analysis should not be separated from the world in which we live and breathe, where language gets its life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIB6rUa9fJQ
I think it illustrates the kind of linguistic analysis we're talking about.
That is, if you study what's talked about and how, you study what's talked about. I don't see how one could even do the 'linguistic analysis alone,' unless you mean actually doing empirical linguistics, which turns language into its own special domain, but this isn't what philosophers have ever done, to my knowledge, except maybe some very recent philosophers of language.
At the beginning of the video, where Austin comments on the first of two things “immensely important to understand...”:
“...Despite the great wealth of words which European languages possess, the thinker finds himself often at a loss for an expression exactly suited to his conception, for want of which he is unable to make himself intelligible either to others or to himself. To coin new words is a pretension to legislation in language which is seldom successful; and, before recourse is taken to so desperate an expedient, it is advisable to examine the dead and learned languages, with the hope and the probability that we may there meet with some adequate expression of the notion we have in our minds. In this case, even if the original meaning of the word has become somewhat uncertain, from carelessness or want of caution on the part of the authors of it, it is always better to adhere to and confirm its proper meaning—even although it may be doubtful whether it was formerly used in exactly this sense—than to make our labour vain by want of sufficient care to render ourselves intelligible. For this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate distinction of which from related conceptions is of great importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or, for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for other cognate words. It is our duty, on the contrary, carefully to preserve its peculiar signification, as otherwise it easily happens that when the attention of the reader is no longer particularly attracted to the expression, and it is lost amid the multitude of other words of very different import, the thought which it conveyed, and which it alone conveyed, is lost with it...”
(CPR, B369)
Similar admonitions, it seems.
I don't think this is quite right, but I think this partly down to how to phrased things with the dichotomy language/world. I need to modify what I said above: it is in fact the case that language and world can 'come apart', but the key thing is to recognise instances when they do. 'Linguistic analysis' ('LA'), as I understand it, is the attempt to track when language and world depart from one another, despite the impression that they have not (what Witty calls 'being held captive by a picture' or somesuch). There's a passage from Cavell that I really like that brings out the critical import of LA here, where he uses a really interesting turn of phrase, on making words 'nothing but their meaning':
"Wittgenstein's notion of "speaking outside language games"... suggests that what happens to the philosopher's concepts is that they are deprived of their ordinary criteria of employment (which does not mean that his words are deprived of meaning - one could say that such words have nothing but their meanings) and, collecting no new ones, leave his concepts without relation to the world (which does not mean that what he says is false), or in terms I used earlier, remove them from their position among our system of concepts".
I like Cavell's way of putting things because he does not say that such uses of words are meaning-less per se, but that they are nothing 'but' their meanings: that their significance does not reach, as it were, where we would want it to reach. The words have meaning, but this meaning does not have the significance one takes it to have. I think the Wittgensteinian treatment of knowledge and doubt is exemplary in this regard: against those who ask: 'but how do you really know the Thing with Certainty?', the Wittgensteinian counter-question is simply: 'do you understand what you're asking? Are you aware of how singular your question is, and the equivocations one risks in construing your question as though simply one more in a long line of questions about knowledge?'.
To be 'mislead by grammar' is here to think that this use of language still 'has its position among our system of concepts': to not recognize that world and language have come apart. That all said, against Wittgenstein, I'm all too happy to maintain that philosophers have long known that this is exactly what what happens in their discourse, and that Witty was simply making explicit what every competent philosopher has known implicitly since time immemorial (Wittgenstein projected, as it were, his own naivety onto the philosophers whom he never read).
There is a problem which arises when we take it for granted, that a particular phrase has a specific meaning. For example, if a person takes it for granted that 'stand roughly here' has a specific meaning, which is independent from the context of use, that person will be lost. Because of this need to rely on the peculiarities of the particular circumstances in any determination of meaning, and the difficulty in determining these peculiarities (accidents in Aristotelian terms), doubt and skepticism cannot be dismissed as easily as an individual who takes meaning for granted might assume.
Quoting fdrake
What you call a transcendent illusion is a type of category mistake itself, which is very common. Distinguishing objects from concepts as if they are categorically distinct is itself a category mistake, because objects and concepts are the same type of thing. Conception begins in analysis because the act of analyzing is a dividing, and dividing is what creates the boundaries which define the concept. The boundaries here are the proposed restrictions, the rules of usage. Also, an "object" requires a boundary in the very same way, restricting what is and is not, of the object. So objects are what is created by analysis, therefore the concept and the object are one and the same thing. The illusion, is in the idea that one contains accidents and the other does not, and this illusion creates the notion that the concept is a "universal", which is somehow separate from the object. However, in reality both concept and object contain accidents. Because of the reality of accidents, the true error is in the assumption that any such boundaries are "necessary".
Your passage from Austin reveals very well the problem outlined in my reply to StreetlightX, above. This is the problem in assuming that a word has a meaning, what is called here, the "proper meaning", which is independent of the context of use.
Quoting Mww
Perhaps it's time for us to give up this notion that the concept is something independent from the physical appearance of the word. We tend to think that a concept is some sort of mental stuff shared between individuals. But all we can find here, as the shared property, where the concept ought to be found, is physical words. And even within an individual person's own mind, we tend to think that the word within that mind represents a concept. But it really does not. The word within the mind gets shuffled around, associated with numerous different other words, images and memories, but none of these can be properly called a concept. Therefore we have no evidence of existence of "a concept" anywhere, except as the existence of the words themselves. We may conclude, concepts are word. Then the effort to analyze the use of words, to seek and find the concepts which words signify, will be fruitless, endless, due to this reality that the concepts are the words.
I hear ya, but still.......
.......I’m not going to give up the notion that concept is independent of word. All representations presuppose that to which they belong;
.......I don’t think concepts are shared. Concepts are mental stuff, yes, but the source of all immanent conceptions, the only ones to which words properly belong, because they relate to possible experience, is understanding, and, just as in consciousness, understanding is never shared;
......because it is logically sufficient to state where concepts are to be found, perhaps the epitome of transcendental illusion is to think only words are to be found there. Concepts, in and of themselves, have a purpose and thereby a use, but not a description. If we find words where there should be concepts, we’re doing something very wrong;
......agreed, the word within the mind does not represent the concept. It is more the case that the word is found in judgement, which represents the concept in cognition, which is the exposition of it;
......we have no empirical evidence of the existence of concepts, no. Rational evidence would seem to be necessary, nonetheless;
......there are those inclined to grant concepts are words, but I submit it is only because they don’t know any better;
......and for those, the search for concepts from the mere representation of them, will be fruitless and endless. And foolish.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why would you say that? How are they the same type of thing?
The source of a thing is distinct from the thing itself. Just because the source of concepts is understanding, and therefore an activity of consciousness, it does not follow that concepts themselves are understanding or part of consciousness. Consciousness is the source of words. Human beings engineer buildings, airplanes, and all sorts of construction projects. Clearly the source of these things is consciousness, but that does not mean they are part of consciousness.
Quoting Mww
Why would you say that concepts have no description? The concept of "square" for example can be described as an equilateral rectangle.
Quoting Mww
Since concepts are presented (rather than represented) in words and other symbols (mathematical for example), as definitions, descriptions and explanations, and the symbols or words have no necessary referent, then the "rational evidence" ought to lead us toward believing that words are concepts. Sure, a mind will associate a word with a referent, as a voluntary judgement, but where might you find a concept within that mind if it is not the word itself?
Quoting Mww
As I described in that post, both concepts and objects are created by the application of boundaries.
That which we are to speak of as "Concept", I see reason to hold as the immaterial force by which our every representation of the objects of experience derive their substance, and by which they are thereby informed of what constitutes any such object both singularly, and as a whole, in any particular case. Which is to say, that though they are byproducts of the activity of thought, and brought to mind only upon the exercise of these same faculties, the sum of their manifestations exists as potential within the field of the abstract, and by virtue of that fact, are in some sense at least, antecedent to the course by which they are set to emerge from view. Moreover, there can be found many ways by which to illustrate any one notion; to render clear, and explicit what conditions inhere therein, without deferring to traditional means of the descriptive. In which instance, the referent of one's choice of phrase, stands as the criteria which impart to its object, a depth, and uniqueness in character that can only be reconciled with itself as a matter of form, and presentation. Yet, these characteristics retain their hold, and are no less significant in meaning regardless of the manner in which one seeks to describe, or at all provide reference for, the object thereof. It is this unchanging aspect of the understanding, that serves as "Concept".
A template for the notions themselves, as it were.
1. Apples and oranges are created by the application of horticulture.
2. How is the concept of "boundary" created by the application of boundaries?
I don't think you'll get anywhere this way Luke, it appears to me like you are just giving me random words. Either you get it or you do not, and I don't think I can provide you with the background required. Your examples are so confusing I can't understand. Apples and oranges come from trees not horticulture. Biology defines what an apple is, and what an orange is, but I don't see your point, if there is one.
And your second is so vague as to leave me without any understanding of what you are trying to ask. I'll give it a try though. A boundary doesn't exist until it is applied. Right? Suppose someone had within their mind, the intent to create a boundary for a specific purpose. What kind of existence could we give to that intended boundary which exists in thought only? It's not a boundary at all. A person could even establish that boundary within one's own mind, like a private rule, 'step across that imaginary line, and I'm going to pound you', defend what is mine. But the imaginary line has no existence as a real boundary, and the person hasn't even told the other, so the other person cannot know the consequences of stepping forward. And, the person who thinks that the imaginary boundary is a real boundary could be called delusional, and attacks the other for no apparent reason every time the other steps across the imaginary line. Ever heard of ostensive definition? if the person keeps trying to step across, and the delusional person keeps enforcing the boundary, the boundary becomes real, and the apprehended enforcement itself becomes the concept of boundary for the other person. The person has developed a concept of boundary, and stops stepping there, or else contests the boundary and retaliates.
You know......people talk so damn much, they think that’s all they ever do. And because when they talk, they use words, so they think words are all there are. If, as you say, the source of the thing is distinct from the thing itself, it follows necessarily that the source of a word is distinct from the word itself, which grants that the concept is presented in the word or represented by the word, which either way immediately subsumes the word under the antecedent concept.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully sympathize with the philosophical vagary, “.....spontaneously producing representations, or the spontaneity of cognition....”**, and the speculative methodology derived from it. Nobody likes spontaneity; it can’t be falsified or established as the case, and the fact it isn’t theoretically self-contradictory is little solace to the ultra-modern, analytic heart. All of which, I suppose, makes it ok to just throw in something or other in order to relieve ourselves of by-gone vagaries we detest so much, justifying the rise of the language gang, which is, of course, merely substituting one vagary for another.
Descriptions and definitions are propositions composed of words; words represent concepts; therefore concepts describe and define concepts, which is impossible. A concept cannot define itself. If a concept cannot define itself, and if the reality of it is given, it must represent that which can be defined, but only as the means to facilitate the possibility of communication. We have no need of definitions in pure thought. You know...pure thought....that thing we do when we’re not so busy talking. And whether we label a particular geometric figure constructed in accordance with precise a priori principles a square or a equilateral rectangle, we still refer to a single conception. We should find we are merely defining the principles which make the conception possible, when closer examination inevitably reveals the lackadaisical attitude of the mind in general, that is, not subjected to critical analysis, when it makes it seem like we are actually defining the conception. We at the same time should find mathematical conceptions, as opposed to philosophical conceptions, are themselves necessary referents, given their construction is entirely dependent on the a priori, albeit synthetic, cognitions of individuals that think them, as long as the principles for it are contained by it.
** CPR B75
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The only way I see this working, is if the boundaries applied are the categories, specifically the category of quantity and modality. A quantity of space is a boundary for the possibility of objects and necessity is a boundary for the realization of concepts. Still, I’d hesitate to grant application of the categories creates anything, but rather makes the construction of conceptions possible a priori and experience of things possible a posteriori. We don’t construct experience and we don’t experience constructs, but both occur in us, so a common ground for them seems to be required. Judgement is common but is not a ground; understanding is a ground but is not common, so something underpins both.
Nahhhh.....I’m going to reject the assertion that we create objects, but grant....sorta.....the assertion that we create conceptions. Arising “spontaneously from pure thought”, as conceptions are said to do, is close enough to creation so as to not cause any major upheaval in The Grand Scheme of Minor Things.
It’s a tangled web, by all accounts.
You seem to be confusing the concept with what represents the concept. If definitions and propositions are composed of words and words represent concepts, then the representations are describing the concepts, not the concept itself. It's like you are confusing the word "whiskers"
with whiskers. "Whiskers", "furry", "pointy-ears", "meow", "scratching furniture", "walk on four legs", etc. are all words, but they represent properties of a cat. The properties are not the words, they are actually characteristics that define a cat, with all of them together distinguishing them from say, dogs, who also have four legs, whiskers, are furry, but don't "meow" or scratch furniture.
Without using words (representations of concepts), can you distinguish cats from dogs? Can you distinguish cats from dogs using the concepts themselves, and not the representations (words)? Sure you can, it is those physical characteristics that you are aware of in your mind - that are pure thought - mental images of cats, and the sounds they make, in contrast with the mental images of dogs and the sounds they make. In your mind, you have a description of a cat that isn't composed of representations, but of the actual physical characteristics that make a cat different than a dog, and anything else.
Smaller concepts (whiskers, meowing, etc,.) define larger concepts (cats).
Honestly now, when you see a dog, do you really use words to tell yourself what you just saw wasn’t a cat?
You've said that "the concept and the object are one and the same thing" and that "both...are created by the application of boundaries". Apples and oranges are not the same thing, despite both being created by trees (the object, not the concept).
I'm reminded of Schopenhauer's three stages of the acceptance of an idea! Not that I'm complaining.
But I think that the history of philosophy is simply not possible without the kind of semantic blindness Wittgenstein puts his finger on. That is, if philosophers know this, they sure act like they don't.
:meh:
That was what I was asking you based on your previous post. I made the point that the concepts that the words represent are what define larger concepts. You distinguish between dogs and cats with different concepts, which words are just representations of. So concepts DO define larger concepts, right? You can define a cat without words, but can you define a cat without concepts?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yeah....I leave the “what it’s like” arguments, the notion of qualia, direct realism and whatnot, to those with an affinity for them.
Conceptions don’t get larger, they get less susceptible to skepticism. The more representations of an object, the less contradictory the knowledge of it.
Why would you think the concept is the source of the word rather than that the word is the source of the concept?
Quoting Mww
I disagree with your second premise, that words represent concepts. I don't see how this could be true, so I think that words are concepts. But that means the rest of your argument is pointless to me.
Quoting Mww
Right, but "pure thought" doesn't necessarily contains concepts. It is only when we think in words, or other symbols like mathematical symbols, that we think in concepts. Do you think that this is a coincidence?
Quoting Mww
Yes categories are bounded for sure.
Quoting Mww
Doesn't application of the categories create concepts? Suppose someone has a vague idea of how some categories, or boundaries ought to be constructed, and so begins to apply these boundaries. In application the problems become apparent, and the precise boundaries get determined. The vagaries get ironed out, and by determining the specifics which solve the problems of vagueness, the concept comes into existence.
Quoting Mww
Look around you. How many of the objects which you see are artificial? How can you say that we do not create objects?
Quoting Luke
Huh? I didn't say that two distinct objects are one and the same thing, nor did I say that two distinct concepts are one and the same thing. I meant that the concept "apple" is one and the same as the object "apple", which is the word "apple".
You're saying that words grow on trees?
:wink:
Times like these.
So I don't wanna shit on linguistic analysis totally, and it's an extremely important tool to check when "thought is not gaining traction on being" (paraphrasing Brassier) when reasoning. But I want to emphasize strongly that it's not the only thinking style which serves this negative role; especially when the flavour of intuitions and philosophical constructs that are wedded to the norms of language use should not be expected to gain traction in the right way.
One example, that this forum readily serves up, is in qualia discussions. A folk psychological judgement of what feelings, perceptions and sensations are becomes embedded in the qualia notion by what counts as a qualia and what does not; it isn't a coincidence that qualia get associated with words for sensation types but /the quale/ is present in every token/instance. People doing phenomenology don't seem to need the concept at all, and the kind of descriptions they produce of experience - how you have to think to produce those descriptions - does not match the kind of descriptions that qualia engender of them (what always seems like a bundle theory). Phenomenology seems to pay much more attention to what makes the items of the bundle distinct.
Reminds me of a discussion on the old forum about the distinction between naming and individuation, but I can't see a precise way of fleshing out the connection.
Another example, taken from @Sam26 's video post about a section from Sense and Sensibilia. Austin gives a brief discussion about the phrase "material thing" and asks whether clouds count (arguably they do not). The ambiguities surrounding whether it's appropriate to consider a cloud a material thing marks site of torsion in how we think of objects and more hazy intuitions about processes. It is not so surprising that there will be internal torsion there in standard language use because norms of discourse have very little to say about how clouds work clouds. That isn't to say that clouds are philosophically uninteresting; linguistic analysis might show that the norms of discourse have a tension regarding them, but there's kind of metaphysics that takes something like a cloud as an exemplary entity rather than something like a table or an idea. There's still room for a positive account, and here it looks to require much different tools to build. Linguistic analysis can show us holes in intuition there, a different perspective is required to give anything like a positive account.
How could a time be like anything else? :chin:
Most of us have talked in generalities, although you have brought up specific examples from Austin. There are many words that philosophers use (and others) that could do with some Wittgensteinian analysis (as per the PI or OC). For instance...
Truth
Knowledge
Illusion
Delusion
Soul
Hallucination
Reality
Unconscious
Subconscious
Belief
Time
Thought
Experience
Infinity
Subjective
Objective
The list goes on and on with words that cause linguistic confusion. Austin tackles a few of these in his book Sense and Sensibilia.
Then there is Wittgenstein's analysis of how we derive meaning. How that many of our words aren't associated with objects (mental or otherwise) that give meaning to a word. It's the problem of thinking that meaning is associated with something internal to me (some mental phenomena) that I associate with the word as I use it.
Obviously, as we have already agreed, linguistic analysis in the tradition of Wittgenstein and Austin isn't the be-all and end-all of understanding, but it is an important study, helping us to understand many confusions that arise philosophically.
What happens after the confusions are dispelled? Does that speak to the veracity of the cleared ground, or is it simply a case of being better off to do whatever else is required than before? I'm always wary of leaving the implicit accounts our use of language has as the final word, when their analysis is intended only to be the first.
I never said it was. I said the word is subsumed under the concept, which just means the concept conditions the word that represents it. As you said, given acceptable convention, we can use any word we like for a conception, but the conception itself, stands for a single thought. There are as many conceptions as there are thoughts, and most are mere images without names. All that means is words come from some aspect of cognitive awareness, of which conceptions themselves are not a part. This must be the case, otherwise we’d have a word already, for a perception or a thought we’ve never had and the knowledge for which we never possess, which is absurd. If it be granted judgement is the first conscious aspect of the human cognitive system, it follows words are only available at judgement or subsequently, in cognition or experience.
