Why would you have to?

You call it enforcement, Kantian ethics calls it constraint. There is, then, at least something prohibitive.

“...although they themselves recognize its authority; and when they do obey it, to obey it unwillingly (with resistance of their inclination); and it is in this that the constraint properly consists....”
(The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, 1780, in T.K. Abbott, 1895)

Not all that helpful. — Banno

Right. Still, my smell-er reports something very different, so I’m not stymied by such irreconcilable circularity.

a question of intension and extension — Heiko

Oh. Ok. Never mind.

So... what is it rational to want?
— Banno

The good, of course — Heiko

I like where you’re going with your groundwork here, but do you see where THE good, if taken as a transcendental principle, cannot be that which is “rational to want”, that being merely A good, or some good or another, as a practical end?

“....While Hobbes, Locke, and Hume disagreed on many important matters, but they each constructed their political theory in a political world that felt a trust crisis. While the atmospheres of Hobbes’s Civil War, Locke’s Glorious Revolution, or Hume’s Wilkes riots are not directly comparable to the difficulties of our own times, the early moderns’ search for solutions to the problem of trust might still be edifying for us. Quite clearly, neither Hobbes, Locke, nor Hume, believed that a political order could be maintained without efforts to promote trustworthiness. All understood that reason makes clear that an order that sustains and encourages mutual trust is best for all involved, but the maintenance of this order is always precarious because of the inability of humanity to regularly understand their interests. For all three, promoting trustworthiness involved promulgating passions, ideas, and habits that compensate for this basic human failing....”
(Anderson, 2011, in http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.197.6937&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Reason....use it or lose it.

undertakings for philosophy to (re)engage or come to grips with today — Statilius

A paradigm-shifting thesis on the metaphysical principles of quantum dynamics, with respect to the observer problem. Which might reconcile the illusory nature of objectivity for that of which direct experience is impossible, with the illusory nature of subjectivity for thinking that which direct experience contradicts.

Nature gave us reason, but neglected to give us the means to control it, which we had to come up with ourselves, oddly enough, by means of the very reason we were given no control over. Sorta like that refrigerator magnet magnanimously warning us.....never let a dog guard your food.

Nahhhhh.....I got nothing.

it takes a critical-reflexion to become objective. — Pantagruel

Yep, and if the limitations inherent in the critical reflection nosce te ipsum be given, so too is being objective.

.....took the day off, but told me he didn’t find much originality anywhere. A litany of likes/dislikes, holds/rejects, covering common philosophical knowledge, isn’t very thought-provoking, but does a good job of telling readers where you stand.

Perhaps you draw a line in the sand after Russell for some reason related to this specific question — Statilius

Nahhhh....Russell is just some arbitrary cut-off because everybody else after was talking about stuff of which I found not much worthwhile. Some Nagel, Chalmers, Dennet, Pinker, nothing from Sellars, Wittgenstein, Quine, James/Pierce/Dewey, the Churchlands. But to be fair, I read those guys but didn’t study them, as I did the German Enlightenment idealists. And they set the bar so high, poor shmucks coming later had nothing better to do but fall back on language, of all things, plus a few half-assed stabs at consciousness or, “being”. Gotta publish something, I suppose, to justify all those letters after your name.

Ironic, isn’t it? Admitting to the very cognitive prejudice I just talked about absenting in order to be objective. (Chuckles to self)

Yes, the quality of our own subjectivity for being objective, determines how objective we can be.

Apologies if I didn’t unpack your comment properly.

Cool.

I would say that conscious, intentional observation and perception itself is an assumption or requires as much. — Seditious

Why do you think that is?

I agree with the dyadic nature of certain systemic domains as fundamental wholes, certainly. Which explains why I never considered the subject-object dualism much of a problem anyway, with respect to reason as one such systemic approach.

Is this what you mean, that avoiding a problem is merely causing it not to be one?

This avoids the whole subject-object problem — Pantagruel

Avoiding isn’t solving, though, is it? In some contexts, the dualism is altogether unavoidable; I mean, the principle of complementarity demands opposites, right?

What would be an example of the subject-object problem your reference avoids?

This modern stuff.....practically everything philosophical written after Russell, 1912.

I’m old, and I think old. Categorical errors are mistakes of reason; category mistakes, except the original Ryle,1949, which is in fact a Kantian categorical error, are mistakes of propositional language, and are all but superfluous.

Still......you know what they say about opinions.

So essentially what you are saying is that you access an objective form of transmission, subjectively? — Harry Hindu

Perhaps I should clarify: objective form of transmission refers to the general kind of transmission it is, whether written, spoken, signed....stone cairns....whatever. The content of the transmission, whether words, sounds, motions.....whatever, will have its particular form in my faculty of intuition, depending on my experience with them. But yes, in any case, I access that content in whatever the form....kind.... of its transmission, subjectively, as I do with any perception.

The form the transmission takes is how it sounds or looks in your mind, — Harry Hindu

This is correct, hence my clarification. The form the transmission takes has to do with what the transmission becomes (phenomenon, in my mind), the form the transmission has, has to do with what kind of object it is (words, sounds, etc., in the world).

Don’t neglect time here. Even a strict physicalist must acknowledge a time delay between the stimulus of sensual contact and the operation of the brain in relation to it. Just because there are pre-existent neural pathways for some particular experience doesn’t negate operational necessity. Philosophically as well, each and every object of perception runs exactly the same gamut of theoretical cognitive procedure, whether there is extant knowledge of it or not. The brain, the hardware, is predicated on the laws of Nature; pure reason, the software, is predicated on the laws of logic, each legislative in their own domain.

I bring this up in order to prevent the assumption that as soon as I see your words I know what you mean by them. In fact, all I know immediately, is that there are words, which in and of themselves, for they are merely objects of perception, tell me absolutely nothing about your intentions in the employment of them.
——————-

I don't see how the rules are subjective if we are using the same rules to transmit and interpret the symbols. — Harry Hindu

Ehhhh....”rules” is just a word, the representation of a general idea, a theoretical explanatory device. Because the empirical world appears to function according to natural law, it stands to reason the immaterial world of human thought can be said to operate according to rules. We cannot say thought according to law, because law invokes the principles of universality and necessity, which is synonymous with robotics, but human thought is quite apt to be self-contradictory within one instance of it, and contradictory across multiple instances of it, the exact opposite of robotic.

Bottom line I guess.....rules are subjective because we as thinking subjects created them. There are no “rules”, per se, in Nature, so they cannot be objective, much like numbers, so all that’s left is to be subjective. And just as we can create an objective illustration of a number to represent the conception of quantity, we can create objective demonstration of a rule to represent the conception of language, or whatever conception to which a rule may be applied.
—————

The boundary between subjectivity and objectivity becomes blurred when what I am cognizing is the rules of the language that everyone else that understands the same language, learned. — Harry Hindu

You’re not cognizing the rules of the language; you’re cognizing the content of language according to rules. This is why theories of knowledge are so complex, because even though all thought is considered to be according to rules, doesn’t mean each instance of it will obtain the same knowledge. It should, but that isn’t the same as it will. Ought is not the same as shall. All thought according to rules can do, is justify its ends, but it cannot attain to absolute truth for them.

The boundaries can be blurred, for sure, but context helps with clarity. They are both qualities, but sometimes what they are qualities of, gets blurry. Subjectivity is pretty cut-and-dried, I think, but objectivity isn’t just about objects.

Thanks for the reference. Interesting enough, but category mistakes of this kind are not the categorical errors I’m concerned with. The original form, via Ryle, from Way Back When, is, but this modern stuff....ehhhh, seems very much “....beneath the dignity of philosophy...”.

Sure, but doesn't the fact that we are both human beings...... — Harry Hindu

True enough, with the caveat that humans in general usually communicate by rote, misunderstandings being the exception rather than the rule. The main reason for all this theory talk is to serve as possible explanation for how misunderstandings occur. Since the ancients, what we know is deemed less important than what we don’t.
——————

In saying "you’ve already cognized that to which it belongs for you, but when I perceive that same image, I have yet to cognize that to which it belongs for me.", isn't accurate. — Harry Hindu

It is, because I stopped at perception. Think of it this way: we each have two halves of an intercommunication, you think then objectify it, I perceive then understand it. For you whatever is being said begins subjectively, becomes objective in the form of its transmission; for me, it begins as object, but ends as an alteration of my subjective condition, that is to say, I know something given from what you say. Role reversal over time, sorta.