Gotta let go of habits, I must say. These days, there are so few perceptions or thoughts we’ve never had....too many people, too much automation, very little significant subjective privacy.....folks tend to allow themselves to be blinded by teaching instead of wondering how teaching occurs. The proverbial dogmatic slumbers.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How would you prove it? And if not prove, sustain logically?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then you must find it absolutely impossible to account for objects we think, but do not empirically exist. I suppose it depends on what you mean by “pure”, and how your notion of it pertains to thought. Is there impure thought, and what kind of thought is that, such that pure and impure stand for different things?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
OK, so this is how you account for non-existent objects. So....it is only when we think in words that we think in concepts, which implies words and concepts are the same thing, or at least do the same cognitive job. Again, human cognition is a process, some of which is absent from our awareness. Words are never absent from our awareness, which makes explicit some part of human cognition cannot be predicated on words. Depending on the stage of cognition one thinks himself aware of the process, that must be the stage at which he begins using words. We’ve already established that the faculty of understanding is the seat of conceptions (theoretically), so the question becomes, are we aware of our faculty of understanding? We are quite apt to say, “I understand what you mean”, but does that necessarily indicate we are aware of the employment of the faculty itself?
We know from science, there is a blank spot between the object meeting perception, and the transfer of that information within the brain, culminating in what we call experience. In the same manner as science has its blank spot in its process, cognitive philosophy has subconscious spot in its process. When science examines its blank spot, it requires empirical justifications for its claims relating to it, but cognitive philosophy only needs logical justifications for its claims.
Both science and philosophy acknowledge the objects of perception become objects of knowledge. But what science can’t examine that philosophy can, is the objects we merely think can also become objects of knowledge. Different kind of object, different kind of knowledge, but undeniable certainty nonetheless, at least from a private point of view. Skipping a few steps, if science grants the combination of this and that to get to an end, and philosophy grants the same thing, it still remains that philosophy has something over and above science, insofar as the “this” is missing. When we have what you call “pure thought”, perception is the “this” of both science and philosophy that is missing.
All this methodology so far being under our awareness, with the exception of the initiating sensation, and in the case of absent perception which simultaneously absents sensation, where is the content of pure thought coming from? Such content can have nothing whatsoever to do with perception, which eliminates anything having to do with experience. From the point of view of science, memory, feedback loops, pre-existent enabled neural networks are eliminated; from the point of view of cognitive philosophy, appearance, phenomena and intuitions are all eliminated. All of those being determined a posteriori, the source of which in “pure thought” does not figure into the process.
Just as science demands its certainty in the form of compliance to observation, so too does logic demand its certainty in the form of conclusions following necessarily from premises. All syllogisms have a major premise, a minor premise conditioning the major, and a conclusion reconciling both, from which certainty is given, or is at least certainly possible. Returning to the this and that to get an end, we arrive at “this” being intuition (the major), “that” being conception (the minor), ending in judgement (the conclusion). But in pure thought the “this” is missing, so we have demoted a logical syllogism to merely the form of a simple subject/predicate proposition. All change must have a cause, is such a pure thought, wherein no content for the subject or predicate is given, but the proposition remains true, and substitution of empirical conditions serves to prove it apodeitically.
It should be clear by now, all those properties we assign to objects are not concepts, they are intuitions, because in pure thought, all empirical predicates, which are the constituents of intuition, become vacant. Absent all empirical properties, we cannot even say we ever knew there was such a thing as a cat. Experience tells us about fur, whiskers, claws, etc, from which the cognition “cat” is given so it follows that absent all those, “cat” disappears. The synthesis of a set of intuitions in accordance with a rule (this and this and this belong together, that does not) is a phenomenon. The phenomenon presented to understanding is then conceived as a particular thing. As long as the logical process meets with no contradictions (somehow a wing got intuited into the phenomenon of fur, claws and whiskers), it befalls the faculty of judgement to conclude, given the sound-ness of its premises, the conception can be thought of, and accordingly named, or, which is the same thing, cognized, as “cat”.
And THERE is the first instance of a word. It should be evident we don’t need the words for fur, claws and whiskers to form our judgements. All we need are representations of objects or parts of objects, all we need is something to synthesize, no matter its name assigned in retrospect, or even if there isn’t one in the first occurrence of it. Only un-named things are representations, all named things are cognitions; of which the former we are unaware, the latter we are fully conscious.
An admission: with respect “lackadaisical minds”, I have one myself, in that I usually say words represent conceptions, but in fact, words represent cognitions. I can rationalize my wanton whimsy by claiming one follows on the heels of the other in so immediate a fashion they are cognitively indistinguishable. The problem only arises in the case of some beliefs, where the cognition cannot conform to a conception without reason being inconsistent with itself. Like....that cloud looks like a rabbit.
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Anyway......this is Sunday morning, and this is what I do on Sunday mornings.
Salva veritate...
An exercise in substitution...
That's one linguistic analysis that is often quite useful.
It depends on what the confusions reveal. For example, if we're referring to Moore's argument against the skeptics, the argument fails. If we're referring to the skeptic's argument against Moore, their argument fails. Both arguments fail because of the misuse of the words know and doubt respectively. In both cases it clears the ground, so that future mistakes of the same kind are not made. Does it speak to the truth of the arguments? Yes. If both arguments fail, then their conclusions are not true. Is it the final word on the matter, of course not. One might need to revise the arguments in light of the new information. It depends on one's goals. Moreover, understanding the points made in Wittgenstein's analysis clears the way in many other similar arguments.
It's seems you're implying that not much is accomplished after the air clears. It depends on what the clarity achieves. It might be a minor point of clarity, or a major point of clarity. Wittgenstein's analysis of what it means to know in OC is a major point of clarity. It affects the way we use the word know across a wide domain of uses.
You seem to be saying much the same thing as me, in a different way. Do you think that this part of cognition which is absent from our awareness (and I would say that it's a large part), uses words?
Quoting Mww
I don't agree with this division. We can free our minds from words. Try humming a tune for example. If you've ever practised meditation, you should have come to notice that we can banish words from our minds. This is an important aspect of contemplation, because if we cannot completely rid our minds of words, then we cannot have complete control over the words which are in our minds. So first we might practise banishing all words from the mind, and when we become successful at that, we can move on toward allowing only the words that we want to exist in our minds. But if you cannot successfully banish all words from your mind you cannot control which words are in your mind.
Yeah I totally agree. Those who think that LA is the be-all-and-end-all of philosophy are infuriating. A major case of seeing everything as a nail while wielding a hammer.
I think....not a chance. Only the preliminaries for empirical cognitions function absent our awareness, which makes sense because to be unaware of the objects of cognition reason creates on its own accord is contradictory. The preliminaries of empirical cognitions begin, of course, with some real object of perception, which is then transformed into some kind of information usable by mechanisms totally different then the mechanisms the initially perceived the object, re: eyeballs are quite different arrangements of matter than optic nerves. This is the blind or unconscious spot I mentioned, blind (unconscious) because whatever that information is, makes no difference to us. That it is, is crucial; what it is, is irrelevant. Nothing controversial here; we are unconscious of this transformed information, even if such information is an absolutely necessary part of the system in general.
Science calls it electrochemical potentials, philosophy calls it appearances. When science measures the potential, a name becomes generated corresponding to the result of the measurement, but that result of measurement of potential is not the object that was perceived. The named potential represents the real object. No one has yet fallen for the absurdity of calling a tree “1.6734uv”. Philosophy, on the other hand, has no means to measure, but cannot ignore what science can measure, thus philosophy cannot name its form of representation, but it no less a representation for lacking a name. So far, to answer your question.....no, there is no use of words.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absent from our awareness means not contained in it; never absent from our awareness means always contained in it. What’s to disagree with? I’m saying awareness is sufficient for words but words are not necessary merely from being aware. So, yes, of course we can free our minds from words; it is my position we do exactly that any time we are not communicating. And meditation is really just extreme non-communication, so.....there ya go.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Banish: Delete, remove, dismiss, abolish. If I do that, I automatically banish anything to which the word relates, because by means of representation of conceptions do conceptions exist and without conceptions, cognition, hence knowledge, is impossible. Ever notice how empty your mind gets when some word is right on “the tip of your tongue”? You become rationally incapacitated, you’re stuck in your cognitive tracks, forced to take a different path that doesn’t require that word. That gawd-awful dreaded Blue Screen of Crash, no less. Nahhhh....I ain’t banishing no words; I got enough short-term memory problems without intentionally exacerbating them to my own disadvantage.
By the way.....I like some of your stuff in the Time thread.
According to Wittgenstein the philosophical problems disappear when the confusions are dispelled.
I'm not sure if you are bilingual or not, but if you aren't -- trust me, a language isn't just a collection of words and grammar it's a worldview with its own implicit assumptions and ways of categorizing the world. Philosophical problems which arise in one language may not arise in another and other languages may give rise to philosophical problems that english speakers would consider ridiculous.
What about habitual actions, would you say that they occur absent of our awareness? For example, if I'm walking, I'm not actually aware of how I am moving my legs, and where I am putting my feet. Sure I'm aware that I'm walking, and I watch for things or other people who might get in the way, but the general, large activity called walking, consists of a whole bunch of small activities, and I might not actually be aware of the some of those smaller activities involved in walking. You know, I could get right into the activities of all my muscles when I'm walking, and I'm sure I'm not aware of all that.
So how would you draw a line between which activities happen absent of awareness and which activities require awareness? It appears like I can't walk without being aware that I am walking (sleepwalking perhaps?), but the activities required for walking, moving my muscles, occur without my awareness.
Draw this analogy to speaking if you will. Suppose someone asks me a question, and I answer from habit, without really thinking. I am aware that I am speaking, but I am not aware of thinking up which words to say, they just sort of roll out in response to the question. Isn't this evidence, that this part of cognition, which is coming up with the words that I am saying, is absent of my awareness, though I am still aware that I am speaking, in a way similar to the way that the activities of my leg muscles are absent of my awareness when I am aware that I am walking? So it appears like words are being used in this part of my cognition which is absent from my awareness. Do you agree? Isn't this even more evident when there are words in your dreams?
By only considering activities within speculative epistemological metaphysics. Physical activities essentially belong to behaviorism, the domain of empirical psychology and therefore outside my experiential/educational comfort zone.
Still, there is a sort of correspondence here.....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
.....in that me telling you all about the human faculty of representation, for which the necessity of language is given in the objective telling but not in the subjective doing, is congruent to subjectively getting right into the activities of the muscles used in objectively walking. In other words, inasmuch as we only think about walking muscles for some reason other than merely walking, so too do we only think about the unconscious operation of the faculty of representation for some other reason than merely thinking. We walk, but how is it that we walk; we think, but how is it that we think. Same-o, same-o.
And I don’t care how it is that we walk, so....there’s my red line in the activity sand.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hume’s “constant conjunction”. From habit is temporal antecedent made explicit, and from temporal antecedents arise the notion of two objects, re: repeated question and habitual answer. Critical examination of the literature in which the so-called two objects are found,** shows not all judgements, which is exactly what any response to a question really is, require contemplation***. That it seems to us we are not contemplating our response, is equivalent to seeming to occur without thinking, but in fact it is reason recognizing the impossibility of a contradiction (again, rationality and intellectual consistency being given). Hume thought the impossibility of contradiction followed from the invariance of Nature, but Kant showed such impossibility cannot arise from empirical conditions, because Nature cannot be proved invariant, but is certainly granted by reason from the principle of deduction given a priori, the power of which Hume went to great lengths to deny.
** ECHU 5.1.5
“.....And it is certain we here advance a very intelligible proposition at least, if not a true one, when we assert that, after the constant conjunction of two objects (...) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other....”
*** CPR B317
“....Many judgements are admitted to be true from mere habit or inclination; but, because reflection neither precedes nor follows, it is held to be a judgement that has its origin in the understanding. All judgements do not require examination, that is, investigation into the grounds of their truth....”
So....answering from habit still requires thought, just doesn’t require understanding to waste any time on it. Because answering a question even out of habit, presupposes a set of empirical conditions in the form of the receptivity of the question, the unconscious cognitive apparatus remains in play just as in any other empirical consideration. Of the myriad of intuitions residing in consciousness, of all the possible answers to that question, just slightly different this or that (his shirt was red (redwood, rosewood, rust, terra cotta and auburn)) the habitual answer is only one, because its precedent has been set, hence the impossibility of understanding contradicting itself. This is how contemplation in judgement, from which the answer is delivered as its cognition, is shown to be unnecessary, and from which follows the immediacy of habitual cognitions in general.
We were talking about awareness. Have you switched this for the faculty of representation? Or do you think they are one and the same?
Quoting Mww
I don't see how you get to this conclusion. The habitual answer is not the only answer, because a person might interrupt one's own inclination to speak, and decide on a different answer. So the whole apparatus of speaking appears to be an interplay between allowing what comes to one's mind by habit, and also at the same time possibly declining this, to decide on saying something else. Therefore it is only sometimes that contemplation is unnecessary, but this itself would be a judgement, that contemplation is unnecessary. It may be the case that all words come from the unconscious cognitive apparatus, and the conscious mind only makes the judgement of whether or not to say them. Would this mean that the conscious awareness doesn't actually think with words, because it would need to think with something else in order to judge the words coming from the unconscious?
We were talking about words, and the awareness/use of them relative to the human cognitive system in general. Your unconscious part of the mechanics of walking is analogous to my unconscious part of empirical cognitions. I haven’t switched anything, and I reject that awareness and the faculty of representation are one and the same.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Answers other than the habitual are possible, but answering habitually makes all of them irrelevant. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be habitual.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don’t care for “allowing to come to one’s mind”; it carries the implication I could actually prevent something from coming into my mind. In order to prevent a thought, the only thing that ever comes into my mind in the first place,** I must first think what I intend to prevent, which is self-contradictory, or, I must be able to un-think the thought I wish to prevent, which is impossible. We don’t “allow” thoughts; they arise from reason necessarily, invited or uninvited, from our very nature as humans, and we may allow them to matter if they relate to something or we may reject them because they don’t. From here, that which comes to one’s mind by habit is just a repetitive relation, or, which is the same thing, good ol’ experience.
If you decide against saying something in favor of saying something else, all you’ve done is relate one to the other and judge something about that relation.
I don’t know or care much about “the whole apparatus of speaking”, but I suspect it is mostly sheer mechanics. But there must be some part of the speech apparatus in which the thought of what to say transitions into being said, at least in general conversation, which would seem to be a lot like your walking muscles.....operating behind the conscious scenes and only comes to the fore upon defect or accident of some kind. Just as stumbling is not necessarily the fault of muscles, so too is speaking falsely not the fault of the language.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Positing that words come from a place still needs justification for the ways and means of them being there. Going to be pretty hard to tell ourselves something about that of which we are not consciously aware, except as a logical possibility. Which sometimes just has to be good enough.
** CPR B67
“.....all in our cognition that belongs to intuition contains nothing more than mere relations. (The feelings of pain and pleasure, and the will, which are not cognitions, are excepted.)...”
We prevent things from coming into our mind all the time. Once you accept as the phrase you will say, and say it "…" you prevent other possibilities from coming to your mind. But if you don't accept what first comes to your mind, you leave your mind open to other possibilities, so more and more possibilities come to your mind. Preventing things from coming into one's mind is what is commonly called being closed minded. Though it's often considered a vise rather than a virtue, it's not at all self-contradictory.
Quoting Mww
Thinking and reasoning are carried out for a purpose. In general the purpose is to solve a problem. When we pass judgement, decide that the solution has been found, we no longer think about that subject. At this point, thoughts concerning that subject are no longer allowed. That's why people on this forum will defend a position to no end, refusing to even consider contrary arguments. They disallow further thought on that subject. So disallowing thoughts, closed mindedness, could be in some cases be related to a confidence in what one believes, or it might be related to some sort of fear of the unknown, and allowing thoughts, open mindedness, is related to a type of skepticism.
Quoting Mww
If this were really the case, how would it differ from straight forward memory? It's not really the case though, because each situation that a person finds oneself in is different from the last, so we can't describe this as a "repetitive relation". When a phrase comes to one's mind in a habitual sort of way, it may be that the person recognizes a similarity in the present situation in relation to a remembered situation, but I don't even think that this the case. It's more like the words just come to mind in relation to each other, like some words just kind of go together, and the situation (being asked a question with specific words for example) just sort of triggers a particular grouping of words to come forward as a reply.
Quoting Mww
"Mechanics", do you really mean that?
Quoting Mww
I would say that the thing operating behind the conscious scene is what is putting the words into the mind. The reply to the question just pops into the mind, as if hearing the question asks the unconscious to produce a reply. But the words have to pass in front of the conscious mind to be judged, before they are spoken. The conscious mind might just glance at them as they pass by, or it might prevent them from being spoken, and allow other options to come forward. So this is not like walking muscles at all. If it were, then each potential act of the walking muscles would have to pass in front of the conscious mind before being carried out.
Quoting Mww
There's no problem with the place where the words are, they are in the memory, just like other memories.. A person doesn't speak words that one has never heard before. But we are clearly not consciously aware of everything which is in the memory. What I suggested is that certain combinations of words come from the memory into the conscious mind, depending on the situation, in a sort of habitual way. But how can this really be habitual, when all the situations are different, and the combination of words which comes forward into the mind as ready to be spoken, is tailored for the situation already, when it comes into the conscious mind? How can an action be said to be habitual when it is different every time it occurs?
What are your thoughts on mental imagery? We agree on a lot of stuff, however different the terminology. The major difference, is in the imagery, so if you reject the reality of it, we won’t ever get past being stuck in our own predications.
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If “we” have that much influence on “mind”, than we and mind must be separate entities. I reject that “I” am in any way distinct and separate from my mind; “I” am my mind. To say some natural activity that justifies and legitimizes what this “I” is, by means of the manifold of my thoughts, is willfully prevented by that very same “I” from thinking something less than that manifold, is ultimately a self-contradiction. This condition can be alleviated by granting reason as possessing sufficient power for preventing things from coming into the mind, in as much as reason prevents nothing except logical impossibilities from coming into the mind, as a consequence of the human methodological system.
To say we can prevent a thing from coming into the mind presupposes the thing. The thing presupposed is at least a valid conception, otherwise we are preventing a thing that is nothing. But to conceive a thing makes explicit it has already entered the mind, for the faculties of mind in general are the sole arbiters of validity in conceptions.
Such are two arguments refuting the assertion we can prevent things from coming into the mind. What we can do, and is more the case, is disregard a legitimate judgement. And THAT is what close-minded really means. But even close-minded is an insufficient notion, with respect to an irrational judgement, wherein a judgement is not disregarded, but simply incompatible with the empirical conditions from which it arises.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Can you honestly tell me you’ve had more than one thought at a time? I’d be very suspicious of an affirmative claim, insofar as it is generally accepted in the literature that human thought is singular and successive, rather multiple and co-existent. It follows that words representing thoughts and phrases representing groups of thoughts, and eventually representing cognitions, must also be singular and successive.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So you think that as soon as I, e.g., learn arithmetic propositions, I don’t think about them the next time I find myself in the presence of one? Even if I need no noticeable time in the accomplishment of any learned task, I am still required to relate something to something else, such the solution of the same problem is consistent. While it is true I may not need to judge some object in general as a particular object of sense more than once in order to know what it is, thereafter I still need to judge the consistency between subsequent observations of that object, and extant intuitions already understood as necessarily belonging to it, such that I will know it as the same object. Or same kind of object.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Oh, I'm guilty of that, I must say. Thing is, I can defend my position til the crowd of smelly bovines amble into the wooden containment structure, I mean, right down to the principles, which not one other person engaged here is ever wont to do. Even you, telling me all kinds of this and that, which I accept as given out of respect for your intelligence, still haven’t yet told me how it is done.——————
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For the empirical psychologist or the cognitive neuroscientist, it isn’t. The epistemological speculative philosopher, on the other hand, dealing as he does in pure abstracts in a strictly representational system, calls “memory” the faculty of intuitions, in order to distinguish the origins of its contents, which is, coincidentally enough.....experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hmmmm....possibly correct; I should have been more precise in my terminology. If I see a red apple more than once, the observations of apples is repetitive and its relations hold, but if I’ve never seen a green apple, the concept “apple” fails in at least one of its relations, so technically I have no right to know the green thing as an apple. Nonetheless, if I observe this green thing on the ground under an apple tree, surrounded by red apples, similar extension and mass being given, I am safe in drawing a new relation, such that future observations will abide as repetitive relations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is pretty much what I’m saying, except I use concepts where you use words. Some concepts go together, and some situation will trigger concepts to come forward. Introspection resolves the “inner voice” reality, but we spend far less time introspecting than we do understanding the world’s relationship to us, which just means we use words less than we use the means to understand the world, through the representations of mental imagery.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you recognize how screwed the system would be, if it required absolute precision for each of its responses to any given situation? If “it was an accident” was the habitual response for tipping over a glass of water, wouldn’t it suffice for tipping over a glass of milk? Particular relations can hold in general experiences.