However, when all I’ve done is receive the object of your communication my powers of sensibility have engaged, but my rational powers have not, which means my statement is accurate. You’ve communicated to me, but not with me.
——————

To lie, you have to know what I know. — Harry Hindu

Interesting. What do you think a lie actually is?

We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking (...)....
— Mww

....then that tells me that thinking is fundamental, and that talking is a kind/manifestation of thinking.
— Harry Hindu

Bullseye!!! thinking is cognition by means of conceptions. Images are the schema of conceptions, but we cannot communicate via images, — Mww

Never "read" a picture book? How are we communicating if not by images on a screen? — Harry Hindu

Categorical error. I’m speaking of images with respect to the schema of conceptions, (...) you’re speaking of images as empirical representations (...) — Mww

You told me, "Bullseye!" in the last post, yet when I elaborate, you say, "Categorical error". You seem to be saying that we're using the same scribbles, "image" to refer completely different things. — Harry Hindu

The bullseye represents that you admit thinking is fundamental; the categorical error represents that you’ve substituted the primary constituent for the origin of antecedent thought, for the primary constituent of the consequential communication of it. This matters from the point of view that holds with the notion that when you put some general representative scribble in objective form, you’ve already cognized that to which it belongs for you, but when I perceive that same image, I have yet to cognize that to which it belongs for me.

It makes no difference to my understanding what the particular object of perception is, whether word, picture, or tickle on the back of my neck or loud boom from the backyard.....they each and all arise as images of some possible object, called “phenomenon”, to my thinking process. So yes, my employment of “image”, as you put it, is one and only one thing, re: that which represents a single phenomenon, which is then called a conception. I still need to synthesize that image either with a manifold of extant intuitions given from experience, in which case I already know the perceived object, or, some non-contradictory genus of conceptions that forms a possible cognition a priori, in which case I am merely learning what the perceived object is.

Now the categorical error manifests, in that it is the faculty of imagination responsible for synthesizing the possible object in phenomena, to the named object in conception, with my mental images as the intermediary between them, hence, images being the schema of conceptions. The phenomenon e.g., loud boom in the backyard or “images” in a picture book, or “scribbles” representing words, are all nothing but objects of my perception, which mandates they all traverse the same rational procedure as any other real physical object. The category is relation, and the error is thinking the perception of an external image suffices as the internal image as schema, when in fact it does not. Well........actually, in theory it does not.

As an aside, there is also the category of modality, having to do with necessity, but I got a feeling that ain’t gonna fly, especially if the error of relation hasn’t first.
—————

Words are simply a way of condensing a complex idea into simple empirical symbols for communicating, and conceptual symbols (which are stored empirical symbols) for conceptualizing. — Harry Hindu

No, not really. Words cannot be the sole causality for condensing an idea into symbols representing it. If that were the case, nothing prevents the word “breakfast” from symbolizing the condensed complex idea “religion”, except the invocation of infinite regress to the point of inception of the initial correspondence between any single word and the conception it represents. The initial correspondence is sufficient for the principle of non-contradiction, which henceforth prevents cross-referencing words with concepts to which they do not belong. Which has much more to do with meaning of words, than words themselves anyway. All of that being nothing but.....you guessed it.....pure thought. Think first, speak later. Or, which is the same thing....speak now about what was thought earlier.

I see what you’re trying to say, but your method makes no room for all that happens between condensing and communicating. You’re trying to tell me in words what you think, which is fine in itself, you couldn’t do it without projecting it objectively somehow, but how you think is not determined by your words, they just represent what it is, after you’ve done it.

we cannot communicate via images, so we invented words to represent our conceptions.
— Mww

Never "read" a picture book? How are we communicating if not my images on a screen? — Harry Hindu

Categorical error. I’m speaking of images with respect to the schema of conceptions, which arise spontaneously from pure thought, you’re speaking of images as empirical representations of the original schema, which arise from experience. Which should prove my point.

Furthermore, apparently you don’t read picture books either, else putting “read” in quotes wouldn’t have an explanation. View pictures, read/hear words. Ever notice that perceiving empirical words becomes viewing mental images? Except for maybe the driest, most technical or abstract moldy tomes, words read always transform internally into the very schema from which they were born, otherwise there is no purpose for them.
————-

You said exhibition of rationality and assertion of rationality are the same thing.

Exhibiting it is the same as asserting it. — Harry Hindu

My examples proved that incorrect, in that the judgements you make in response to each, are very different.....

Yes, that you are strong enough to do 20 pushups.

.....which is a valid judgement, because from the exhibition that I actually did 20 pushups you know some particular physical ability of mine. On the other hand....

Yes, that football is liked by you. — Harry Hindu

....cannot be a valid judgement of yours merely from my saying so. I might detest football, saying I like it for any number of rational or irrational reasons, which would be impossible for you to derive from the mere assertion.

I would tend to agree. The time it takes for you to fly to the moon and back for me is whatever the time of it is; the time it takes for you to fly to the moon and back for you is whatever the time of it is. Whether or not the times are the same or not has nothing to do with our respective internal sense of it, and why the times should be different under certain conditions has just as little to do with us as mere observers.

Sure as hell wasn’t my fault I got older and you didn’t. Although, I gotta say....it’s funnier that you shrunk and I didn’t.

Hey.....

A couple of cents.....

....Kant knew of spherical geometry, and qualified all his analogous geometric figures with “...straight lines..”. All he was doing is proving, within the context of his own theory, the possibility of synthetic a priori cognitions. He didn’t need to complicate the issue, because whether planar or spherical, the a priori relationships contained in one are just as a priori, and just as synthetic, as in the other;

..... we do not experience space and time, the reasons for that, and what experience actually is, is given further along in the text. Space and time are merely the necessary conditions for possible experience. Possible because space and time are themselves alone insufficient for experience, but are absolutely the ground for what may become experience, all else being given;

.....Einstein didn’t have much use for Kant, re: “Geometry and Experience”, 1921:

“...Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things? In my opinion the answer to this question is, briefly, this: as far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality...".

This is a rather ill-disguised denunciation of those very synthetic a priori cognitions Kant derived in the Transcendental Aesthetic, CPR, 1787.

Still, I have always wondered, given this:

“....If, for example, I consider a leaden ball, which lies upon a cushion and makes a hollow in it, as a cause, then it is simultaneous with the effect...” CPR A203/B248

.....did Einstein get the idea to bend spacetime by merely extending the notion of a bent cushion? Same principle, right? I don’t think Einstein used the colloquialism “fabric of space” himself, that being reserved for “GR For Dummies” and such pop-science, but he did envision it being deformed by massive objects. And he was quite familiar with Kantian physics and philosophy. Sooooo.......

Anyway, Kant concerned himself with the affects of objects on us without regard for relativity, Einstein concerned himself with the affect of objects on space or on time because of relativity. Both paradigm-shifting thinkers; just different paradigms, the former subjective, the latter objective.

We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking (...)....
— Mww
That's not how it seems to me at all. If you can think without talking, but can't talk without thinking, then that tells me that thinking is fundamental, and that talking is a kind/manifestation of thinking. — Harry Hindu

Bullseye!!! Remember that definition, “thinking is cognition by means of conceptions”? Images are the schema of conceptions, but we cannot communicate via images, so we invented words to represent our conceptions. Think first, speak later.
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Exhibiting it is the same as asserting it. — Harry Hindu

When I do 20 pushups, have I asserted (told, mentioned, conversed with respect to) anything about my strength? When I tell you I like football, have I exhibited (manifested, displayed, shown acquaintance with) anything to do with football?

How else do you show the existence of rationality. — Harry Hindu

That which exists, exists necessarily, and its negation is impossible. That which exists cannot not exist.

Rationality cannot be an existence because rationality does not exist necessarily insofar as its negation is possible. Rationality can not exist when irrationality does.