This all depends on how one defines the terms. The point is that there must be some sort of divisions. If "mind" means "conscious mind", Then these things which come from the unconscious, like memory, feelings, and emotions, are separate from mind. If "mind" is supposed to include these, then where do we draw the line? You ask me about images, and sure they are real, but are they produced by the conscious mind, or the unconscious? Images come to me in my sleep when I am unconscious so if images are produced by the mind, the mind must extend to the unconscious. But is my finger part of my mind because it has feelings? I think "mind" is a somewhat useless term here because it is commonly used in so many different ways that it's really hard to know how someone is using it. Often people will equivocate, because it's very easy to do with a term like that, and the equivocation is not intentional.
Quoting Mww
This is not true at all. We commonly prevent things which we haven't even identified. We do this by limiting the possibilities. By doing one thing in the next minute I prevent a whole bunch of things from happening which were possible, but now impossible, which I haven't even identified. So it's completely untrue that the possibility has to come to my mind, as a valid conception, before I can prevent its occurrence. By choosing to do anything which excludes that possible occurrence, I prevent it without even knowing about it. Sure, the possible thing is "nothing", but that's what preventing something is, ensuring that it remains a nothing. But this does not mean that it didn't exist as a real possibility at some time. This is why a possibility is really nothing, but at the same time as being nothing, it has some sort of reality.
Quoting Mww
You argument is clearly contradictory. It assumes that something must exist before it can be prevented. But that's nonsensical contradiction, because if it exists, it hasn't been prevented.
Quoting Mww
You don't seem to grasp the issue. Suppose I have an open question in my mind, "what will I do tomorrow morning?". As soon as an idea comes which I accept, and I decide that's what I will do tomorrow morning, then I stop thinking about it, and no more ideas for what I might do tomorrow morning come to my mind. I close my mind to that subject. It's not an issue of multiple ideas coming to my mind at the same time, it's a succession of ideas, one after the other, as possibilities to consider. But I put an end to that succession as soon as I decide, therefore no further possibilities come to my mind. For instance, if I decide right away, I have to go to work tomorrow, then I plan for my commute, etc., and don't let anymore alternative ideas of what I might do tomorrow morning come into my mind. Having a conclusion puts an end to any line of reasoning and allows one to move on to other thought..
Quoting Mww
What I mean is that you do not think about how to solve them now, you already know. So when you come across more, you simply act to solve them rather than thinking about how to solve them. Take my example of walking. The child has to learn how to walk, and puts much effort over many days, trying different things. I'm sure the child puts a whole lot of thought into learning how to walk. But when we get up to walk we don't put any of that thought into it, because we already know how to walk. The thinking goes into solving the problem, but once the problem is solved the procedure is carried out without thought.
Quoting Mww
When you say ten times ten is a hundred, what is the other thing you are relating it to? It's nothing other than a memory. If a new problem comes to your mind, then you'll have to relate it to something else in your memory to figure it out. But the solution to "the same problem" ought to come straight form your memory.
Quoting Mww
Let's take this example of an apple. If someone asked me, when I see an apple, how do I know it is an apple, I would say I don't know, I just kind of recognize it as an apple. So I can start to describe an apple, different features, but this is not really how I know an apple is an apple, by naming these features I see in it. I just see an apple, and somehow I know it's an apple, without relating it to anything else, or comparing features. You might suggest that when I learned how to recognize an apple as an apple I had to learn these features. But I don't think I did, I just saw a number of apples and learned how to recognize an apple. So where's the concept apple? It's not in any features of an apple, it's simply the capacity to recognize an apple as an apple.
Quoting Mww
This is just a feature of our society. The society we live in is very much science oriented, so we learn from a very young age, and develop the habit, of trying to understand the world. We are far less directed toward introspection, so we do not develop that habit.
Quoting Mww
I can't see what you're saying here. Are you saying we shouldn't cry over spilt milk?
Yeahhhh-no, it isn’t. You are neglecting the domain of discourse which gives the proposition its validity. There are things that may indeed be prevented from coming into the mind, including the set of empirical things which don’t exist or the set of things that exist but have never been presented to us, and, the set of logically impossible things, but in those cases it is not WE who are preventing.
Now, WE, in order to responsible for preventing something from coming into the mind, must have something presented to us, otherwise we have nothing to work with, and if we have nothing to work with it cannot be said anything occurred, in this case, the occurrence of prevention for which we are the cause. From this, it is clear it makes no difference what this something is that is necessary for us to work with, but the very minimal thing it can be, and still be an affect on the mind, is a conception. Obviously...I mean, if an object is given to us we cannot deny it has been given to us, which is the same as saying we cannot prevent it from coming into the mind. So all that’s left that can be an affect on the mind is a conception. But.....and here’s the kicker.....if there is a conception, the mind has already done something, has already been affected by itself, which immediately makes it impossible for the mind to be prevented from doing what it just did.
We, as conscious, otherwise fully cognizant individual humans, cannot prevent things from coming into the mind. There is never a time the mind is empty of the representation of a thought/idea/notion a priori, or empty of the representation of an object a posteriori.
BOOM!!!! Mic drop.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is nothing given from a thought at t1 preventing anything at t2. The content of the thought at t1 makes no absolutely necessary restriction whatsoever on the content of the thought at t2. Ever lost track of what you were thinking, the next thought of which you are aware having nothing to do with the first?
It is a categorical error of relation (cause and effect) and modality (existence-non existence) to say a thing has been prevented from entering the mind when no reality had ever been connected to it in the first place. Transcendental illusion writ large. If one happens to acknowledge such things, that is.
If you’d said the content of a thought at t1 prevents any other content of that thought, I would have agreed.
Metaphysical reductionism is your friend.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Issue grasping? So what...you have a bunch of ideas on a subject, one right after another, pick one, cease examining further ideas, stop thinking about the subject. Move on to the next. How is that any different overall than what I said?
Is the problem.....“as soon as an idea comes”, in that they may be all come at once? You know that can’t be, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart in order to give your acceptance a valid ground, such that closing the subject actually occurs. If you picked an idea that doesn’t fit, the subject may very well remain open.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Carried out without the same thinking that went into solving the problem, but not without thinking of some kind. Even if you’ve done the same problem repeatedly, since the solution of it, you still have to do something mentally in order to ensure the solution you give actually belongs to the problem given to you. Simple arithmetic isn’t that much of an issue, but the same principle applies to the problem of, say.....solving the problem of exiting the shower such that the floor doesn’t impact your face.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hmmmm....yeah, radical skepticism. Reminds me of a quip by Russell: “....element of frivolous insincerity in any philosophy which pretends to accept it...” But just perceiving being good enough for knowing is exactly the opposite of skepticism. Tell ya what I do: I tell a thing what it is, that way, there’s no doubt about what I know it as. I do have to make sure what I know as an apple isn’t already known as a 2 x 4, but that’s easy enough.
Been real.....
It is not the case that we have nothing to work with. We have something to work with, this is the subject, what is being thought about, what I described as the problem to be solved. Once the thinker believes oneself to have solved the problem, further thoughts about that problem, and alternative solutions are prevented. Are you denying this?
Quoting Mww
Are you saying that a problem to be solved is a conception? I don't think so. Conceiving the exact nature of the problem is half way to solving it.
Quoting Mww
We already discussed this, meditation and such. You agreed that we can prevent words from coming into our minds. Saying that we can prevent things from coming into our minds does not imply that we can prevent everything from coming into the mind, to have an absolutely empty mind. That would be a ridiculous conclusion. How can you assert that we cannot prevent things from coming into our minds, yet agree that we can prevent words from coming into our minds, then insist that this is not contradictory?
Quoting Mww
Are you serious? Despite the fact that I do not know what you might mean by "absolutely necessary restriction", if it were true that the thoughts at t1 had no restriction whatsoever on the thoughts at t2, we'd have no control over our thoughts at all. The temporal progression of thoughts would be completely random.
Quoting Mww
What I say is different from what you say because I say that "picking one", deciding, choosing, is what allows one to stop thinking about the subject. You are arguing that a person cannot stop oneself from thinking about a subject. You are insisting that a person cannot prevent thoughts, because the thoughts would have to be present to the person's mind, in order for that person to prevent them. But that's contradictory nonsense. And it leaves you in the position that if an individual did happen to stop thinking about something, it would just be random chance. In fact, it appears like under your principles all thoughts would be random occurrences.
Quoting Mww
Where do you derive this necessity to talk about not thinking, in an absolute sense. I am surely not talking about a person doing something while not thinking at all. How would that even be possible? This is how we multi-task, things we do routinely we put on auto-pilot, and do them while we think about other things.
Quoting Mww
Yes, I agree you must do something mentally, but all you have to do is pass it in front of your conscious mind to make sure it looks right. That is the point, the person is not solving the problem at this point, just making sure that it looks right. So back to the example of speaking in the habitual way. When the words come to my mind, in response to a question, I simply make sure that they appear correct for the circumstances, and I speak them, without thinking about what they actually mean, or considering if they are the best words for that situation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, insofar as it is false that alternative solutions are necessarily prevented. There’s nothing about one solution to a problem sufficient to cause the impossibility of another. Once the thinker has solved the problem, further thoughts about that problem, and alternative solutions qua solutions, are just redundant, and if pursued could actually be irrational, illogical or even catastrophic. On the other hand, there’s nothing preventing further thought on an alternative solution facilitating a solution of greater benefit. But even a greater benefit is not a necessity in itself. Nahhhhh.....not thinking an alternative solution is not the prevention of it; not thinking an alternative solution is merely the lack of causality for it.
And I question the relevance. When we’re awake and aware, we always have something to work with, because it is impossible to prevent, which has been my position all along. The questionable relevance arises from the fact that the something we always have to work with is not always a problem to be solved. Problem solving is the domain of empirical psychology/anthropology, where the analysis of words and concepts is the domain of pure reason, or, speculative epistemology.
Nails are a given; I wish to know all there is to know about their relationship to hammers.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Me: something necessary; minimal; conception;
You: problem, conception, solution;
How in the hell am I suppose to relate those? I never said anything about a problem, or anything that could relate to a problem.
What is a problem if not a separation between what is given and what is known. Conceiving the exact nature of a problem is understanding the synthesis of its fundamental a priori representations, and judging that relation to experience. So no, a problem to be solved is not a conception alone, but rather, it is reason in conflict with itself, temporarily if subsequently solved without contradiction, other than temporarily if solved with contradictions, hence irrationally, or, permanently, if unsolved because of insufficient rational predicates.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolutely necessary is one of two principles of law, the other being universality. Reason, and by association, human thought, is not law-abiding, which is sufficient reason to justify the proposition that thought at t1 does not legislate thought at t2. Thought may be random, and often is, but it stands just as much chance of being pertinent, or logically related, to its antecedent.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Perfect example of conflating the particular with the general. It is quite obvious one may indeed stop paying attention to any given particular subject for any given reason. But an aware, otherwise cognizant thinker cannot not think about something, so in effect never stops thinking about some subject in general.
Keyword....overall.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what we’re conventionally calling the subject is actually the object. That which is thought about is the object of thought, the subject being that to which the thought belongs, the thinker, represented by “I”, or other grammatically coherent personal pronouns. The proper form of all human thought is “I think (__x___), x being the object to which the subject directs himself. Such is the only reasonable way to account for subjectivity, even if it is only an appearance.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And what would that be, except thinking? Is there something else we do mentally, such that knowledge is possible from it? Feelings don’t count here; they are not cognitions, and we’re not interested in whether or not feelings “look right”.
But it's not false. Alternative solutions are prevented, just like in my analogy, when an action is taken alternative possibilities, which as possibilities, are just as real as the one decided upon, are prevented from occurring. That's how we work to avoid bad situations. We take action to prevent the possibility from materializing. By ceasing to give the problem further consideration we prevent the possibility of alternative solutions from materializing.
Quoting Mww
Right, the thinker sees thinking about that subject as irrational and avoids thinking about it. Therefore thoughts on the subject are prevented. Where's the problem for you? When a person apprehends a specific course of thought as irrational, it is avoided. Why do you insist that this is not a case of preventing those thoughts? In the analogy, we apprehend a bad situation as possible, and we act to avoid it. Here, irrational thinking is apprehended as a bad situation, and we act to avoid it. That bad situation consists of irrational thoughts, and those thoughts are avoided. Therefore the irrational thoughts are prevented from occurring.
Quoting Mww
I agree that there is nothing to prevent these thoughts from occurring at a later time, if the thinker changes one's mind, but for the time being, the thoughts are prevented from occurring. Furthermore, the later thoughts would not be exactly the same thoughts anyway, being triggered by new information or some such thing.
With respect to your determination of "lack of causality", consider my analogy. We are on course for a bad situation. Preventing that situation requires action, causality. The bad situation would happen, following from the present situation without any causality. The issue is that the continuity of the current situation, as understood by the principles of physics, inertia, momentum, will continue with no cause required.
Thoughts are not different. The thinker is actively engaged in thinking about something. If this particular activity, thinking on this specific subject, continues indefinitely it will develop into a bad situation, severe anxiety, or some sort of incapacitating fear of the impossibility of deciding. So the thinker puts an end to it by preventing this type of thought from occurring anymore. Therefore stopping the current situation, i.e. stopping from thinking about the specific subject, is causation, as defined by the principles of physics. And so there must be an act of causality and this prevents the continuity of further thought on the subject.
Quoting Mww
I agree with this, we cannot prevent thoughts in an absolute sense. So I grant you this principle, that there is always something there, "something to work with". If you agree, we can call this "content", or "subject matter". I like the latter because it implies a sot of "matter" which is proper to the individual human "subject".
Would you agree that this "subject matter" is what is derived from the unconscious, and taken by the conscious mind to be worked with? As required for thinking, it is temporally prior to the conscious act of thinking, and therefore the conscious mind has no capacity for causal impact on this subject matter. However, if we adhere to the Aristotelian concept of "matter", we might allow that this subject matter has no necessity of any particular form, though it necessarily has "form". There is no particular form which is proper to it. So it might come to the mind in any "form", a problem, a word, a concept, etc., it still must come to the mind as a form.
However, since the "form" is what the conscious mind works with, and the conscious mind has the capacity to change the form which the subject matter has, through imposing the causal limitations described above, the subject matter itself has no inherent capacity to restrict the conscious mind. So in spite of the fact that we tend to think that things come to the conscious mind from the unconscious systems, and these things constitute the content of the thought, as imposing on the person, what that person will think about, this is actually false, because the conscious mind will actually impose the form (the 'whatness') on to that subject matter, through the imposition of the restrictions described. This is how we can say that the will is free.
But the will is not free in an absolute sense. If we say that when the content comes to the conscious mind it necessarily has form, adhering to Aristotelian metaphysics which dictate that there is no such thing as pure matter, prime matter, then the subject matter necessarily has some sort of form, but not any particular form of necessity. Then the possibilities for the thinker would be determined by that form which the content has when presented to the conscious mind. The thinker is therefore restricted in the capacity to prevent thoughts which are already dictated by that prior form.
Quoting Mww
You appear to be claiming that the subject matter, the content which comes to the conscious mind, from the unconscious, is necessarily a "conception", and this is what I dispute. Yes, the content comes to the mind as subject matter with a form, but the form is the form of a particular, in the case of "subject matter". So this is what separates it from a "conception", as a conception is known as the form of a universal. It is only the subject matter that is worked with by the conscious mind, that has the nature of a universal, conception. Therefore we have a necessary separation here, the forms (abstractions) which the conscious mind is applying, and the subject matter which the conscious mind is applying it to. The subject matter already has a particular form, and the conscious mind is working with universal forms, so there is an incompatibility here, a necessary separation between the two.
You are not upholding this necessary separation, to claim that anything within the conscious mind must be a conception. But we must maintain this separation to properly account for the nature of temporal existence, and the fact that new material, material from the particular circumstances, which must be dealt with, is continually coming into the conscious mind. Relating the new subject matter, to the already existing universal forms, or conceptions, is what is called abstraction. So, "a problem" is exactly as you describe it "a separation between what is given and what is known". And since that separation is very real, we need to respect the reality of it, within the conscious mind. So within the conscious mind there is both "what is given", subject matter with a particular form, and "what is known", conceptions, as universal forms.
This is not "reason in conflict with itself", it is two incompatible aspects of reason. But it is the essence of reason, because with out these two distinct aspects there would be no need for any reasoning whatsoever. The conscious mind must reconcile the particularities of the present situation, given to it as subject matter, with the universal conceptions it holds within, produced from prior processing of situations.
Therefore the conceptions, being extensions of past situations, are simply memories. And the memories are held within the brain and presented to the conscious mind as representations of what has occurred, images, and symbols. Primitive conceptions exist as images which are recreated, requiring extensive brain power, while advanced conceptions exist as symbols which have a known representation, reducing the required brain power.
Quoting Mww
I disagree, thought cannot be random. That is contradictory. If one's mind is changing at every moment of passing time (random thought), this cannot be called "thought". As describe at the beginning of this post, breaking up a line of thought, creating a discontinuity, requires causation, under accepted principles of physics. Therefore thought is naturally continuous, and breaking it up with discontinuity (randomness) requires acts of causation.
Quoting Mww
"Reason" by definition is law abiding.
Quoting Mww
Can you see the separation between the particular and the universal, which I described above? The particular we might call "the object" of thought, and the universal we might call 'the subject" of thought. All thought must consist of both, as the mind operates with the two. However, if we take the Aristotelian principles of matter and form, the role of each of these two is inverted between the object of thought, and the subject of thought. The universal, being a conception, is essentially a form, and the material aspect is accidental to it, this is the subject. The object, being the peculiarities of the particular situation, provides the material aspect. to the thinker.
Quoting Mww
I think it is necessary to distinguish the different mental activities. The two fundamental ones, described above, are receiving present information, and retrieving past information. That they are fundamentally separate, I believe, is evident from the activity of dreaming. There is a third fundamentally different mental activity which is judgement. The nature of judgement (what I described as preventing unwanted thoughts) is what we have been disagreeing on.
Took some extra time with this one, dija? Worthy dialecticians are so awful hard to find, n’est ce pas?
And away we go.......
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You (a): Once the thinker believes oneself to have solved the problem, further thoughts about that problem, and alternative solutions are prevented. Are you denying this?
Me: Yes, insofar as it is false that alternative solutions are necessarily prevented.
You (b): But it's not false. Alternative solutions are prevented (...) when an action is taken alternative possibilities (...) are prevented from occurring.
Ok, we have a temporal disconnect here. (a) and (b) are different times. Your (b) is correct: the time of action taken, is the time of the thought of the solution, and because we have but one thought at a time, all other thoughts, as alternative solutions, are prevented therefrom. However, your (a), “once believed to have solved”, the ground of my initial response, is post hoc, looking back to the time of the thought of the solution. From his post-solution time, he can easily think another solution, which means it is false further solutions are prevented. The one and only time in which no other and all alternative solutions is prevented, is the time of the thought of a solution. This principle applies for any number of successive thoughts, for each and every thought can be a solution in itself.
From the day before......Quoting Mww......which is saying the same thing as your (b) here today.
Shall we call it a draw?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, as long as we are allowed our choice. I would prefer content, because reason considers the individual self as a subject, thus will try to convince him the notion “subject matter” pertains to the content of his self rather than the contents of his mental activities. Minor point, to be sure, but in speculative metaphysics, everything in its place and nothing left out of place.
That aside, content or subject matter arises from unconscious and is worked with by the conscious, yes.
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Beginning at....Quoting Metaphysician Undercover....well done indeed. Each line has something which can be said about it, but taking just a few.....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I should have given your comment on conscious vs unconscious parts of mind, and the general uselessness of the conception itself, more attention. It is relevant now, because you brought up coming to the mind, and we never agreed on what that really means. In the Kantian sense, form is a priori, hence derived from the unconscious, and from that the fun, and rampant confusion, really begins......
Physical objects do have proper form, which is the particular arrangement of its matter. So....“subject matter” as mere sense data alone, does come from the unconscious part of mind in a particular form, but is yet unknowable to the conscious mind. This kind of form is called intuition, by which we represent to ourselves the arrangement of the matter of a thing as it is perceived. This is the fur, claws, whiskers, etc., thought to belong to some yet unnamed thing, which will eventually become conceived as some kind or another, of “cat”.
Such is the case for real subject matter, that is, data given to sensibility by physical things. But there is the kind of “subject matter” not given directly from matter, but is still given from thinking a particular arrangement of it. In this way, we conceive a possible object with the form of board, from the sense data of a tree.
.........Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’m ok with Aristotle in some places, particularly the categories, but not here, with respect to forms. But then, I’m not so learned in his metaphysics, so I must excuse myself.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
(Errr....not no, but oh HELL no!!! Moral philosophy has nothing to do with speculative epistemology)
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Good. As well you should. The subject matter in the conscious mind is not conception alone, which is what I said. The subject matter of the conscious mind is cognition.
The rest of that section is also very good, well-written and thoughtful. I don’t agree with much of it, but to go through it item by item, in order to refute it successfully (from my point of view) is just too much. At the end of it, you wrote:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Within the conscious mind is subject matter, yes, but that subject matter is what is known, or possibly known. Experience or possible experience. I don’t think the human cognitive system can be divided as you think it to be. Divided yes, conscious and unconscious, but both parts are equally necessary and the system cannot function without both, at least under empirical conditions. You said as much as well.
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Lots of good stuff. Sorry it took me so long to respond, and sorry I didn’t get to everything.
If that were the case, irrationality would be impossible. We would never make a mistake in judgement if all understandings were predicated on necessity and universality. The principle of induction forbids those principles from conditioning experience, and is sufficient reason for asserting the tentative nature of empirical knowledge.
Pure logic is law abiding, which makes mathematics law abiding. Transcendental speculative metaphysics is grounded in logic merely as the means to exemplify its ideal, which the human can never attain.
OK, we're starting to have better understanding of each other, and better agreement.
Quoting Mww
He can think of another solution, but he doesn't because he believes the problem has been solved. Therefore these thoughts (looking for other solutions) are prevented. Please don't think of this as a situation of necessity, because we are talking about free willing beings. Yes, "he can easily think of another solution", but he doesn't because his mind is made up by the present solution. Any person can change one's own mind, at any time, I mentioned this, but so long as the mind is made up, the thoughts are prevented.
Quoting Mww
It's not "the one and only time", because it's an extended period of time. So long as the person has made the decision, and adheres to the decision, the thoughts are prevented, just like we prevent thoughts in meditation. Of course it is possible that at some future time the person will reconsider, and at that time allow those thoughts, but that's irrelevant to the fact that during that period of time (no matter how long it is), when the thoughts were prevented, they were being prevented. Delaying the occurrence of something is a matter of preventing it for a period of time. While it is being prevented it is being prevented, but when it is no longer prevented it is no longer prevented. Nothing about the concept of prevention implies that prevention must be eternal. It refers to the here and now; I prevented myself from falling down the stairs many times when I used the stairs, but maybe not next time.
Quoting Mww
I'm wary of the Kantian use of "form", because in the Aristotelian sense "form" is strictly actual, while Kant seemed to allow "form" to be possibility. So when we talk about what is derived from the unconscious, if this is understood as possibilities for thought, then we must place it in the category of matter rather than form, if we adhere to Aristotelian terms. However, as you state below, all these possibilities must be present as particular forms. So even if it is categorized as matter, subject matter, or possibilities for thought, it still must have some type of form.
Quoting Mww
So I'm in agreement with this paragraph.
Quoting Mww
I wouldn't say this though. The faculty of imagination gives us forms, as images, what you call phenomena. If that faculty works with both, forms from intuition, and appearances from sensation, I would say that only one of these is the "subject matter". Since we have a workable form/matter distinction, and we say that the imagination gets forms from intuition, then we ought to say that it gets subject matter from sensation, and synthesis of the two is phenomena.
An important point though, is that the subject matter, the appearances from sensibility, must already have forms of their own, the particular forms mentioned above. So even within this unconscious faculty of imagination, there must be something (a faculty) which establishes compatibility or consistency between the forms from intuition and the forms from sensibility (which are the material aspect, as the possibility of phenomena, contrary to Kant), in order that phenomena be intelligible. There is a fundamental difference between the two types of forms, universal and particular, so this faculty must focus on, and work with the matter from sensation, as providing the possibility of phenomena. The particular forms are reduced to possibility because they are fundamentally incompatible with the universal forms from intuition.
Quoting Mww
I think we have a lapse in terminology here. I would understand "cognition" as what the mind does, but we still have the issue of what it is working with when it is engaged in that activity, the content. "Form" historically has a wider range of applicability, as ideas and concepts, in the sense of "formulae".
Quoting Mww
Wouldn't you be surprised! Do you see the problem we've had with this issue of preventing thoughts? If you'd only release your idea of necessity, and approach this from the perspective of a free willing human being with the capacity to choose, that being the approach of moral philosophy, rather than the approach of some epistemological necessity, perhaps the reality would reveal itself to you. But you have created that wall of incompatibility between your intuitive forms of necessity, and the forms of the particulars which must be understood as possibilities. It is only moral philosophy which gives us a true understanding of possibility, and this is the only way to understand the particular. And the particular does enter the mind, as is evident in the case of individual words. Therefore the existence of a word, as a particular, must be understood by the terms of moral philosophy, the terms of possibility.
Quoting Mww
I don't think you are adequately grasping the role of the possible. There are two distinct roles for "the actual". There is the actual which is activity within, creating forms of intuition, knowledge, etc.. And, there is the actual which is activity outside the individual subject, creating the material world of objects. The two types of activity need to be understood as distinct, as I described, because the internal forms are universal principles, while the forms external to me are individuals, particulars. Since we cannot establish compatibility between these two types of activity, within and without, we look at all the external activity as possibility. Then we have the basis for a dichotomy. But the dichotomy doesn't work, because it's not clear cut. Judgement and decision are how we impose activity onto the external possibility, while indecisiveness and skepticism is how possibility seeps into the internal activity. So we cannot hold such a dichotomy. The real dichotomy it is far more complex.
Quoting Mww
Why do you say that? Failing to abide by the law is a real possibility. What you don't seem to realize is that law does not produce necessity, laws are produced out of some necessity. This is why it is far better to approach this subject from the precepts of moral philosophy, rather than to approach it as a speculative epistemology. From moral philosophy, the law says what one ought to do, but the law does not provide the necessity to ensure that what ought to be done is what is actually done. Moral philosophy is the only philosophy which provides us with real principles to give us a real understanding of possibility.
Here's another thing to consider Mww. The precise separation between passive (possible) intellect, and active (agent) intellect, has never been resolved. Logic has determined the need to assume both of these as distinct categories, but no one has been able to adequately demonstrate which things are property of each, because all things are a combination of both (matter/form). This was a fundamental issue in the nominalist/realist debate. Some wanted to deny material elements within the mind, attempting to maintain the pure immateriality of the human mind. But then the passive aspect of the intellect needs to be accounted for by some sort of passive element which is other than matter. And if matter (as passive intellect) is proper to the individual mind, then the active intellect must be something external to human minds, to maintain the separation between the two. It remains an unresolved issue as to how the passive intellect and active intellect might both be features of one human mind.
On the other hand, one might characterize the same division as a priori/a posteriori like Kant. The problem is that we create these categories of separation as a means for analysis, because such a division is "necessary" (in the sense of needed for understanding the operations of the mind), when we do not have adequate principles to define the categories; "and rampant confusion, really begins...". So a philosopher might say "these are the categories required for analysis", without paying due respect to the fact that everything to be categorized already contains aspects of both categories. So there is confusion That's why I propose we go to a different form of analysis, a sort of analysis where we look at the things to be categorized as essentially of one category, with accidents of the other category, in an attempt to avoid the confusion.
It has already been agreed, that any content of a thought prevents all other content for that thought. This is a necessary prevention, because its negation is impossible. If the thinker doesn’t think something at some time, it is a contingent prevention, for the impossibility of a thought is not given merely from the not having of it, but from the having of a different one.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep. That’s the way I see it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not sure of any benefit in mixing the two greatest thinkers known to man. I prefer Kant maybe for no other reason than he operates from a period in time with 1000 years of advancement in knowledge beyond the time of Aristotle. Everything evolves, given sufficient stimuli, the greatest of which is, of course, time itself
Not sure how you arrive at form as possibility in a Kantian sense. Seems to me the idea always refers to something definitive, re: space and time are the forms of all sensible intuition; categories are the forms of all experience, and so on.
I suppose you’re of the mind that form belongs outside the mind, thus forms are actual because that to which they belong are themselves actual. Which is fine, except we don’t really care about the actuality of things, such being presupposed when we want to know what the thing is. In addition, maybe you’re of the mind that the Kantian ding an sich, being unknowable, makes its form merely possible. In a representational cognitive system, however, the ding an sich doesn’t matter.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you say so. Like I said, I’m not that well-versed in Greek thinking. In Kant, though....two things: matter is not a category, and, possibility for thought does not require matter, if the thoughts are a priori, re: space, time, causality, existence, geometry, etc. Empirical thought, on the other hand, requires both matter and form.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I would guess you wouldn’t, favoring Aristotle as you seem to do. But to put things in order...imagination gives us phenomena, but they are not images, because this occurs in the unconscious part of the mind and we are always aware of our mental images.
Matter is nothing but extension in space, and sensation merely represents such extension as it appears to the sense organs. Intuition is the origin of a pattern into which the appearance fits, and is given from previous experience. Whether or not the form matches the perception, and the phenomenon is valid is irrelevant, because it is unconscious subject matter. If the phenomenon subsequently turns out to conform to its experience we learn nothing; if it turns out to contradict all experience we know we made a mistake somewhere, or, we learn something new about the object of our perception.
That being said, you are correct in that the synthesis of the two is phenomena. It must be kept in mind, that there is no matter, per se, except external to us. Internal to us is merely representation of matter. It follows “subject matter” can attributed to any of the individual faculties for which there is an object derived from it, therefore “subject matter” of the unconscious part of the mind in general, is phenomena. The subject matter of the faculty of sensibility is represented as appearance; the subject matter of the faculty of intuition is the form of the appearance.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As history would have it, yes. However, in order to theorize on the possibility and truth of a priori cognitions in general, as the means to explain the certainty of mathematics in particular, rather than just take such certainty for granted, the entire historical methodology for the understanding the real world needed a paradigmatic overhaul. And the most radical part of the overhaul, was the speculation that it is us that assigns form to objects, not, as history warrants, that objects come to us with their forms included.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It isn’t the consistency between the forms of intuition and the forms of sensibility, it is the consistency between the forms of intuition and the matter of sensibility, and the consistency is determined by the categories intrinsic to understanding, not imagination. In the quest for knowledge in concreto, we gain nothing from imaging a world, but from understanding the affect it has on us.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
(I take “imposing activity onto the external possibility” to mean we tell Nature what it is rather than Nature telling us, to which I agree. Skepticism just indicates our impositions on Nature cannot be proven with apodeictic certainty, with which I also agree. So we cannot hold such dichotomy just means it doesn’t do us any good to be so skeptical we falsify every judgement we ever made. Actually, this is the primary justification for the paradigm shift in epistemological metaphysics, in that, e.g., to be skeptical of, or merely hold an opinion on, the certainty of mathematics is absurd. Recognition of the absurdity, rather than adhering to the skepticism of the possibility, is the ground for the relative truth of all synthetic judgements, of which the most common to humanity is experience itself.)
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, if we wish to instill a necessary ground for something. It is never the case we absolutely must know some external object as a single thing, but it is absolutely necessary we act in a very certain way iff we wish to think ourselves as moral agents. That is to say, we are allowed to contradict ourselves with respect to what we know, which merely makes us silly, but we are never allowed to contradict ourselves in our moral determinations, the occurrence of which jeopardizes our very human worthiness. Thus it is the power of necessity, and the authority of law given from fundamental principles, from which a singular effect called “morality”, is at all possible.
Again, not to put too fine a point on it, all knowledge is possible from pure reason; morality is possible from pure practical reason. The difference is that morality has its own object, that being the agency that both formulates its own criteria for formulating his moral disposition, then obligates itself to conform to such formulation in order that becoming such an agent is possible.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I would say logic has determined the need to assume distinct ontologies, but not so much distinct intellects. Transcendental idealism dictates there is but one intellect, which functions under two ontological conditions. The external condition is a passive ontology, insofar as everything about it is given to us. The internal condition is the active ontology, insofar as everything about our cognitive system arises from itself. There is one inconsistency intrinsic to this system, in that we think perception to be passive, which falsifies the notion that our entire cognitive system is active. We just allow an overlap between them, so we can move on. Hence the lack of precision??
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That’s me. Pure immateriality of the human mind, but granting the physical properties of the brain from which the mind seems to evolve.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Lay it on me. Just keep in mind, what appears to be a failure to grasp is really nothing but a difference in points of view. I would never be so presumptuous to think you fail to grasp your own philosophy, so I’d appreciate reciprocity.
...and far more numerous. At the apex, I submit the immanent/transcendent; descending to practical/speculative; analytic/synthetic; transcendental/experiential, culminating at the bottom of complexity in the ubiquitous subject/object.
No wonder philosophy has lasted so long: it is self-generating and self-sustaining. For better or worse.
OK I respect that. Sorry, too much time spent at TPF and I've developed bad habits. Since you said "lay it on me", you get a long post. Feel free to ignore parts, or just reply to any issue which is important to you, or the thread, as the dialogue has gotten unruly.
So, the first point I'd like to make, external/internal is not clear cut. If we make these two into categories, and say that some things might be of the internal, and some might be of the external, then we need a boundary in order to classify, and I don't think such a boundary can be established. But if we make these two into directions, then we can conceive of them as opposite directions. Something can be moving from the inside outward. or from the outside inward. No boundary is needed, just a sense of direction.
There is a problem with assuming boundaries between external and internal, because we see from chemical analysis that things which are supposed to be individual, like atoms and molecules, actually overlap each other. Furthermore, we see that things are active, and the nature of interaction is that it crosses external/internal boundaries. Therefore the external/internal division, while it appears on the surface to be a clear cut division, is not very useful because it can't help us to represent the reality of the activity of things. We'd be best off to place internal/external as the two extremes of a single category, spatial existence, and represent all activities as occurring by degrees in between.
Quoting Mww
OK this is a starting point of agreement The thought prevents contrary thoughts, at the same time. This is during the act of thinking. But what do you think happens when a decision is made? I propose that the conclusion (decision) is either acted upon immediately, or relegated to memory, then the act of thinking on that subject, therefore all thoughts on that subject, are prevented. If the conclusion is acted on and the act is successful, this is relegated to memory as well. So anytime there is an urge to think about that subject, the mind is directed toward that conclusion in the memory, and thoughts on that subject are avoided. If the conclusion is acted on and there are problems, thoughts might be resumed.
Quoting Mww
There is a very good reason for mixing great thinkers. As people say, great minds think alike, but that does not mean that they think the same. When we find principles of consistency between them, we are likely on the right track. But every great thinker has weaknesses, and it takes comparison with another great thinker to find the weakness.
Quoting Mww
Do you apprehend the suffix "ible" on "the forms of all sensible intuition"? This introduces possibility into the phrase, in an ambiguous way, because Kant does not make it clear as to where the possibility lies. We have a capacity for sensation, which he calls "sensibility". We have forms, which are intuitions, and "matter" to an extent, as a representation of the sensation itself. The "form" of the intuition, is a priori. But this designation, that the form is a priori renders it as nothing other than the capacity for sensation. So this is where the ambiguity lies. If the form of intuition is supposed to be something other than the capacity for sensation (a possibility), to ensure that the "form" is something actual, as is necessary under Aristotelean terminology, Kant does not provide us with that separation. The forms of intuition, space and time, as a prior to sense experience, are rolled together under the term "sensibility", which is the possibility for sensation, and this is a category mistake from an Aristotelian perspective, to make "forms" possibilities.
What is at issue here is the source of activity, and that defines what is actual, rather than possible. When we look at living creatures like human beings, we see the source of activity as internal, moving outward toward the environment. This is the essence of free will, the human being acts according to an internal principle, rather than being determined by the external activities. Now, we ought to represent sensation in the same way, the living being is actively sensing, such that the activity comes from within, as the being senses its surroundings. Under this representation, the possibility for sensation (sensibility) is provided by the environment. And in Aristotelian categories, possibility, or potential, is provided by matter. So the "forms of intuition", would be proper to the activity of sensation, not properties of sensibility, because the capacity for sensation, as the possibility for sensation is provided by the external, matter.
However, placing matter (potential, possibility) as only external, is inadequate. We need to bring the capacity for activity (potential, possibility) inside the individual being, by providing for the necessary potential within. This is where Aristotle excels (oddly enough), in his biology, "On the Soul". Capacities are the powers of the soul. However, since these powers, or capacities, like self-nourishment, self-movement, sensation, and intellection, are not active all the time, they must be represented as potential, potencies, the possibility for action. And, since potential is properly assigned to matter in categorization, this creates the dilemma of the nominalist/realist debate. How do we allow matter into the mind to account for the passive intellect? The problem with the passive intellect was already identified by Aristotle, as inherent within the ancient understanding of the act of abstraction. The ancient understanding was that the mind received the forms of object, in abstraction. But this would mean that the mind is passive in abstraction, rather than active.
In any case, this is how Aristotle provided the principles whereby we can understand ourselves as material beings. The powers of the soul are potentials, and potential is grounded in matter, so he brings matter right into the living being, as an essential part of "the being" in this way. However, it is still necessary to posit a first principle of activity, and this is the soul. Any powers or potentials, as possibilities, must be actualized, so the soul (as the first form) accounts for the activities of a living being, while matter accounts for the powers that it has. This allows that all the powers of the soul, including intellection itself, are accounted for by the material aspect of the being (the brain in the case of intellection), yet there is still an immaterial source for the activities of the material being.