Existence is a subcategory of quantity, rationality is a subcategory of quality. Asking how much rationality we have is senseless in juxtaposition to asking in whether or not understanding is properly conditioned by reason.

Philosophically, the quality of rationality is demonstrated by the accordance of pure reason with possible experience. Or, if you prefer, from altogether more mundane point of view, the accordance of logical inference with observation.

Piece-a-cake, trust me.

Ok.

objects absolutely must tell the brain something definitive about themselves
— Mww
Nobody thinks that way. — David Mo

Yeah....how ‘bout that.

Psychologists??? Google scholar??? Farging PRACTICE, fercrissakes!?!?!?!?

I’m done here.

Thinking is all that we (our minds) do. — Harry Hindu

Exactly. From which it follows necessarily that talking is not something our minds do. We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking, hence the origins and manifestations of thinking and of talking are necessarily completely distinct and separate, even if they are under some conditions related.
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I think, therefore I am. — Harry Hindu

Correct. “I” think, therefore “I” am. That which thinks, exists thinking. Nothing more, nothing less may be derived from such problematic subjective idealism, for its negation, that which does not think does not exist, is absurd. The Good Bishop’s ultimate defeat.
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But you just did, in bold. — Harry Hindu

Hmmm......did I? Did I assert some rationality, or did I merely exhibit a quality represented by that which is asserted, from which some judgement of yours with respect to rationality, is facilitated? When I tell you about a thing rationally, I am not telling you anything whatsoever about rationality itself. Exhibiting it, yes; asserting it, no. You witness rationality, or the absence of it, and judge accordingly.
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Are we ever irrational? Maybe from another's perspective..... — Harry Hindu

That’s what I’m sayin’, yep. Although, I think it’s possible to realize myself having been irrational, which is just me judging my own thinking introspectively.

Agreed, for in no other way is criterion for truth irreducible, then to the form to which all substitutions in it must adhere. If substitution violates the form, the substitution is false.
— Mww
The substitution axiom is a mathematical axiom. I would like to know what it has to do with the existence of objects outside the mind — David Mo

We don’t use truth as a mark of existence of real objects, for they are necessarily presupposed by the cognition of them. It is, after all, impossible to cognize any real object that doesn’t exist.
— Mww
You have simply transferred the problem of truth to the problem of "cognition". You've changed one word for another. — David Mo

No, I haven’t. You are in effect asking for the truth of whether or not an object exists outside the mind, which would be necessarily given if that object affects our perception. But that affect in and of itself tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of what that object is. For that, cognition of it is required, and cognition is the result of the logical substitution of the matter of that object into the universal form of objects in general. And how that is accomplished depends on the cognitive theory one deems sufficient to explain the process.
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"When I state a true proposition?" is equivalent to "When I have a cognition of a thing?" — David Mo

When you state a true proposition about a thing, you have already cognized the thing in such a manner that does not contradict experience or possible experience, yes. Just a cognition is not enough, it must adhere to the LNC in order to for a truth claim to be valid. Hence, the logical substitution of the matter of some object in particular into the universal form of all objects of the same kind in general.
——————

With the aggravated problem that you can't recognize and communicate a "cognition" if you don't speak about it through propositional language. — David Mo

Which is hardly a problem if that is the natural modus operandi of the human rational agent. Propositional language is nothing but a reflection of the intrinsically logical human cognitive system, so how else would we communicate, if not in keeping with how we think?

Besides....so what? Haven’t you ever just sat there and thought about stuff, cognizing this and that one right after another, actually quite endlessly, without telling anybody about it?
——————-

What they are an experience of, and thereby what they are known as, depends solely on the logical form of truth intrinsic to human thought.
— Mww

Do you mean to say that my experience of an emotion and that of a lizard is subjective? — David Mo

The experience is, yes. How could it not? You said it yourself....”MY” experience. There are no experiences that don’t belong to somebody.