There are alternatives for categorization which the Scholastics take advantage of. If matter and potential are not categorically the same, then there might be potencies which are not material.
Quoting Mww
This is the difficulty I have in interpreting Kant. If a "possibility" is not grounded in matter, its existence cannot be logically supported. This is the problem Aquinas had in interpretation of Aristotle's passive, or possible intellect. In the attempt to keep the intellect free from matter, he speculated about the nature of time and potentiality, in order to come up with a form of possibility, or potential, a passivity, which is not grounded in matter. I believe he posited a medium between eternal and temporal, as "aeviternal".
A priori implies "necessary for", prerequisite, or required for. Any sense of "prior" is reducible to a temporal sense. People try to argue that logically prior is distinct from temporally prior, but in the end this makes no sense, because logic is dependent on understanding, which is a temporal process.
So the issue here is that a priori thoughts have to be grounded in something. If they are looked at as the potential for a posterior thoughts, then this is a temporal priority. If we do not ground them in the Aristotelian way, by saying that they only have actual existence by being "discovered" (which really means created) by the human mind, then they become eternal like Pythagorean or Platonic idealism. So Plato could not validate Pythagorean idealism, and Aristotle decisively refuted it with what is known as the cosmological argument. Because of these principles, a priori thoughts, or thoughts which do not require matter (or perhaps some other form of potential) are incomprehensible. We could move toward some other form of potential, but what's the point? All this does is add an extra layer of complexity for the sake of denying the reality that human thought requires a material element.
Quoting Mww
This is hard for me to grasp, because as human, we are material beings. So I don't see how you can say matter is only external to us. The physical body which we use in the acts of sensation, and the brain which we use in thinking are composed of matter. If I am supposed to assume that all matter is external to me, then where does this leave "me"? If I am internal to all matter, this just leaves me as an inner soul, with the entirety of my body somehow clinging to me from the outside. How could the sensations, and all unconscious faculties relate to the conscious mind if not through the means of the material body?
The production of phenomena itself must be a complex process, whereby the immaterial soul would use the material body. The material body is a necessary condition for the faculty of sensibility so we cannot remove matter, as the passive element (providing the possibility) from sensibility. And for the same reason we cannot remove matter from the faculty of intuition.
Quoting Mww
I don't think the idea of "a priori cognitions" really makes sense, for the reasons explained above. I don't think that cognitions free from the influence of matter are possible. And so these cognitions cannot be free from the influence of that matter interacting with other matter which is the essence of experience. But this brings up the importance of differentiating between activity which is sourced internally, from the soul, and external activities which are understood as the relations between material bodies.
Suppose there's an internal source of activity within me, the soul. I also see other people moving, so that motion is sourced externally to me, though it is internal to them. Now, whether the motion is internal or external is completely dependent on one's perspective, of what constitutes "an object". For example, if a culture or society is taken as an object, then all the different activities, sourced from the different people is all internal to that object, the culture. But from the perspective of myself, as an object, only what's within me is internally sourced. Now look at what happens if I divide myself into distinct objects, like we could divide a culture into distinct individuals. Where would I find the internal source of activity? Does each part of me have its own internal source, or is some part specially equipped? We might resolve the issue by dissolving the boundaries between individual objects, allowing them all to overlap, like atoms and molecules overlap, but then we might completely lose the meaning of "internal".
Quoting Mww
The problem here is that "a priori" is given the status as prior to sensation, in the form of sensibility. In this way it becomes a possibility rather than an actuality. So the principle of cause and effect doesn't really apply. The a priori does not cause the a posteriori by any sense of necessity as is required for causation. The a priori is required as a condition, or possibility, required necessarily for it, but not necessarily producing it. That's why the a priori is more properly called a possibility rather than an actuality.
Quoting Mww
Yeah, intelligibility is compatibility. The internal activity produces principles for understanding, and those are applied towards the external activity. But even the principles are just part of the internal activity (going back to our discussion on thinking, where I argued a conclusion is a stopping point for activity). The stopping of internal activity (perhaps you'd understand it better as "redirecting") must be caused by resistance which itself is the opposed, the external activity. So the internal sourced activity must seek ways out through the opposition, and these ways become possibilities, as weak points in the external activity, and the way through the resistance. When a way out is determined, it is remembered as a possibility.
[quote="Mww;393406"(But we can; there is compatibility or there is not. Either of which is an establishment with respect to ontological disparity)[/quote]
Sure, but that ontological disparity is misunderstanding, plain and simple, and that's what we need to dispel. One can assert "it is possible to understand ontological reality, the reality of existence is intelligible". But if that person applies principles which render ontological reality as unintelligible there is an inconsistency between the person's assertion and the person's actions. That's a form of hypocrisy. And if the person says it is impossible, then there's no point to even trying. So the only logical approach is to seek compatibility. If the principles we employ lead us to a dead end (we think and think and think without coming to a conclusion, i.e. finding no way out) then our principles have mislead us, and it is time to discard then (that itself being a conclusion, and possible way out).
[quote="Mww;393406"[(Isn’t external/internal clear cut?)[/quote]
This is the type of principle which needs to be discarded. We find that through language and communication, ideas which are internal to me are also internal to you. The boundary between us therefore, is porous. The internal is shared through the medium, which forms the boundaries. But that's an odd concept to wrap one's hand around, and it results in many people insisting that the boundaries between us are not real. We see a very similar issue in our attempts to understand physical reality, physics. We have in the past, individuated objects, separated the earth from the moon, and from the sun, divided things up in labs, etc.. However, such separations are incomplete as there are gravitational fields, electromagnetic fields, and other fields, which permeate distances and penetrate objects, making these principles, this dichotomy of internal/external, inapplicable to the objects we've actually individuated in practise.
Quoting Mww
Right, we impose our activities onto nature. However, Nature grants us real limitations, real impossibilities which must be respected. So in that sense we must allow also that Nature tells us what it is. We can have great success in telling Nature what it is, going very far in one direction, but that is simply one direction out of many possible directions. If we hit a dead end, the confidence produced by that progress will impede any inclination to turn back, and find a fork in the road that may have been missed. This is where skepticism is essential. Consider the history of evolution, and the creation of dinosaurs. Back then, bigger was better, and that's the direction evolution followed. But it was a dead end, the creatures could only get so big and it didn't really help them get anywhere, so it all collapsed. Then the mammals superseded, with the capacity to teach their young, and smarter was better. The point being that if the dead end is not recognized as a dead end, we won't seek the real way out.
Quoting Mww
Unintentional irrationality is one possibility, but what I was talking about is intentional irrationality. That is the dilemma of moral philosophy, first identified by Plato, or Socrates. A person can know that it is irrational to go ahead with a particular act, yet go ahead with it any way. This reality was Socrates' ammunition against the sophists, who claimed to teach virtue. Since knowing the right thing to do does not necessitate the right thing being done, the claim that virtue is a type of knowledge is effectively refuted. This reality is extremely evident in the fact that bad habits are extremely difficult to break. Augustine, who has probably the most comprehensive treatise on free will is somewhat stymied by this dilemma.
So the issue you point to is dependent on how one defines "reason". If "reason" is defined by the principles produced by a rational mind, as rules or laws, then it is impossible for reason to be non law-abiding. But remember, in the model I propose, the rational mind is itself constrained by matter, the human brain. So the rules or laws produced by the rational mind, principles which we say the free soul ought to follow, are not infallible. And, the free soul is not necessitated to follow those principles, which are the habits of thought, but are essentially possibilities, so the person might act in a way which is knowingly irrational.
Quoting Mww
That we cannot contradict ourselves in moral determinations is an irrelevant platitude. The fact is that we actually knowingly do what we know is wrong. So we actively contradict our moral determinations with our actions, as hypocrisy. And hypocrisy is not a rare occurrence, it's widespread. Therefore, if we take as a fundamental epistemological principle, that hypocrisy is impossible, or that it would make us look silly, irrational, or inhuman, we are starting on falsity. Hypocrisy is common place and widely accepted, "do as I say, not as I do".
Quoting Mww
Here is the difficulty. Thinking is itself the activity of an agent. And thinking produces the principles to be followed, even if you assert that these are principles of "pure reason". So even the principles of "pure reason" have come into existence through practise. Understanding follows from the production of those principles, it is posterior, requiring principles of reason. The principles are posited prior to understanding, as enabling understanding. Following understanding, i.e. posterior to understanding, it may be determined that some thinking practises, and therefore some principles of pure reason, are wrong, or unacceptable. Since these principles are already accepted epistemological practise, the only recourse for redress is the precept of morality. The thinking practises which produces the principles of pure reason, which understanding reveals as possibly faulty, cannot be demonstrated as epistemological faulty, because they are by their very nature the principles which ground the epistemology. Therefore the skeptic, who recognizes through understanding, the possibility that the principles are unsound, must turn to moral principles to demonstrate how this practise could possibly be wrong.
Quoting Mww
Yes indeed, apprehending the system of sensation as passive is a serious issue which needs to be resolved. This is why the Aristotelian biology "On the Soul" is so coherent and comprehensive. It allows passivity, and therefore matter to enter into our principles of understanding, as a necessary condition. By describing the powers of the soul as potencies, potentials, or possibilities for action, we allow the required passivity into the human being. Now we can create consistency between all the various powers, including intellection. But passivity is only allowed for by matter, and this means that we must allow matter as an essential part of the intellect. In doing this we separate "mind" from "soul", as a potency of the soul. So even "mind" is a contingent property, and not a necessity of the soul.
Glad you’re back; was afraid you mighta got The Big C-19!!! We did major necessity shopping the other day, and we’re exercising a selective “Katie, BAR THE DOOR!!” mentality for the duration. (Grin)
Outstanding post. I should have something in return tomorrow. Depends on how much backspacing/mindchanging I have to do.
All in the paragraphs before this ending for them, is theoretically acceptable. If anything were to disavow the tenets, it would be that the subject cannot think a spatial existence for itself. Even if I can think your internal activities as merely an extreme of spatial existence, I could never think that for myself.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
By substituting the terminology and procedure from my philosophy, I can understand where you’re going with this. Still.....how are thoughts on the subject avoided, if the mind is directed toward the conclusion in memory with respect to it? How does the mind know it’s being directed to the conclusion that corresponds to the subject it is avoiding thinking about?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah, that was me using “sensible”, not Kant, who used “sensuous”, or external or empirical. A sensible intuition indicates an intuition given from sense data of real physical objects in space, thus not to be mistaken for an intuition that is sensible, that is to say, makes sense in itself. Intuition from sense, not intuition that makes sense. In the introduction to the “Doctrine of Elements” is found the definitions for terms used explicitly in his theory of knowledge, of which I may have taken some liberties.
In case such clarification wasn’t needed in the first place, the thing about possibility remains. Just let me say.....form does not indicate possibility, if possibility means there is some arbitrariness in the association of form to appearance. As you have said already, intuition is merely a “memory”, in that objects for which there are intuitions, have already been subjected to experience. Combined with the Kantian definition which says, “form is the arrangement of the matter of objects”, we see that some object given to us, if it is known already as a particular thing, re: “cat”, it is represented as having its matter arranged in a certain way already given a priori.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not in my philosophy. The effect of an object, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation. Form, as intuition, is not yet a procedural presence. Sensation represents a physical effect; form is an a priori representation of the composition of the effect. The capacity for sensation is, therefore, dependent on our sense organs and something that effects them. In truth....theoretically....this designation, that the form as a priori, renders it as nothing other than the capacity for phenomena, and subsequently, the capacity for experience of objects.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand where this comes from, though, for Kant says, “...These (space and time) belong to pure intuition, which exists a priori in the mind, as a mere form of sensibility, and without any real object of the senses or any sensation...”. I rather think this conundrum is a manifestation of the necessary separation between what is given to us, and how we treat what is given to us. On the one hand, a thing is given to us because it is in space and time, which implies space and time are properties of objects, and on the other hand, a thing is given to us only if we can say it is in space and time, in which case space and time are merely subjective conditions for objects, and of course, subjective conditions are always a priori. In the former, space and time could be said to be rolled under the possibility of sensation, insofar as sensation only becomes possible when space and time adhere in the objects being sensed, but in the latter, space and time, being conditions for things of sense, do not need to be thought as properties of things of sense. The proof thereof, is quite facile, being a scant few uncharacteristically short paragraphs, and readily understandable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Close enough. The “forms of intuition”, however, are not proper to the activity of sensibility, for the very reason that the capacity for sensation is provided by the external matter, the environment. Also, there are only two “forms of intuition”, but there are as many intuitions as forms as there are arrangements of matter met with in perception.
Again....immediately upon perception, our knowledge of what we’ve been affected by is not available to us, but that we have been affected must have a validation in order for the eventual experience given from it to be called knowledge. The reasons are legion for why the unconscious part of our mind is necessarily ordered, and the fact Aristotle didn’t recognize them is why his metaphysics was subsumed under an advanced theory that does. His theory wasn’t wrong, per se, just incomplete. And there is nothing to say Kant’s theory is right, per se, no matter how complete it is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That matter is brought right into the living being is easy enough to understand, as is the immaterial source of the activities of the material being. I don’t understand matter as the essential part of “the being”, as different than the living being. If I were to simplify it in some way, I might say something like...reason is one of two fundamental conditions of the being of human. But I wouldn’t go as far as to imply that’s what you meant.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Prior to is a temporal relation, to be sure, but is generally understood as an empirical predicate. A logical temporal relation of the same kind is usually represented by “antecedent”. A priori is a logical distinction representing the relation between things, or, the ground of the origin of things, but not necessarily in a temporal sense. We have empirical objects given to us simultaneously with the a priori representations of them, after all.
Analytic propositions are necessarily true or false because of the relationship of their content, but not because they are a priori. A priori judgements are true of necessity, but may very well be empirical judgements, re: married men, and all that......, true just as much as pure a priori judgements of no empirical content whatsoever are true or false, re: every part of space is itself space (true), all bodies are heavy (false).
Temporal priority can only be logical, if one accepts that time is not real. The time of this thing may be prior to the time of that thing, not because of time itself, but because of our understanding of things.
In a strictly Kantian point of view, and because you were wondering about why he never said much about possibilities, it is from the a priori itself that his reasoning for possibilities is given. In short, that which is known is a posteriori because the cognitions from which such knowledge is given is from the senses alone, what it only possible to know is a priori, is not given by the senses but is merely thought. It may become knowledge, but while it is not, it remains a priori.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, except humans are capable of thought of non-material things, some of which, as in beauty or the sublime, can hardly be said to be incomprehensible, even with, or despite, the added complexity of a faculty never considered fundamentally important.
Enough for now, in order to get something put up without being 2 feet long. You know....the ol’ word salad dismissal.
I would argue all fields of study (personality, psychology and physics) can be broken down to linguistic analysis. Considering the dictionary definition of 5 is 4 + 1(all math is built off of simple defintions going all the way up to the complex defintions), all logic and reason and even our personalities can be broken down into extremely small parts called definitions.
If we spent a ridicoulous and perhaps sometimes an impractical amount of time on any subject or field of study, we could find exactly what the cause or solution to any problem is.
Mathematics can be understood with definitions and linguistics then so can anything.
to add to the previous comment, linguistic analyis is built off of definitions. Etymology (a sub field) can be tricky but not all of linguistic analysis is etymology.
We're talking about linguistic analysis, a philosophical method associated with the ordinary language philosophy movement and Wittgenstein.
Quoting Snakes Alive
Some papers read like shuffling words about, the best ones don't. Something like intersectionality (in the heritage of Bell Hooks) turns on stuff out there happening; taking something as a topic and providing a lens to see it through.As such, I think good philosophy facilitates or enables and then provides good descriptions of how things are. Even if that thing is its own lens crafting.
Us. Me. We. External to that which is represented by personal pronouns. I may experience my own blood but I think I’d be in serious trouble if I come to experience my own brain. And even if I could, I’m not about to experience the workings of it, except by means of philosophical musings. Imagine....a machine on my head, showing me what it looks like to enjoy a brisk swim in the lake. I don’t think so. The point being, there is no matter of basketball in my head when I represent one to myself upon perceiving or remembering it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As nothing but a representation of that which thinks about stuff. You can't deny the reality of your “me”, in some form or another, so if you decide to make some claim about it, you can only do so theoretically. The hard sciences may tell us eventually exactly what “me” is, but as you said before....what’s the point? Is the “me” going away just because you’ve been given some empirical facts about it? Won’t you still say, I wonder; I think; we’re going; our plans, in my mind......
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It probably does. It almost has to. But as long as we have no suitable explanation for everything we do with respect to mind, we are permitted to theorize on it as much as we like. Helps to be reasonable, logical, comprehensible about it, though, obviously. Just can’t claim such theories as necessarily the case, even if we can claim them as logically sufficient.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You’re dividing an immaterial representation. Therefore, you can only divide into others of the same kind. The source of the activities of such divisions would depend on what you want them to do, what they’re supposed to accomplish. The most fundamental division of self, I suppose, brings up the representation of consciousness as ego, and is the source of both feelings and cognitions, the only mental activities of which humans are capable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolutely, we might. All the needs to be done is come up with a theory that allows its hypotheticals to overlap. Problem is, what is responsible for what, if they stumble all over themselves? How do they stay out of each other’s territories? A molecule cannot be confused with an atom, even if their fundamental physical constituency overlaps. In the same way, hypotheticals cannot be confused with each other even if their respective logical conditions overlap. Still, if individual things have individual jobs, I don’t see how boundaries for those things won’t be part of the bargain.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This from Aristotle? Could be.....I’ll take your word for it. In Kant, to reiterate, a priori and a posteriori are conditions relative to their respective objects or relative to each other, within the context of a particular cognitive system, and not necessarily in a temporally prior sense.
I might be starting to see what you mean....sorta. Your saying intuitions, for example, don’t determine an object, which means the best they can do, because they are a priori, is determine the possible identity of an object. This notion is reconciled by the operational parameters of the modern term “memory”, same as the old term “intuition”, which we agree readily identifies objects of our extant knowledge.
Anyway......think I’ll let the rest of your post alone. Thing to keep in mind is, Kant knew Aristotle very well, being a professor of metaphysics and held the chair in logic. Kant’s major philosophical claim to fame is taking Aristotle where he either didn’t know he could go, or refused to go because he saw no reason to. Either way, Kant is based on Aristotle, for most intents and purposes.
For what that’s worth.
Quoting Mww
When something is put into memory, it is forgotten about. That seems contradictory, but what I mean is that it's put away for later access, so it leaves the conscious mind at that time (is forgotten by it), but can still be accessed later. Any random occurrence, or odd association might incline one to access the conclusion which lies waiting in the memory. The conclusion is remembered, because it has significance in the present circumstances, but the conditions which led to making that conclusion (thinking on that particular subject) need not be remembered. I think that we can find the essence of a symbol, or word here. It has meaning or significance, as a sort of conclusion, stashed away in the memory, but the actual conditions of why and what for, are not remembered. So the mind is directed toward particular words when determining what to say in a particular situation, without remembering the particularities of the situation in which the word was used, when it was remembered. Numerous instances of use are remembered when learning a word, so usage is remembered in a general sense.
This is why word meanings vary so much, and evolve, sometimes quite rapidly. Likewise, in the case of a conclusion, a person will be in a situation doing something, and realize, 'I have a principle (conclusion) which applies here'. They'll remember it, and use it, without ever thinking about the problem which first lead to the conclusion, so thinking on that subject is quickly forgotten.