And we don’t experience feelings; we experience the objects responsible for the invocation of feelings. Objects give us knowledge of the world and objects also make us feel in ways about the world. Both are nothing but alterations of the subjective condition, but the former has to do with experiences in which causality is the object, whereas in the latter the causality lays in the subject alone, the experience be what it may. In no other way is it possible to account for the differences in feelings between subjects involved in the same experience, while the certainty of congruent knowledge from the same experience is not so questioned between involved subjects. We both know a Picasso when we see it, but you may find it beautiful while I find is a unremarkable mess.
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the form of my cognition is something subjective, which does not depend on the known object. This does not seem to me to stand up. It seems that the object I know has something to say about the way I can know it. — David Mo

All objects are always cognized, whether already objects of experience, in which case you are merely remembering them as such, or whether the object has never been experienced at all. We don’t have a system for known objects and a system for unknown objects; we have one system with embedded facilities that enable us to tell the difference. All cognition is subjective and empirical cognition does depend on objects known or unknown. I say empirical cognition, because the other kind, a priori cognitions, depend on the possibility of objects, and the knowledge possible of them iff they exist.

The object you know has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how you know it, except such object must actually be available for you to know about. The mechanisms for knowing are in your head, that to which the mechanisms are directed is outside your head. How can the external object direct the internal mechanism?

Nevertheless, it is an age-old question, and apparently still around these days, as to whether we tell objects what they are, or objects tell us what they are. If it is me telling myself I know a thing, it should be me telling the object what it is. Otherwise, the object is telling me what I know which is the same as directing my intellectual capacities, so if I get it wrong, it is necessarily the object’s fault. But no, if the object is telling me what it is, how could I get it wrong, assuming my capacities are operating properly? I couldn’t ever make a mistake in my knowledge, and, I would immediately know that object in its entirety. I would have the thing-in-itself as knowledge, unless the object didn't tell me everything, in which case I couldn’t really say I know about it. Nahhhhh......way too many variables in that scenario, methinks. Parsimony rules, I say.

Yeah, yeah, I know.....objects absolutely must tell the brain something definitive about themselves, because otherwise there is inexcusable violation of natural law, which is anathema to all manifestations of reason. Enter the metaphysical mind, invented by reason itself, in order to allow natural law but still account for fallible renditions of it. But in that case, it can only be reason responsible for our fallibility.......AARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!

.....Would-You-Like-To-Play-A-Game........

Perhaps the best first post I’ve seen here. Only parts of it are of interest to me, but that shouldn’t matter.

Well done.

Yes, it’s a paraphrased conclusion having to do with human minds in general, given from certain pertinent tenets of a particular epistemological theory. (...) And no, it isn’t a need, indicating some particularly beneficial inclination; it’s an interest, indicating merely some arbitrary persuasion.
— Mww
So your words are about human minds, yet you say that the words are about some arbitrary persuasion. I don't see how they can be about both. — Harry Hindu

My words are about human minds in general because the theory is. Not being the author of the theory, the onus is not on me to defend it, but if the theory is interesting, my understanding of it accords with the interest the theory holds, and an arbitrary (because of all the theories with which I am familiar) persuasion (this one, as reflected in the words I use concerning human minds) arises.
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How do you know that you are thinking of an uextended body or a straight line connecting two points if those concepts don't take some shape, some form, in your mind? — Harry Hindu

First of all.....you must surely understand the vast dissimilarity between thinking and talking about thinking. In that is found the worth of the theory, as the means to describe what the mind is doing when it’s not being talked about.

Second.....I can think whatever I want, and if you’re interested, thought is nothing but “...cognition by means of conceptions....”, and conceptions “...are based on the spontaneity of thought....”. Understanding is the synthesis of conceptions, so while I am not prohibited from synthesizing body with unextended in thought, the two conceptions so conjoined contradict the principles of causality for empirical objects, which all bodies, per se, must be. The human system absolutely mandates something from which certainty is at least possible, otherwise we have no ground for claiming any knowledge whatsoever, which in humans is the LNC. Therefore, even if I can think a contradiction, I must have in place some means to prevent any experience from ever following from it, in order to preserve my requirement for possible certainty, and by association, knowledge itself. This manifests in the fact that while I can think “unextended body”, I couldn’t possible describe the properties such a thing might be given, which means such a thing is not possible for me to know.

So to answer your question, there are forms of those conceptions, it is just impossible to cognize anything by the conjunction of them on the one hand, yet serves as justifiable criteria for the valid cognition of things like lines and points on the other.
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How do you know that you are being rational or irrational if rationality and irrationality don't take some form in the mind? — Harry Hindu

Rationality is the quality of a rational procedure, the form of it given through its schema, re: sub-categories, instances, iterations, occurrences, etc. I may never know I’m being irrational, if I never understand certain schema do not actually reflect states of affairs in the world. I might be crazy but think I’m doing alright. Why shrinks drive Beemers.

Normally though, I would be irrational if I insist on knowledge proven to be illicit. If I insist I can demonstrate the reality of an unextended body, for instance. Or, if I insist the interior angles of any triangle cannot sum to greater than 180 degrees.
——————-

To assert your rationality, you must have some reason to assert your state of rationality. — Harry Hindu

Not sure what to do with this. Not sure rationality is something to be asserted. Exemplified, perhaps. Dunno.

Mostly agreeing.....always a good thing.

The substitution axiom is a mathematical axiom. I would like to know what it has to do with the existence of objects outside the mind and the possible knowledge of them. — David Mo

Yes, but not necessarily or exclusively. Substitution can also be a logical activity, insofar as the universal form of premises can be exchanged for the particular matter of them. If truth is the conformity of a cognition to its object, merely substitute what constructs a cognition, with the instance of that construction, and see if they match. The universal matter of truth, on the other hand, whether analytic or continental, can never be given from mere instances of particulars, but only each one in its own time, in accordance with the rule contained in the form.

We don’t use truth as a mark of existence of real objects, for they are necessarily presupposed by the cognition of them. It is, after all, impossible to cognize any real object that doesn’t exist.

As for possible knowledge.....no such thing with respect to objects of cognition. Such objects are an experience. What they are an experience of, and thereby what they are known as, depends solely on the logical form of truth intrinsic to human thought. The aforementioned inseparability of the empirical/rational dichotomy writ large.

“...the definition of the word truth, to wit, the accordance of the cognition with its object...
— Mww
Yes, correspondence theory of truth. Aristotle. — David Mo

Perhaps, but the quote, taken in the full context of its derivation, has been associated with the coherence theory as well. Depends on how far one delves into the text and what he can dig out of it for himself.
——————-

But limiting itself to the pure form of the proposition. — David Mo

Agreed, for in no other way is criterion for truth irreducible, then to the form to which all substitutions in it must adhere. If substitution violates the form, the substitution is false.
——————

The statement "The snow is green" is true if and only if the snow is green, is a banality from the point of view of knowledge of the world. — David Mo

LOL, true dat!! Still, the formula isn’t falsified by banality.
—————-

I suggest that a theory about truth is neither impossible nor pointless. — David Mo

Of course it is neither. The context from which this exchange originated doesn’t address theory, it addresses what happens without one.

Mind is a human construct given from pure reason (...)....
— Mww

Is this quote about all minds and speculative epistemological philosophy, or about your [mind's] ego's need to put scribbles on a screen? — Harry Hindu

Yes, it’s a paraphrased conclusion having to do with human minds in general, given from certain pertinent tenets of a particular epistemological theory. It says here what minds are; what they do is elsewhere. And no, it isn’t a need, indicating some particularly beneficial inclination; it’s an interest, indicating merely some arbitrary persuasion.
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I'm not clear on your distinction between empirical predicates and rational predicates. This might be a product of the false dichotomy of empiricism vs. rationalism. In my mind, they are inseparable. — Harry Hindu

The false dichotomy is long-since reconciled, again, theoretically, and under all objectively real conditions, they are necessarily inseparable. Nevertheless, the human cognitive system is fully capable of pure thought, of which nothing empirical is cognizable because the conceptions are self-contradictory (an unextended body), or, that of which empirical cognition is possible but iff we can construct objects corresponding to the conceptions (a straight line connecting two points). To say nothing of moral dispositions, for which the actions are necessarily empirical, but the causality for them is given from pure thought alone.

If there is no way to establish truth, then judging things as true or false is pointless. — Echarmion

Absolutely. I’d even go one step further, to wit: is impossible. Still, pointless works, because if it’s pointless, being impossible doesn’t make all that much difference.