Quoting Mww
Kant did use "sensibility". Here's a definition from the first page of "Transcendental Aesthetic"
First, notice that sensibility is a passive, receptive thing. It is a capacity, like an Aristotelian potency, like "matter" is for Aristotle. As taken from Plato's Timaeus, matter is the receptacle. Second, notice that "objects" is used in two distinct ways. In the first sense, sensibility is the passive thing, affected by objects. In the second sense, sensibility gives us objects, as intuitions, therefore sensibility plays an active role as well. So "sensibility" has a dual personality, it receives from external objects, and it gives (internal) objects, as intuitions. This is the basis of the Kantian ambiguity. If he would have adhered to the Aristotelian categories of active and passive, he would have apprehended the need to divide sensibility into two distinct aspects. Instead of such an analysis, he has synthesized the two distinct aspects into one thing "sensibility". But there is no such thing as "sensibility", he just made it up as a means of putting an end to the analysis and starting a synthesis. In reality, he ought not have stopped the analysis here, because this made up thing, "sensibility", just causes ambiguity by allowing that one thing, sensation, is both passive and active, which is sort of contradictory if we do not distinguish a passive aspect from an active aspect of the thing.
In Aristotelian terms "form" refers to the active aspect of a thing, while "matter" refers to the passive aspect, which provides the potential for activity. So a little further on, Kant defines matter and form in relation to sense appearances:
Can you see the problem here now which the ambiguity creates? An appearance is an object created by sensibility and given as intuition. As an object, it must consist of matter and form to be consistent with Aristotelian principles, yet here Kant assigns to it "matter" only. In the previous definition, of "sensibility" he has made the mind which receives the intuition, passive. But now he wants to reverse roles, making the mind active, such that instead of receiving objects it creates objects by ordering intuitions into relations. So the active role of sensibility, giving objects to the mind, he now retracts, and hands it over to the mind, as sensibility is only supposed to provide a passive aspect, matter. But now the sensation, the object given to the mind, has no form at all, and cannot correctly be called an object, it is completely dependent on the mind for its form. Therefore it cannot be actively "given" by sensation, it is actively created by the mind. But this turn around is what allows him to talk about pure intuitions, because there must be an active form in the mind to act on the matter of sensibility. But these pure intuitions are contradictory because he has already succinctly stated that intuitions can only come as objects, from sensibility.
By not differentiating the passive and active aspects of sensibility he has gotten himself into a pickle. He must allow that sensibility is passive, in order to receive the forms of sensible objects. But he cannot allow that sensibility passes these forms directly to the mind, because he needs to maintain a separation between the object as appearance, and the sensible object itself. So he says that sensation creates an object which is given to the mind. But sensibility cannot create the form of these objects because he has no a priori principle there, no pure intuition to act within sensibility.
Now he has the same active/passive problem again, at the level of mind, or intuition, so he posits a pure, "a priori", intuition to account for the activity of the mind in creating forms. But this is wrong because he's already said that all intuitions come only from sense. So this "a priori" or pure intuition which he posits must be something completely different from an intuition, or an object, or anything like that, it would be more like a pure actuality, pure activity. Furthermore, this pure actuality must really, also be present within sensibility, to account for the activity of creating the objects of sensation. which are given as intuitions.
Quoting Mww
You don't seem to be accounting for the distinction between the thing itself which is sensed, and the object which is the appearance. If you recognize that the object of sensibility which is given to the mind is the appearance, then we need to account for the cause of existence of this object. The cause is the sensibility itself, so we cannot say that the sensation is the effect of the thing being sensed, though the sensation is affected by it. The sensation is the effect of the sensibility (capacity to sense) when the sensibility is active. When the capacity to sense is active, objects, appearances, are produced. What activates the capacity is the internal, pure actuality, we might call it the a priori, rather than the external thing which is being sensed. the external thing does not activate the sensibility. This is evident from the fact that we can sleep, and not sense while we sleep, then wake up and start sensing.
A sense organ is a passive thing, a receptacle, which needs to be activated, to actually sense. Only when it is activated can it sense. It is activated from within. This is where scientism has lead us away from vitalism, in what I believe is a misguided direction. A sense organ is not simply a passive receptacle which receives outside activity. Yes, it has a passive element which receives outside activity, but whatever is received is 'interpreted' within the sense organ itself, and this means that it is judged or measured somehow, by an internal activity in the sense organ. So sensing is properly an activity itself, an activity of judging other activities. It's not well described as a reaction.
I think I see why you are so reluctant to accept the idea that the conscious mind can prevent thoughts. You do not really accept free will. You think that sensation is the effect of the sensible object, caused by that object. Therefore you believe that objects in the mind, intuitions, are caused by sensations, and the mind does not have the capacity to prevent these thoughts.
But still, you want an immaterial mind, so you posit an "a priori". But this creates inconsistency, because if the a prior exists within the mind, to influence and act on the intuitions, then why is it not at work in the sensibility as well, to influence and act on the sensations? And if we remove it from the sensibility, as Kant attempts to, we have no separation between the object received by sensibility and the object given to the mind from sensibility (the phenomenon/noumenon separation). The object given to the mind by sensation must have form as well as matter, and the form cannot be the same as the form of the external object sensed, or else we lose the separation. So the form must be given to that object of sensibility, by the active sensibility. But where does the sensibility get that form from? It can't come down from the pure intuition.
This is why the Aristotelian conceptualization, which is has the form (soul) acting at all levels, from bottom up, is more consistent and comprehensible. The form, as soul, is active in all the potencies of the soul, from self-nourishment, to self-movement, through sensation, and intellection. The soul creates the forms of existence of the material body, from the lowest organism to the highest organism. The forms of intuition, are just an extension of this activity of the soul creating forms. However, we have a distinction between the material form of a living body, and the immaterial form (final cause) by which the body is created. Even the lowest organism (maybe even a virus) acts on an immaterial form. The immaterial form which accounts for the activities of the soul is prior to any material form.
In this way, we have the pure immaterial form, the soul, acting from the bottom up, at all levels of living organisms, active in all the activities of living beings. There is no need for the "pure intuition", or "a priori" conceptions, which within the Kantian system appear to be imposed from the intellect downward onto the material sensations. The "pure intuition" is inherent within even the lowest organisms, and is therefore already inherent within the object given to the mind from sensation. Notice that "intuition" in a common sense of usage refers to what is instinctual, provided through hereditary means, so the most pure intuition can only be sourced from the most primitive life form. Though it is sourced from the lowest levels of life, it appears to us in the highest levels, as that knowledge which goes beyond empirical knowledge. But what this means is that it must really be prior to, before, all empirical knowledge, which takes us to the lowest forms of organisms. I recommend you consider what I said last post, that all forms of "prior" are grounded in, or reducible to, temporally prior.
Quoting Mww
So, these pure intuitions, space and time, as necessary conditions for sensation, must be prior (in time) to all sensation. This means that they must have existed within living beings before living beings could develop the capacity to sense, therefore a property of non sensing beings. Therefore we cannot posit these as properties of the mind, if a mind requires intellection, because intellection came after sensation. As prior to sensation, and active in sensation, they actively form the object produced by the sensibility. Then when the sensibility gives objects of intuition to the mind, the pure intuition, the a priori, is already inherent within those objects. This resolves the apparent contradiction above, where Kant says that only the sensibility can provide intuitions, yet the mind has pure intuitions, free from sensation, a priori. The pure intuitions are already inherent within, as required for, the empirical intuitions.
Quoting Mww
So I think you're wrong here. The "forms of intuition", as space and time, the pure intuitions, as a priori, and a necessary condition for sensation, must be active within the activity of sensibility (sensation). This means they must be temporally prior to sensation as required for sensibility. Otherwise the inconsistency and contradiction appears.
This is why the Aristotelian metaphysics is actually more sound than the Kantian. Kant introduces ambiguity within the concept of "sensibility", making it appear like the sensibility gives objects of pure matter to the conscious mind. But this is impossible, these objects, as objects, must have form and the form must be derived from the act of the sensibility, sensation. Therefore the forms of intuition, space and time, as pure a priori intuitions, must be prior to sensation, and active within the activity of sensibility.
Quoting Mww
This I also see as a mistake. You are assuming that the temporal necessity can be removed from "a priori", and this is impossible. You assume that there can be a logical type of "origin" which is not temporally prior. Removing the temporal order from prior, or "a priori", introduces contradiction into your logic, rendering the principles as unsound.
Here's an example, 1 is prior to 2. You could argue that it is logically prior, but not temporally prior, arguing that the concept of two is logically dependent on the concept of one, but there is no need for one to be temporally prior to two. But this is false because it is impossible that there could be two things, prior in time to there being one thing. The concept of "2" requires that there be two individual "ones".
Quoting Mww
To assume that time is not real is to assume a falsity, rendering the principles which follow from this assumption as unsound. Again, you are showing that you do not believe in free will. Free will requires that there is a real difference between past and future, and therefore time is real.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is the falsity which Aristotle demonstrated with the cosmological argument. If the a priori is produced by understanding, it only exists in potential prior to being understood. Then it cannot play an active role in understanding.
Here is a big problem. You claim that Kantian metaphysics has supplanted Aristotelian as an "advanced theory", but all it really does is neglect sound Aristotelian arguments. This plunges us backward toward Pythagorean idealism, the deficiencies of which Plato had already demonstrated by analyzing the theory of participation. It was Plato's analysis of "participation", which revealed the nature of idealism, as the concept that things participate in the Idea. Kant's transcendental idealism brings us right back to this conception of passive, unchanging, eternal a priori, necessary Truths. This assigns activity to the things participating, and passivity to the Idea, or a priori Truth which is participated in. The passivity of the a priori Truth leaves it exposed to the Aristotelian refutation. So Neo-Platonists turned to an active Form, the One, from which emanates the Soul, then the Intellect. Kant undoes all this, foregoing the cosmological argument, and plunging us back to pre-Socratic times. That cannot be called an advancement.
Quoting Mww
But this is just a rehash of Pythagorean idealism, which was soundly refuted.
Quoting Mww
This is just an issue of how you would define "experience". Regardless, when you perceive a basketball, under Kantian principles there is a material aspect, the object given by the sensibility. And when you experience a memory of a basketball there must be a material aspect given by the memory. What Kant neglects is that these "objects" given to the mind, must also have a form as well as matter. Since he neglects it, he doesn't need to tell us where they get that form from. A careful analysis of his principles, as explained above, reveals that these objects must receive their forms from the a priori, or pure intuitions. Therefore these pure, a priori intuitions, cannot be property of the conscious mind.
Quoting Mww
I don't agree that we "might", because these fundamental "things" turn out to be activities. Notice that you even implicitly agree to this principle by saying that the individual things have individual jobs, they are doing something, so they are activities. And activities cannot overlap each other without some sort of interference, that's what's called interaction. Now, boundaries are out of the question here because interaction is not per se, a boundary. But we describe interactions as the distinct activities either cooperating or interfering with each other. If we assume that there is such a thing as cooperation, then we must assume a further end, a common goal. Without that end, the interactions are just interferences. Therefore to have a theory in which the interactions of distinct activities are described as cooperating, instead of simply interfering with each other, we need to assume final cause.
Quoting Mww
Here's something to keep in mind. Long before Kant, Aristotle's "Physics" had been determined by the scientific community, as not worth the time to read. I assume his biology "De Anima", had gone the same way. His logic was maintained and taught, as valuable, but his metaphysics would be incomprehensible without the structure and principles laid out in his physics and biology. So I'm not as sure as you seem to be, that Kant had an adequate understanding of Aristotelian metaphysics. He doesn't address the cosmological argument, to either accept or reject it, which is the basis of Aristotelian ontology. Instead, he introduces ambiguous synthetic judgements which create the appearance that further analysis is not possible.
Of course. The ambiguity arises from using Aristotle to qualify Kantian methodology, which just ain’t gonna work.
“....A philosophical system cannot come forward armed at all points like a mathematical treatise, and hence it may be quite possible to take objection to particular passages, while the organic structure of the system, considered as a unity, has no danger to apprehend. But few possess the ability, and still fewer the inclination, to take a comprehensive view of a new system. By confining the view to particular passages, taking these out of their connection and comparing them with another, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions....”
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
“...The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility...”. (1);
“...We apply the term sensibility to the receptivity of the mind for impressions, in so far as it is in some way affected....” (2)
The mode in which we are affected by objects, is the five varieties of perception. Objects here being real physical things, affected by objects indicates the kind of sensation corresponding to the mode of perception, the cause of sensations, in short, an impression. That which is received from an impression of an object is its effect, called an appearance. This is where sensibility stops, insofar as it has fulfilled its capacity for receiving impressions of sensation, such that “...the faculty of cognition is awakened into exercise...”. (3). It is also here that the physical matter of real objects stops, because the object’s extension in space and duration in time is not represented merely by their impressions on our sensation.
(Sidebar: in order to maintain consistency between the presence of a real object and the impression by a real object, the real object without its physical matter is thought a priori as a transcendental object. For the process of cognition, however, this is not pertinent. It is like reason saying to itself.....yep, ok, sensibility was right, there really is somebody at the door. For cognition to be awakened to its exercise is not a waste of my time)
“....The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation. That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical intuition....” (4)
This distinguishes a capacity from a faculty, the latter a rational, that is, other than a physical, function with a resultant product, the former merely the physical ability to do something from which all else follows. As such, the resultant product of the faculty of representation are themselves representations, and in this preliminary stage, with an impression as a cause, is an intuition and this is accomplished by the imagination in its synthesis of appearance of an object in sensation with the arrangement of its matter in consciousness. This means the faculty of representation is every rational function which we have already termed the unconscious part of the mind, up to and including the understanding, but not including the part of understanding having to do with a priori judgements.
The “sort of intuition” does not indicate there are a multiplicity of sorts, but indicates the only sort of intuition there is, and the only sort of intuition there is, is empirical because it is by the impression of empirical objects that it is at all possible.
“.....the undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon....” (5).
Of course undetermined, because the determinant itself has yet to be given. Nothing whatsoever has been given to conscious cognition, but only that something has been given possible to cognize. Also, because intuition is a representation, its object can only be a representation, therefore object here has nothing to do with matter, but is merely a rational, albeit unconscious, hence a priori, product.
“...but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations and by which they are susceptible of assuming a certain form (...) cannot be itself sensation....”
That the content of phenomena is susceptible to arrangement into a form because of certain relations of the characteristics of its content, is a valid observation given from judgement, in as much as we know from experience certain conditions about objects, that there is one by sensation of it, and what it is like by the form of it. If the content of phenomena is derived from the matter of objects through their sensations, then it follows that “that which effects that the content can be arranged”, cannot be sensation, so must be something subsequent to phenomena themselves, or, something common to both objects and their representations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That which is given to, or affects, perception is an object as such. That which is given to, or affects, the mind is not an object, so cannot properly be called one; it is, rather, a representation of the object that affects perception. And it has content, given from the characteristics of the object, intuited as such. The representation from intuition, called phenomenon, is dependent on the mind for the ordering of its content according to certain relations.
“....The difference between a confused and a clear representation is merely logical and has nothing to do with content....”
This says that without the certain relations, which are always logical, under which the content of phenomena are susceptible to arrangement, we cannot have any use for them, regardless of what they represent, or, regardless of their content. This is just a roundabout way of saying we can only conceive “dog” if the matter intuited as tail is on the other end from the matter intuited as nose, and we need the tail, and the nose to be constituted of different substances. These arrangements are necessary in order to cognize a particular object of sense even if it is not an object immediately present to sense. It is how we remember things already known every bit as much as how we learn a thing not yet known. Phenomena are undetermined, always, regardless of extant experience or novelty, but to be eventually determined in conformity to experience or instantiation a new one, it must have a certain logical order to its content.
There are only two ways for us to cognize anything, one is by sense perception, the other is by thought. It would be totally bizarre of Mother Nature to imbue us with two separate and distinct cognitive systems, one for cognizing objects present to our senses, and another to cognize objects not present to sense, but of which there is antecedent experience of when it was present to our sense, and, in addition, of which we are completely capable of presenting to ourselves in thought alone without it having ever been an experience at all. It is much more parsimonious, and logically consistent, that we as rational agents operate under the auspices of a singular system, albeit under the restrictions pursuant to the two types of cognition given by our very nature.
Obviously, the difference between the conditions for cognitions is only given from the faculty of representation, And then only that part of the faculty of representation that has appearance for its product. All else remains exactly the same, as it must, because understanding needs something to think about even if there is no object present to our senses. If appearance is missing, and imagination synthesizes appearance with intuition to give phenomena, then phenomena become necessarily comprised of intuition alone. This must be the case, understanding is the faculty of thought, and phenomena are absolutely required for understanding. If we think, we must be using understanding and if we use understanding, there must be phenomena. That which the understanding thinks about must necessarily already exist for us in the faculty of representation from which it arises. And if it arises not from anything empirical, because the source of it is missing, it must arise a priori as already residing in the faculty of representation called intuition.
Furthermore, if intuition arises a priori under one condition, there is no reason to suspect it does not so arise under any condition. If it arises a priori under any conditions, it arises a priori under all conditions. Remembering that this is all occurring in the unconscious part of the mind, makes explicit there is no conscious mechanism in place to tell the faculty of cognition from where or how phenomena come from. If there is no conscious mechanism supports the notion that all intuitions reside a priori in the mind.
It should be clear now that the notion of a priori is not temporally significant, but is merely a condition for a means for something. A priori isn’t necessarily before experience when it is logically instead of experience. The problem then becomes, even if forms of cognized objects reside a priori in intuition, says nothing about how they got there in the first place. Simply put, they are derived from experience, and thereby suffices as logical equivalent to the psychological principle of memory. Just as we can never remember that which was never known, so too can we never have empirical intuition of that which we’ve never experienced.
Lastly, the form of empirical intuition is not the form of empirical objects represented as phenomena. Intuition is given from objects of sense, so the form of intuition must be that which all objects have in common, or, which is the same thing, that which makes objects possible as perceptions, which in turn makes intuition itself possible. The number of intuitions is predicated on the number of perceptions, but the possibility of intuitions is directly related to the possibility of objects. For humans, space and time are the necessary conditions of the possibility of objects, and thereby the possibility of experience. Theoretical derivatives to follow, if interested.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It isn’t. A priori isn’t a production at all, it’s a relation.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
See “SECTION VII. Critical Solution of the Cosmological Problem“, CPR B519. From there, for the next few chapters, is a rather thorough dissertation on the cosmological argument. Kant certainly cannot be said to forego it.
It is obvious empirical science has put the general hurts on much of pure metaphysics, more so for Aristotle than Kant, who didn’t grant the empirical any apodeictic unconditioned conditions, which the C.A. demands.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct, I do not think free will as a valid conception. That there is a will, and that it is grounded in the transcendental causality of freedom, all conditioned by pure practical reason, having nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of time for its implementation, but may invoke coexistence or successions in time for its predicates.
But you’re more than welcome to enlighten me as to these alleged false assumptions.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I can show how temporal necessity for some a priori considerations is unwarranted. There may be conditions for temporal necessity, but withdrawing such necessity is not impossible. Remember, this is all with respect to human cognition alone, without reflection on all and everything that is or may be possible.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Numbers are nothing but the schema of the category of quantity. If there are two things, each is already in its own part of time from its perspective, but they may very well coexist in the same time from mine.
Only if I count objects, must there be temporal priority, because I cannot count all things at the same time. But this has to do with me, not the temporal necessity of existences. And it has to do with me, because time is merely the subjective condition within which all phenomena are possible. We cannot think the non-existence of time, even if we may think the non-existence of things in time.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’ll take your word for that. Hell....it might actually be more sound. I dunno. But I judge the value of a theory only on how much sense it makes to me, so if I spent as much time and effort on Aristotle as I have on Kant, I might’ve had a different allegiance. But I didn’t, so I don’t. So there ya go....
You haven't resolved the ambiguity and inconsistency. You have an "impression" or "appearance" which is the effect of a sensible object on the capacity of sensation, sensibility, and also a "representation" which is a synthesized product of a faculty.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
See, the faculty of representation produces a representation through synthesis, but the capacity of sensation produces an appearance only by being affected by objects. The pure intuitions, the a priori, are required to account for that synthesis which produces the representations. But how do we account for the synthesis within sensation, required to produce an appearance? The pure intuitions are not supposed to be there, within sensation, or are they?
Quoting Mww
The ambiguity is because of the inconsistency and lack of clarity in Kant's work. That has nothing to do with Aristotle. However, Aristotle provides a good example of what consistency looks like.
Quoting Mww
Here's that same inconsistency again. You distinguish a rational function from a physical ability to do something, with reference to the "resultant product". However, there is a resultant product from the capacity to do something called "sensibility", or sensation. There is an appearance, just like the representation is the resultant product of the rational faculty.
There is no basis for the proposed difference between these two, it is an inconsistency. If there is something a priori, some sort of pure intuition, involved in producing rational representations, that same pure intuition must also be involved in producing the appearances of sensation. Otherwise we have no principle to account for the production of those appearances. By Kant's own transcendental aesthetic, the pure intuitions are prior to any sensible properties, and necessary a priori for sensibility. If these pure intuitions are part of the rational mind, then the rational mind must be prior to sensibility. But that's nonsense, so whatever it is which is called "pure intuitions" must be prior to the rational mind.
Quoting Mww
You are intentionally neglecting the "pure intuitions", space and time. All intuitions are given to the mind from sensibility, but not all intuitions are appearances. That's why pure intuitions are a different sort of intuition. The pure intuitions are a priori, and therefore prior to any appearances, as necessary for sensibility. Hence the 'transcendental' aesthetic.
"This pure form of sensibility may also itself be called pure intuition".
"The science of all principles of a priori sensibility I call transcendental aesthetic."
Do you apprehend these pure intuitions, space and time, as prior to, and necessary for sensation, and therefore existing in all instances of sensation, as the conditions for sensation, whether the being which is sensing is rational or not?
Quoting Mww
The matter of the object itself cannot be the matter of the appearance in sensation, or else there would be no separation between these two. They would be one and the same thing. So the content of phenomena, if it is supposed to be matter, cannot be derived from the objects of sensation. That content must come from something other than the objects.
What comes from the object is its form, that is the traditional way of understanding abstraction. If Kant wants to turn this around, and say that matter comes from the object, into the appearance, and this is the content of phenomena, then we need some principles to support this. That the sensibility is affected by the form of the object is already supported by the principles I described. The question for Kant then, is if the matter of the object is distinct from the matter of the appearance, as is necessary for the two to be distinct, then how can the appearance be in any way related to the object, unless it is through the means of some type of form?
Quoting Mww
But Kant calls it an object, in the passage I quoted. "Objects are given to us by the means of sensibility...they are thought through the understanding..." If these appearances are not objects, then it's not objects which are given by sensibility. It's something else. Why say "objects" are given to us? Furthermore, if they are the content, or "matter" of the phenomenon, how can they be anything other than objects? Consisting of matter, they must be objects. Do you see the ambiguity here? Kant brings matter into the mind, but he has no source for that matter. It cannot be the matter of the object itself, so where does it come from? Can you say that the sensibility creates matter, or ought we not turn to the pure intuitions, as I do, and see that the matter of the appearance can only be provided for by the a priori, pure intuitions? But then the pure intuitions cannot be property of the mind.
Quoting Mww
It is Kant who is trying to impose two distinct systems of cognition, the a priori and the a posteriori. If you think that such a proposal would be totally bizarre, as you say here, then reject Kant's system as totally bizarre. Do you not see that Kant's pure intuitions, space and time, and the a priori in general, are presented by Kant as a distinct form of cognition which does not require sense objects. Having two distinct forms of cognition is totally bizarre, and that's why the a priori, pure intuitions, ought to be rejected as misunderstanding. Whatever it is, which is active in the a priori sense, and is responsible for the existence of what Kant calls "pure intuitions", cannot be a type of cognition at all, because it is necessarily prior to cognition. The Aristotelian representation of this, as a pure form, "the soul" is extremely primitive, I agree, but it is far more accurate. instead of giving us a step forward, Kant gives us a step backward toward misunderstanding.
Quoting Mww
This is not consistent with Kant. Appearance must be prior to representation, as that which is given to the faculty of representation, from sensibility. That's the problem I'm trying to point out to you. We need to account for the production of appearances. We cannot say that appearances are a product of the cognitive faculty of representation, because they are given to this faculty by sensibility, as the faculty's content, matter.
If we assume that the cognitive faculty has some pure intuitions, not requiring any sensibility, free from appearances, then how do these pure intuitions get into that cognitive faculty without being contaminated by appearances, when the cognitive faculty is described as a posteriori to the sensibility. How could a cognitive property, the property of pure intuitions, be prior to sensibility, in order that it be free from sense appearances, and therefore provide us with 'pure' a priori intuitions?
Quoting Mww
Right, except the a priori intuitions cannot be already residing in the faculty of understanding, because all intuitions are provided from sensibility. So how could these a priori intuitions, space and time, get into the cognitive faculty which gives us understanding? The faculty of understanding is a posteriori to sensibility, and receives all its content from sensibility. Yet there are a priori intuitions, pure and free from sensible content. How does the faculty of understanding receive a priori intuitions? They cannot be already residing in the faculty of representation (a cognitive faculty), because this faculty only receives intuitions from sensibility. Therefore, if the a priori pure intuitions are free from sensible content (appearances), they must be prior to sensibility.
Quoting Mww
This is inconsistent with Kant again. "Objects are given to us by means of sensibility and it alone yields us intuitions...". In your own words, it would be extremely bizarre if one faculty of the mind was receiving a posteriori intuitions, and another part was creating a priori intuitions. It may be true that there is a part which retrieves memories, while another part receives current appearances, but it doesn't make sense to say that one part of the mind is creating 'pure' intuitions, because these would be completely random, free from all influence of sensibility. How could the mind even do that, isolate a part of itself, from any sensible content to produce pure intuitions?
Quoting Mww
Don't you recognize that a condition for something means that this thing which is the condition, is necessarily prior in time to the thing which it is a condition for? How can you even think that you might remove temporality from this concept?
Quoting Mww
You ought to recognize this as contradictory as well. To say that the a priori is derived from experience begs the question of what type of "experience" might you be referring to. And to say that this is experience "which we've never experienced", is simple contradiction.
Quoting Mww
Again, it makes no sense to say that the possibility of objects as perceptions, is a property of the human mind, because this makes it impossible for other sensing animals to sense objects as perceptions. So, if the pure intuitions, space and time, are necessary conditions for sensibility (possibility of sense experience), then these intuitions must exist in all sensing creatures, and even must have been produced prior to sensation itself. That is why it does not make sense to speak about this feature of living beings as a property of the mind, and it is better understood as a property of the soul which all living being have.
Quoting Mww
I agree that withdrawing temporality from a priori is a possibility, but it is not a logical possibility; it is illogical, because the defining terms of "a priori" will be contradicted in such an effort. If you think you can demonstrate otherwise go ahead and try. You would have to define "a priori" in some non temporal way, but this would be nonsense, just like defining cause and effect in a non temporal way.
Quoting Mww
Sure, two things might coexist, but that is not what we're talking about, we are talking about a priority of existence. To determine if one is prior to the other, we need to consider their origins. If they are both caused to come into existence at the exact same time, we can rule out coincidence as improbable, and conclude that they have the same cause. That cause is one thing, which is prior to the two. If we accept coincidence, then we still have two distinct things, and we need to look to the cause of those things, and avoid infinite regress.
Quoting Mww
This is why I am trying to demonstrate to you how Kant's system makes very little sense.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In a theory of knowledge predicated on logical structure, but initiated by physical means, the transition between the two needs no technical account; it is sufficient that the transition occurs, and is sustained by observation. Think of that transition as the major premise in a propositional syllogism: if an object affects perception and from such affect is given an appearance that represents the affect, and if....(continue to minor premise). This is a valid procedure, regardless of whether such logical system is representational or not, because obviously there is in fact a transition of some kind between the physical external and the rational internal. I know you have doubts about the external/internal relation, having to do with possibilities and activities and whatnot....but I don’t see why that should be the case. No matter their names, a dualism of some kind is consistent with the human complementary architecture under which the logical system works. Up/down; left/right; yes/no......ad infinitum.
So we don’t synthesize within sensation, we grant a physical/mental transition, a representation being the result, and get on with it. Representation understood to indicate a “change in the subjective state”. The pure intuitions are not there, no, but the time until they are is practically instantaneous.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, I’m forced to grant you that. He’s infamous for apparent inconsistencies and notorious for lack of clarity, employing, as is his wont, the paragraph for a unit of argument. Still, we do the best we can with what we have to work with. The strength of the theory as a whole far outweighs the troubles in its construction, and whether it was from the validity on the pro side or vagary on the con side, that philosophical academia reinvented itself after CPR, is irrelevant.
As an aside, the Transcendental Analytic is far FAR more controversial, ambiguous and obfuscated than the easy stuff occupying us here in this first, merely groundwork part of Elements, the Transcendental Aesthetic.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ways and means, I say. Ways and means. It being abundantly manifest that the external and internal are very distinct, it follows the operational parameters governing the expositions of them must also be. Interchange the terminology if you like, in that a capacity can be a faculty and vice versa, (Kant does this himself regarding sensibility, four times throughout the text) but what have you gained? If the gain is clarity and consistency, but we end up in the same speculative end......who cares? Again, no matter the names, there is a difference between them. All each has to do is be self-consistent within its own arena, and not functionally intrude on the other. It’s a process, after all.
Sensibility is the capacity for receiving impressions, it does not have a product of its own. Nothing will make any sense if it is not shown that we actually do perceive things, and how they relate, what their place is. Sets the stage, if you will. Sensibility the conception, merely denotes that we are able to perceive things as external to us, while the affect on us still belongs to the object. Sensation is the affect of an object of perception on “our faculty of representation”, of which sensibility is not a part.
Hopefully, this horse is now dead enough.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Intuition does not produce representation, intuition is a representation of a certain kind, produced by the human system. It follows then, that pure intuitions also do not produce representations, they are the conditions which must be met in order for there to be empirical representations. Appearance is just a name for a kind, along with the name conception, idea, and of course, intuition, the kind dependent on the cause and effect of each.
Space and time are called intuitions because they are representations of a kind that indicates a subjective state, just as they all do. Space and time are called pure intuitions because there is nothing in experience that belongs to them. Empirical intuitions, on the other hand, represents empirical predicates, because only empirical objects are perceived by us and become experiences.
Gotta keep in mind the theory under discussion, in which space and time are the absolutely necessary ground of the possibility of all experience. If involved at all in the producing appearance as representing sensations, it is because without space and time, objects and the sensation of them are impossible for us. That is not to say appearances are actually produced by them.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They don’t. There are no intuitions at all in understanding, there are only conceptions. Space and time are not conceptions. We need space and time as the necessary conditions for objects, but absent perception, we can still think objects, which just means we are thinking the form of objects as representations arranged a priori as phenomena. This explains why time is the condition of our conceptions but space is not. Thoughts do not occupy space but they do subsist in time.
Just as there are the pure intuitions represented as space and time, there are the pure conceptions of the understanding called categories, which relate phenomena to empirical conceptions.
Understanding isn’t given to us; it is what we do as part of our nature, just as we intuit, and judge, and cognize and experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It doesn’t; it receives phenomena that imagination synthesizes with conceptions, which gives judgement.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Technically, it isn’t quite right to say intuitions are free from appearances. It is more that the content of appearance have no organization, or “...arranged under certain relations...”, which intuition provides. Saying imagination synthesizes is the same as saying intuition arranges the content of appearance into the organized form called phenomena.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting. Kemp Smith and Guyer/Wood translations read that way, but Meikeljohn reads: "The science of all principles of sensibility a priori I call transcendental aesthetic...”. I like that better, because of what follows:
“....In the transcendental aesthetic we will therefore first isolate sensibility by separating off everything that the understanding thinks through its concepts, so that nothing but empirical intuition remains. Second, we will then detach from the latter everything that belongs to sensation,
so that nothing remains except pure intuition and the mere form of appearances, which is the only thing that sensibility can make available a priori...”
Taken together, we should see it isn’t sensibility itself that is a priori, but only the rational product of it, which we have agreed all along, is mere appearance. This reflects back to my interpretation that the affects of objects stops at sensation, whereby the mind takes over from the empirical, hence the advent of a priori conditions. Not prior to physicality, but instead of it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I wouldn’t, and I haven’t. I said there are situations where the notion of temporal sense is unwarranted, and that the a priori is just as much a logical relation from deductive inference as it is a relation in time. Furthermore, we need to keep in mind what we actually talking about here, and that is a theory of knowledge, in which the hypotheticals make clear we don’t give a hoot about the when of something, but only the use of it. Saying the premises of a syllogism are necessarily prior in time to the conclusion of it, it a trivial truth, and serves no purpose whatsoever.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not what I said, and certainly not what I meant. The mind doesn’t receive intuitions, it creates them because objects are given to us, hence always a priori but with empirical cause. Pure intuitions created as the form of empirical intuitions.
You know.....you can’t have matter/form necessarily in one place, use that necessity for something else, yet arbitrarily drop out the matter/form complementarity, just because. If the theory starts with it, the theory must maintain it for its own internal consistency. Form has always been a rational aspect, so at some point, the matter part of the complement must also become rational, or the theory defeats itself again, it being, after all, a metaphysical thesis.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To say anything is a property of humans does nothing to say it is thereby an impossible property of anything else. For humans, space and time are the necessary conditions of the possibility of objects, and thereby the possibility of experience. Keyword.....for humans. At best, we may allow other rational beings like us to be imbued with similar cognitive apparatus, but rational beings does not necessarily include “sensing animals” in general, but only certain kinds.
“.....I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them....”, is the determinant factor in what a rational being would be.
It makes perfect sense to say the possibility of objects as perceptions is a property of humans, but such property in no manner makes the possibility of objects in themselves dependent on human perception. Human experience of objects, on the other hand, is entirely predicated on the initiating perception of them. Such proclamation should broker no controversy whatsoever.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
“.....But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion), an addition which we cannot distinguish from the original element...
.....For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or that may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from 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. Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure. Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up....”
So there!!! PPPFFFTTTT!!! Defined, just as you demanded. Notice, if you will, the glaringly obvious lack of temporal and non-sense. This being independent of that removes time from their relation.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And doing a good job of it, too, I must say. Thing is, I like to think I’m doing just as well in refuting your demonstrations. Still, the controversy intrinsic to a thing, and the degree of sense it makes, are directly related to the understanding of it, assuming it is comprehensible in the first place, of course.
“.....Despite its brevity - a mere thirty pages in the first edition and forty in the second - the "Transcendental Aesthetic" argues for a series of striking, paradoxical and even revolutionary theses that determine the course of the whole remainder of the Critique and that have been the subject of a very large proportion of the scholarly work de voted to the Critique in the last two centuries. In this section, Kant at tempts to distinguish the contribution to cognition made by our receptive faculty of sensibility from that made solely by the objects that affect us (A21-2/B36), and argues that space and time are pure forms of all intuition contributed by our own faculty of sensibility, and therefore forms of which we can have a priori knowledge. This is the basis for Kant's resolution of the debate about space and time that had raged between the Newtonians, who held space and time to be self-subsisting entities existing independently of the objects that occupy them, and the Leibnizians, who held space and time to be systems of relations, conceptual constructs based on non-relational properties inhering in the things we think of as spatiotemporally related. Kant's alternative to both of these positions is that space and time are neither subsistent beings nor inherent in things as they are in themselves, but are rather only forms of our sensibility, hence conditions under which objects of experience can be given at all and the fundamental principle of their representation and individuation. Only in this way, Kant argues, can we adequately account for the necessary manifestation of space and time throughout all experience as single but infinite magnitudes - the feature of experience that Newton attempted to account for with his metaphysically incoherent notion of absolute space and time as the sensorium dei - and also explain the a priori yet synthetic character of the mathematical propositions expressing our cognition of the physical properties of quantities and shapes given in space and time - the epistemological certainty undercut by Leibniz's account of space and time as mere relations abstracted from antecedently existing objects (A22-5IB37-41, A30--2IB46-9).
Kant's thesis that space and time are pure forms of intuition leads him to the paradoxical conclusion that although space and time are empirically real, they are transcendentally ideal, and so are the objects given in them. Although the precise meaning of this claim remains subject to debate, in general terms it is the claim that it is only from the human standpoint that we can speak of space, time, and the spatiotemporality of the objects of experience, thus that we cognize these things not as they are in themselves but only as they appear under the conditions of our sensibility (A26-30/B42-5, A32-48/B49-73). This is Kant's famous doctrine of transcendental idealism, which is employed throughout the Critique of Pure Reason (and the two subsequent critiques) in a variety of ways....”
(Guyer, Cambridge Press, 1998)
All that to say this: nothing is but what we think of it.
Actually, this is precisely where scientism fails us. It assumes that if a premise or proposition is supported by observation, then it must be true. In reality though, the fact that the referred to "transition" is supported by observation is insufficient to support the truth of the proposition or premise produced, because the "observation" itself must be verified.
If you're not familiar with the tinted glass analogy, I will introduce it to you now. It was used in middle Christianity, by Aquinas for one, to argue for the immateriality of the mind. Perhaps it was derived from a Muslim source, or even Aristotle in a slightly different format. The argument is that in order for the mind to be able to know all material objects, there cannot be anything material within the mind, because this would taint the mind's perspective, like looking through a tinted glass.
The problem this brings up, is that we cannot simply assume that the mind is purely immaterial, and is not thus tainted, and that the human being has the capacity to know all material objects through its immaterial mind. We must allow for the possibility that our observations are made through a lens, and that the lens itself, is contributing to the observation, like a tinting on the glass. Therefore, we need a clear analysis and understanding of the means of observation (and this is sense, or sensibility, in the context of our discussion), before the observations themselves can be held as valid.
In conclusion then, we need to reject your major premise "if an object affects perception...", because we need to determine how perception is constituted, and how it is disposed to be affected by objects, before we can draw any conclusions from that premise.
Quoting Mww
To continue the analogy, I will refer to sensibility as "the lens" through which the internal mind observes the external sensible world. I'll agree then, that we do not synthesize with sensation, but sensibility contributes to the representation. I won't call this contribution a synthesis, but we must accept the reality of this contribution. Furthermore, our apprehension and understanding of the reality of sensible objects will always be tainted until we determine the features of this lens, and account for those features in our representations.
Quoting Mww
Of course this would be the case, the fundamental principles are laid out in the ground work. So if there is even a small or seemingly insignificant degree of inconsistency or ambiguity (an indication of uncertainty in the author) there in the ground work, it will be multiplied in what follows. This is why Aristotle serves as a good example. The groundwork, his physics and biology, each is consistent and unambiguous. The ambiguity and inconsistency enters in the more difficult subjects of ethics and metaphysics. But due to the clarity in the ground work these inconsistencies are easier to identify and isolate.