If I may.....

The formula is the new-fangled, analytic, thinks-it’s-better way of stating the continental version which claims, “...the definition of the word truth, to wit, the accordance of the cognition with its object...”. The formula relates to the criterion of the truth for propositions while the definition relates to the criterion of truth for human thought which is, of course, responsible for the construction of such propositions in the first place.

We commonly speak in propositions, but can and do communicate by other means that are not propositions, re: signing, Morse, etc., but we do not consciously think by means of any of those. It would seem a better test of truth to restrict its universal form (the definition) to our method of cognition, rather than the universal form (the formula) in the use of it, for it is quite clear ultimately all truths are our own judgements necessarily, even if we must still rely on something else other than ourselves merely to sustain or reject such decision. It follows that propositions may very well show error in composition or finality, but can never show error in origin, and as a rule, we wish to know, not that we were wrong about something, but how it is we came to be wrong.

a consensus of individual knowledge forms our shared physical reality. — Echarmion

D’accord.

So, then we are not to take your previous quote seriously, — Harry Hindu

I posted one quote concerning the “pretensions of the schools”; treat it as you wish, hopefully in context.

Your words aren't about the world, but are about your ego? — Harry Hindu

Depends. If the topic has empirical predicates the words will be about the world, conditioned by the pure intuitions and having natural law as its irreducible ground. If the topic has rational predicates, the words will be about speculative manifestations of the intellect, conditioned by pure reason and having the ego as its irreducible ground. And n’er the twain shall meet. The value of expressions in words to one mind, cannot be determined by the origination of them in another.

In this Platonic pseudo-elenchus we got goin’ on here....if you are Socrates, which interlocutor might I be?

It seems to me that you can only talk about what you think — Harry Hindu

Of course; whatever is said is first thought, yes.

Subjectivity comes about by confusing what your mind is with what the rest of the world is. — Harry Hindu

If you prefer, so be it. I do not. Mind is a human construct given from pure reason, subjectivity being nothing but the consequence of such construction. It is hardly a confusion, insofar as the rest of the world cannot be blamed for human intellectual error, so theoretical subjectivity was invented to take the fall, and speculative epistemological philosophy was invented to, if not correct the fall, at least to make the fall less painful.

If the use of what you say is up to others, what is the use of you saying it, for you? — Harry Hindu

Your subtlety is well-noted. Irreducibly? For me? To assuage the ego, of course. What else? Not the blatant uncontrolled “I’m right, you’re a farging moron” ego, just the half-assed reclusive, take it or leave it, I don’t really care ego. Transcendental rather than Freudian.

My position is that insofar as our knowledge about reality is based on experience, it's not objective.....

.....It stands to reason that the common elements in the experiences of different subjects are the result of objective reality asserting itself.....

......so the conclusion I arrive at (...) is that our knowledge about phenomenal, physical reality is indeed consensus-based. — Echarmion

The major: agreed, all empirical knowledge is grounded in experience, which is always subjective;

The minor: agreed, there is no reason to think, and it is counterproductive to suggest, that which appears to the sensibility of a plurality of perceiving subjects is not the same for each of them;

The conclusion: does not follow from the premises, in that consensus-based becomes the condition for the premises, rather than consensus alone being a valid judgement given from them.

A plurality of congruent individual knowledges is merely an agreement, and such commonality in itself cannot be sufficient reason for the knowledge, for it then becomes possible for agreement to be the ground of knowledge, which contradicts the major.

I may very well have direct experience, hence knowledge, of what I am told, but I still may not have the direct experience of what I am told about. This is the standing argument against “....the arrogant pretensions of the schools, which would gladly retain, in their own exclusive possession, the key to the truths which they impart to the public....”

Of no particular import, I know. But still.....gotta separate the subjective concept of knowledge from the objective domain of learning.

If you thought that your assertion was actually subjective, then why say it at all? What use would it be for others? — Harry Hindu

First, anything I say wouldn’t be purely subjective, that being reserved for what I think. Second, for whatever I say, the use of it by others is up to them.