Quoting Mww
The external and internal are not "very distinct". This is a necessary principle I've brought to your attention already, but you do not appear to have apprehended it. And this points right to the topic of this thread. When you read this passage, the 'same' word exists within your mind (internal) as in the written medium (external). We might maintain the internal/external separation by saying one is a representation of the other, but which is which? Proponents of the scientism perspective will say that the mind makes a representation of the spoken word, but Platonists would say that the word is a representation of the idea. If we do not get this relationship right, we have a misunderstanding.
Suppose we start with a mind/body separation, as did the pre-Socratics; mind being internal, body being external. Now, we propose sensibility, or sensation as the medium between the two. But sensations come in different sorts. We feel pains, pleasures, emotions like desires and satiation, as well as tactile sensing, right in the body. We also sense external objects through senses like hearing and seeing. Now the human body is no longer the external, as external to the mind, but it is the medium of sensation which separates the external objects, and the internal mind.
So it appears like we cannot make sensibility a property of the internal mind, nor is it a property of the external object (the body). It must share both. However, if, when we talk about "sensibility" we may refer to it as a property of the immaterial mind, or we may refer to it as a property of the body, something external to the mind, then each of these two times the thing referred to as "sensibility" has a different relation to the mind. Then the respective role which sensibility plays in mental activity is completely different in each of these cases, because in one case it is external to the mind, and in the other case it is internal, as part of the mind.
Furthermore, we have the standard objection of naive monists against dualism, that the internal, as distinct from the external, cannot have interactions. What these monists fail to recognize is that Plato resolved this problem long ago, by positing passion, or spirit, as the medium between mind and body. However, this medium itself has a dual characterization. It may cooperate with the material body to act on the immaterial intellect, or it may cooperate with the immaterial intellect to act on the material body. Notice that in the one case the immaterial intellect is a passive recipient of activity, while in the other case it is the source of activity. This provides the basis for the Aristotelian division of passive and active intellect. Not only must the intellect be passive in receiving sense impressions, and whatever "feelings" it gets from the material body, it must also be active in causing bodily activities, thus actively causing change to the material world.
This is why moral philosophy becomes very relevant to epistemology. Reconsider "the lens" of observation now. The lens is the human body, which the immaterial intellect looks through, by means of sensibility. However, we now conceive of the immaterial intellect as also acting in the sensible world, through the means of the human body. From this perspective the body is a tool. So the same thing, which is the medium between the mind and the external world, is both, what affects our representations, as lens, and how we affect the world, as tool. Was that tool created for the purpose of scientific observation? Evolution theory would tell us no, it evolved according to survival, so it was created for the purpose of survival. But even this principle is doubtful, because we see such a vast array of life forms of all different shapes, sizes, colours, etc., this suggests that it is not simply survival which accounts for the bodily form.
In any case, "the lens" of sensibility can now be considered to be a tool, and as a tool, it is shaped and adapted for the purpose it is put to. And observation itself is subjective, depending on the purpose of the observation. This is why Plato, through the character of Socrates moved from the aesthetic principle of beauty in the "Symposium", to a more pragmatic principle, "the good", in the "Republic". Socrates' teacher in the Symposium, Diotima, supposedly taught him how to recognize beauty in human art and institutions. These things could only be beautiful because they partook in the Idea of Beauty, so Socrates was encouraged to find true beauty in the Idea of Beauty.
To me, it is indicated from the progression of Plato's dialogues that Socrates was not satisfied by this type of Idea, he literally could not find the Idea of Beauty, or any of the other Ideas he sought in the Plato's early dialogues. Then we might say he "saw the light", so that in the Republic, "the good" is said to make intelligible objects (Ideas), intelligible, just like the sun makes visible objects visible. This makes ideas and concepts, as they appear to human minds, relative. The way that they are understood by a human mind, is relative to the good which they are put toward. But this revelation completely changes one's perspective of on ideas and concepts. These things are created by the mind to be used as tools, for whatever purpose the mind gets up to, they are not at all representations of sensible objects. Further, it becomes apparent that all the artificial things in the world, and even the natural things (put there by the Creator), are simply representations of the Ideas. So the people in the cave see sensible objects as the real things when they are really just reflections of the Ideas.
Quoting Mww
Well the horse is not dead at all, because this is what I absolutely dispute, and I'm trying to explain to you why I dispute it. Let me state it bluntly, there is no "faculty of representation". The immaterial aspect, what you call the internal, is active, doing things, creating ideas, etc.. These things which the internal mind is creating, ideas and such, are created for a purpose, implying that their existence is based in a final cause. As such, it is only when representation is desired, as the final cause, that the mind is creating representations. If "sensation" was created with the purpose of giving the mind representations, then we could say what you say. However, sensation was produced from the forces of evolution, so this feature was selected for on the basis of survival, or something like that, not on the capacity for providing a representation.
Quoting Mww
The problem here is what I pointed to in my last post. Kant very clearly states that all intuitions are derived through sensibility. This includes pure intuitions. Therefore we cannot say that pure intuitions are devoid of experience. What Kant says is that they are devoid of sense experience. As I explained, the only logical way to interpret this is that the pure intuitions are prior to sensibility, taken by sensibility and given to the mind unaltered by sensation.
Quoting Mww
See, this is very consistent with what I said in the last passage. First we exclude what is proper to the mind, concepts etc.. Then we take empirical intuition and remove everything derived from sensation. So we are left with everything which is prior to sensation. Effectively, this is "the lens". The only problem is that Kant goes and posits space and time as the pure intuitions, the lens, and that is completely unwarranted. If we look from the Aristotelian perspective, the pure intuition would probably be matter. And Aristotelian matter, being what accounts for temporal continuity, inertia for example, and also having the character of potential, is a temporal concept. Form is spatial. But notice also, that when Kant talks about space and time, time is described as an internal intuition, and space is an external intuition. What could he mean by external intuition? "Space" might not be an a priori intuition at all, it might be a synthesized concept.
Quoting Mww
Right, we're talking about a theory of knowledge which distinguishes a priori from a posteriori, and you're telling me "we don't give a hoot about the when of something". Tell me another one, President Trump.
Quoting Mww
I already quoted the passage where Kant clearly states: "Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions...". This is where the ambiguity leads to inconsistency. So you are handing sensibility over to the mind, as if it is a property of the mind. But sense organs are clearly material aspects of the material body, and not part of the internal, immaterial mind. We sense through the means of material organs, and the distinction between the various sense capacities (sensibilities) is due to the difference in the material features.
Quoting Mww
You can say that, but it doesn't really have any bearing. The pure intuitions are necessary conditions for human sensation, this means that they are prior to human sensation. If you want to say that other animals sense in a completely different way from the way that human beings sense, a way which doesn't require the pure intuitions, we could accept that as a possibility. However, evolutionary theory shows consistency between the various animals, and it really would not make sense to entertain the idea that human eyes are radically different from the eyes of other animals, to account for such a difference between human sensation and the sensation of other animals.
Quoting Mww
This is not what Kant is giving us though. He says all intuitions are derived from sensibility. And, it makes much more sense this way. How could the mind produce ideas, or any sort of thought, which is free from sense impressions. Remember earlier, I said something about meditation. If you've tried meditation, the idea might be to separate your mind from sense influence. But that's impossible, it can't be done. The closest we come perhaps is in sleep, dreaming, but this is more like the mind utilizing memories. So I think back to childhood and see if I can remember a time when I was thinking prior to sensing, but I don't think such a time existed. Therefore it appears impossible to me, that the faculty of cognition, the thinking mind itself, could add anything to one's knowledge, which is not influenced by sensation.
Quoting Mww
It looks to me like you failed.
"For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or that may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience...."
Notice, the temporal procession described here.
Quoting Mww
Thanks, I'm glad you appreciate the effort.
Quoting Mww
We need to consider the meaning of "ideal". Space and time may be ideal for the purpose of representing material objects, but "ideal" is relative to the purpose. The purpose is defined by what is sought, the good. So Plato was moved to posit "the good", as the object itself. Therefore, depending on the nature of the object, (the good), space and time might not be ideal. So Kant hasn't really determined what sensibility contributes, he proposes space and time as the ideals for representation, but sensibility is probably not designed for the purpose of representation.
Hmmmmm.....
So you’re saying theories concerning knowledge in general, depends on knowledge of particulars. Makes me wonder....how can we claim knowledge of a thing before we have decided how it is possible to know anything at all?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, actually we don’t. We can just as well assume our sensory apparatus doesn’t distort our perceptions, work out a theory under those conditions, see if the conclusions make sense. If there is contradiction or inconsistency, it then becomes possible the apparatus does affect the perception; if there is no contradiction, and as a rule we are not confused by our sensations, we are justified in disclaiming the notion of an interfering lens. I have never ever looked at an apple and conceived from that observation, a grape. And even if my perception apparatus has distorted whatever that object actually is, to me it is a grape nonetheless.
Hence the value in a representational cognitive system. We already know the object in itself is not what the mind is working with anyway, and we already know the object in the aftermath of immediate perception is not itself lent to the mind, so it makes little difference if observations are lensed or not. Whatever gets to the mind is that which is cognized.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We’re not looking for truth of anything, no theory grounded on empirical conditions can ever be graded by its truth, but only on the non-contradiction of itself. All observations are verified, right up until they are not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We don’t care if the observations are valid, we actually know sometimes they are not. We do not need to reduce a theory of knowledge to the inception of it, but only to ascertain if the ends conforms to the means.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There you go again, attributing my lack of apprehension for what is actually sheer rejection. You cannot prove I reject this alleged necessary principle because I don’t apprehend the theory to which it belongs, as opposed to rejection of it because I do. Just because I find the internal/external dualism sufficiently explanatory doesn’t mean I don’t apprehend the arguments that it isn’t.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If the separation is held as a valid hypothesis, the which is which is given by it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Everything including and after this opening paragraph, and ending with.....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
......is acceptable from a Classic perspective. Sensibility is a tool, shaped for its purpose as a capacity for something, by Nature; sensibility is not a property of the internal nor the external, it is a gateway between, hence can be said to be shared by both but belongs to neither. Intuition is impossible without the appearance of objects and objects are unknowable by us as something if they do not appear to us as something.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You’re misreading the passage. Isolate sensibility is to separate it, and in effect use an erasure on it. It’s gone, extinguished. Separating off what understanding thinks is what extinguishes it. You’re thinking separating off means sensibility is left. But if nothing but empirical intuition remains, it cannot be sensibility that is left because sensibility does not give us empirical intuitions as representations. It gives us appearances as representations by means of the sensations objects impress upon us, which is merely part of the capacity for receiving impressions.
Then, from this empirical intuition remainder, is anything from sensation separated, which are those other representations, re: appearances, which are always empirical. Now, the empirical intuition has lost its empirical part, but is nonetheless intuition. So the final remainder is an intuition, but without anything belonging to it whatsoever. If a thing exists in some form, but has no content, it is nothing but a condition for that which was separated from it. It has become irreducible. What was taken was appearance, the empirical content from sensation, which in its turn came from the impression of objects, which in their turn, are actual real objects all given from sensibility, the capacity to receive objects. Therefore, for us, space and time as pure intuitions, are the necessary conditions of objects.
We are not left with everything prior to sensation; we are left with everything after it, which is what is meant by “...all that sensibility can make available a priori....”. Just another.....18th Century scholastic upper class Prussian.....way of saying, if there is something a priori we have, from which sensibility is the ground for its abstraction, it is intuitions in general, of which pure intuitions are included. This also explains why all intuitions are a priori in origin, but empirical in employment, for these must also apply to merely possible objects. It also contradicts your claim that a priori means prior to, because there cannot be an intuition of an object antecedent to its impression on our senses. Just the opposite of what you’re claiming.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, he does not. We do, in current parlance, because we disregard what he is trying to say under the constraint of his language, and disregarding exactly to whom he is aiming that language. We say derived from sensibility because nothing happens to our knowledge that doesn’t begin with sensibility, but that doesn’t mean we have knowledge because we have sensibility. Again...capacity vs faculty.
Intuitions are the product of experience, sensuous impressions giving merely the occassion....for that experience. This should be obvious, because it is possible to perceive something, have the impression or sensation of a thing, and have no knowledge of what it is. But we can still think that sensation relates to something. We just won’t know if what we think about the sensation represents what it actually is. We may think “bug” when we experience a tickle in a place we can’t see, but it turns out to be a hair. We may very well know we have a sensation, but that doesn’t mean we know the content of it. If knowledge begins with experience, it cannot begin with something that happens in the system long before it can even be called experience.
The mind produces ideas and thought of all sorts of things without sensation. Whenever nothing is the immediate focus of our attention, the mind can think whatever it wants. I mean.....when was the last time you had a sensation of potentiality, that wasn’t simply the sensation of something in possession of it?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Irrelevant. The context is empirical knowledge: “speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience”. We are wont to say it is a priori, but it isn’t if it’s given from a rule that was itself given from experience. This is impure a priori, as opposed to pure, which is covered in the next paragraph. For all intents and purposes, it is reason operating under an improper judgement.
“We are wont to say” means it is our habit, without due consideration of the truth of it.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure. Space and time are the ideal relative to the purpose of explaining how it is possible for us to know material objects. Ideal here means “Perfect for explaining....” because it is irreducible to something which could be more perfect for explaining. Purpose is defined as what is sought, and what is sought is knowledge. Transcendental, not Platonic.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, I can dig it. The final cause of the activities of the internal aspect, is pure reason, and its purpose is either knowledge with respect to what is, or morality with respect to what ought to be. Damn!!! Yet another necessary dualism.
Come on, you can't be serious? Knowledge is specific, to particular individuals. To say "we have knowledge" is a generalization. But to say that a group of individuals collectively has "a body of knowledge" is a sort of composition fallacy. Where would that knowledge exist, in the libraries?
So your question is like asking how can a person claim to see without knowing how it is possible to see. Living capacities don't work that way. They have developed over time, as features of the various beings, and these beings use those capacities without knowing how they work. Knowledge is a product of those capacities, so we claim to have knowledge without knowing how it is possible to have knowledge.
Quoting Mww
Right, and this has already happened. It happened for the ancient Greeks (as Socrates displayed in sophism). In those days people didn't even know that the earth revolved around the sun. Things aren't as they appear. The senses don't "represent" things the way that they are. And, it has happened again in modern society. Contradiction and inconsistency are rampant. Principles of one field of study contradict and are inconsistent with those of another field, and even within a particular discipline there is contradiction. Look at quantum physics for example, or some advanced evolutionary biology. Therefore the notion of the "lens" is justified.
Kant knew about the "lens", read the passage you quoted for me from Guyer.
Quoting Mww
Kant knew that the senses don't represent things as they are, hence the phenomena/noumena division. What he didn't recognize is how deep the difference is. Why even call it a "representation"? Semiotics gives us insight into this difference. What living beings use is symbols rather than representations.
A symbol has significance due to associations, we say a symbol has meaning. Sometimes we might say that a symbol represents something, but it doesn't represent it by being similar to it, it represents it by corresponding to it. When a word is used to refer directly to an object, like a proper noun, the word doesn't "represent" in the sense of being a reflection of the thing. And a significant portion of word usage does not involve proper nouns, the word simply has significance, or meaning. Semiotics gives us the principles to look at all the functions of living beings as semiosis, processes using symbols. Why wouldn't sensibility be the same? The senses don't give us representations, they give us symbols, which are associated with aspects of the world which have significance to us, are meaningful to us. As evidence of this, consider all the features of the world which modern chemistry and physics have determined are real like molecules and atoms, which the senses don't show us.
Quoting Mww
A representational cognitive system doesn't have value in the way that you claim it does. Consider your example of distinguishing an apple from a grape. Differentiation is not performed by representation. Imagine if you had a number of individual apples, and a number of individual grapes, and you were asked to determine which is which. You do not have an ideal representation of a grape, and of an apple, in your mind, to serve as paradigms by means of which you would make your judgement. In fact, this sort of judgement is not derived from representations at all. If it was, it would require the ideal paradigm for comparison. No such ideal exists This principle I learned from Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations".
Quoting Mww
I don't get this. Isn't truth exactly what we are looking for in an empirically grounded system? We want a theory which corresponds precisely with the empirical conditions. X theory corresponds precisely with a specific set of empirical conditions. The problem is that empirical conditions are unique, and particular to the subject. Furthermore, empirical conditions are necessarily of the past. Therefore such a theory would deal exclusively with how a subject might ideally represent the past. Succinctly, this is memory. But in knowledge, memories are applied. And, since the capacity for application must play a big role in establishing the systems for remembering, (the memory systems must be useful for application) we can no long say that the "ideal" system for remembering empirical conditions is a precise and exact representation. All empirical conditions are unique. This is because empirical conditions are always changing. So the ideal "representation" would be one which is applicable to a multitude of different conditions, therefore not actually a representation at all, but a useful form of association, significance.
Again, we get a glimpse of the importance of final cause, and the relevance of moral philosophy. Our goals, ends are a determining feature of application, and applicability is a determining feature of memory systems. Since applicability plays a determining role in how things are remembered, memories are not properly represented as representations, they are principles available for application just like concepts, which may or may not be used for representation.
Quoting Mww
All intuitions are received from sensibility! I quoted that twice already for you. What is an empirical intuition other than a sense impression? I think you need to reread the passage.
First we separate sensibility from thinking through the means of concepts so that nothing but empirical intuition remains. The we detach from the latter (empirical intuition), everything which belongs to sensation. So Kant claims, we are left with space and time. Notice we are proceeding from the highest toward the most fundamental, removing the highest, thought with concepts (proper rational thought) first. Then we move to the next highest, intuitions derived from sensibility, and remove everything which is proper to sense. We are left with what is prior to sensation, pure intuition.
Quoting Mww
Wow, this is extremely confused. Interpret it my way, it's so much easier, and clearly how it was meant to be taken.
Quoting Mww
Actually a priori does mean prior to. This contradiction which is derived from your interpretation, is evidence that you are misinterpreting, not me. To make sense out of your interpretation you have to give a priori some strange definition. Switch to a proper interpretation and you no longer need to give a priori a strange definiti
[quote=Wikipedia]The Latin phrases a priori ('from the earlier') and a posteriori ('from the later') are philosophical terms popularized by Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason...[/quote]
Quoting Mww
I'll quote it again. It's at the very beginning of Transcendental Aesthetic.
[quote=Kant]Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions...But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.
You're going the wrong direction with "pure reason", you're looking to the top instead of the bottom. The dilemma of moral philosophy, that a person will knowingly do wrong, indicates that the motivating factor for human activity does not come from reason. It comes from bottom up, not top down. All reason can do is attempt to directed the living activity, vitality, which is already active within.
Sensibility, as the capacity to sense is (temporally) prior to sensation. The pure intuitions, as constituent parts of sensibility, providing the capacity to give us objects, are therefore prior to sensation.
Compare this to the theory of recollection which Plato presented in the Meno. If knowing these ideas is always just a matter of remembering them, then we get an infinite regress temporally. We cannot account for them having ever come into existence, so Platonism considers them as eternal. But Plato exposed problems with this perspective, of eternal passive ideas. Aristotle provide a way to account for them as capacities; they come into existence and evolve as the potencies of living forms. But this makes them essentially material, giving us the tinted lens problem.
Yeah.......think I’ll get right on that.
It’s been real.
What can I say? When your interpretation of the work forces you into unconventional definitions of some key terms, like a prior and a posteriori, it's time to consider that your interpretation is a little off the mark.