existence is defined here as all that exists. Existence cannot belong to anything else than existence. And what exists belongs to existence by definition. — leo

And with that, I see my effort here is not well-spent.

Carry on.

Depends on the claim, yes, which we may say depends on the domain of discourse. Empirical knowledge is always contingent, so there is no infallible guarantee that some claim is true; pure rational knowledge is always apodeictic, which is its own infallible guarantee that some claim is true.

Half a cookie!?!? Jeez....what a cheapskate!!!

I covered what you said in my 2.)

I imagine you letting loose of the other half of MY cookie.

Metaphysics is just unavoidable. — BitconnectCarlos

Couldn’t be any other way, if one digs deep enough.

“....For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error....”
(1787)

Yours.

1.) The possibility of crashing is not given from none other than the imagination of flying. A man imagining flying does not conceive crashing. You, imaging a man imagining flying and imagining the same man crashing, contradicts your imaging the man only imagining he can fly.

2.) given the way the human imagination works, it is impossible to imagine a man imaging, that isn’t reducible to just you.

Do I get a cookie?

Our mutual dialectical precedent suggests the clash of the analytic mindset with the continental mindset presents the audience with naught but an abundance of subjectivist hand-waving, despite the propriety of being “....sufficiently cautious in the construction of our fictions, which are not the less fictions on that account....”.

While I have the utmost respect for your argumentative prowess, it is at the same time quite obvious to me our metaphysical sparring won’t satisfy either of us, nor anyone else with barely a superficial interest in abstract critical thought.

Because you made the first comment, you’ve earned the last as well.

Peace.

And what you wrote presupposes complicated human thought qualifies as experience.

(Insert icon here)

What is philosophy? — Pantagruel

What it is:
“....Philosophy is the system of all philosophical cognition. We must use this term in an objective sense, if we understand by it the archetype of all attempts at philosophizing, and the standard by which all subjective philosophies are to be judged. In this sense, philosophy is merely the idea of a possible science, which does not exist in concreto, but to which we endeavour in various ways to approximate, until we have discovered the right path to pursue—a path overgrown by the errors and illusions of sense—and the image we have hitherto tried in vain to shape has become a perfect copy of the great prototype....”

What it’s for:
“....For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error....”

What to do with it:
“....Until that time, we cannot learn philosophy—it does not exist; if it does, where is it, who possesses it, and how shall we know it? We can only learn to philosophize; in other words, we can only exercise our powers of reasoning in accordance with general principles, retaining at the same time, the right of investigating the sources of these principles, of testing, and even of rejecting them....”

For what it’s worth.

An icon? All I get is a stupid ICON!!! I feel so....so....diminished.

I get it, you're a pure rationalist/idealist. — Pantagruel

Then you got it wrong; no pure idealist, more commonly called a subjective idealist, the domain of The Esteemed Bishop Berkeley, grants the physical existence of material objects as anything other than the machinations of the mind alone. I, on the other hand, do grant material objects an existence completely independent of human experience, while maintaining that knowledge about those objects, is very much solely dependent on the thoroughly human cognitive system that tells us about them, by means of their affect on our sensibility. Most properly, that is known as the transcendental idealist epistemological philosophy. Besides, it’s really absurd to deny materialism, then try to explain to myself that my own body is merely an idea in my mind.
———————-

Because some experiences are, in fact, illusory. — Pantagruel

Of course they are, or can be. But.....why? If everything ever talked about, thought about, cognized, experienced, has primarily to do with us, then illusion must have to do with us as well. Either that, or the determinism of physical science, and the apodeictic truth of mathematics, is forfeit, because we can’t tell wherefrom the illusion arises. We really cannot conceive the forfeiture of determinant physical science, which leaves the fault of illusion manifest in reason.

Reason was never theorized to be perfect; it couldn’t be, without contradicting itself.
————————-

Addendum, re: your added query, added last:

How can you assign existence? — Pantagruel

Short answer: understanding thinks it.

A parking lot full of cars. And the classic example being Einstein’s famous quip, “I refuse to believe the moon is not there if I am not looking at it”. (Or something like that) We grant the reality of the moon without its perception because understanding thinks the moon exists, and thinks such without the aid of immediate experience. Notice this subconscious procedure doesn’t work for that which has never been, nor can ever be, an experience, because understanding does NOT think existence to as-yet or impossible experiences. We never grant existence to anything we cannot cognize, and thus become either experience or possible experience.

As for the row of cars, it is easy to see our attention is drawn to the closer, or the further, but never both simultaneously, but nonetheless reason acknowledges surreptitiously the existence of the remainder of the row not in attention. We know they are there as mere uncognized objects, without ever actually perceiving them. The fact they exist therefore, cannot be given from sense, so the fact of “existence” can only be given from the subjective realm of understanding.

Once more, this time with bullhorn and amplifier:

And here’s why: anything ever talked about, or thought about, is from the perspective of human rationality. So everything absolutely must relate to us and us alone. Properties are that which we assign to objects in order, on the one hand, to arbitrate them one from another, or, which is the same thing, how they relate to each other. On the other hand, we assign conceptions to understand how they can be told apart, or, which is the same thing, how they relate to us. — Mww

We’re doing the talking, the observing, the understanding, the assigning, the cognizing, the experiencing.
We assign properties a posteriori, we assign conceptions a priori.
Liquidity is assigned as a property of “water” perceived as such, so we do not intuit “dump truck” (relation of objects to each other).
Existence is assigned as a condition of water experienced as such, so we do not think it is an illusion (relation of objects to us).

Now. If you would be so kind. Gimme back my damn BOOM!!!!

Bonus round: why is water as perceived written as “water”, but water as experienced written as water?

Criticism is over-rated. — Banno

And over-abundant. Proper critique, on the other hand, is not.

Or maybe I just like the word.

On the other hand, I'd not agree that this is the fundamental or primary category of existence. — Pantagruel

As well you shouldn’t, your “this” being understood as the general conception “property”. The fundamental ground of properties is their capacity for measurement, or, the establishment of the inference of some relative quantity. Existence does not carry the burden of being measurable. If, instead, existence is merely a necessary condition, it need not be subject to measurement, nor the ambiguities of logic-linguistic arguments, and above all, properties need not be a fundamental category of existence.

And here’s why: anything ever talked about, or thought about, is from the perspective of human rationality. So everything absolutely must relate to us and us alone. Properties are that which we assign to objects in order, on the one hand, to arbitrate them one from another, or, which is the same thing, how they relate to each other. On the other hand, we assign conceptions to understand how they can be told apart, or, which is the same thing, how they relate to us. We use properties a posteriori for the former, but we use the categories a priori for the latter. Properties can have no bearing on the respective objects to which each set belongs, and the assignment of properties presupposes the objects to which they belong. There is no need to quantize that which doesn’t exist.

Fine. But what tells us it is not a waste of reason to assign properties? We don’t just willy-nilly think....this will be red, that will be 4” long, the other will be 16 lbs. Still fine. But to say we assign properties to that which is met with perception only tells us there is something there, but not whether it is proper that it should be there. Mirages are given properties, because they appear to perception, but experience informs us they do not exist.

OK, so what can we use to tell us that which appears really is something that actually and indubitably deserves the properties reason works so hard assigning to it. In other words, why do we say it is a waste of time talking about something of which we know nothing. And why for some of us, it is a waste of time to talk about that which is either highly unlikely or only possible? Because reason doesn’t want to waste its time, that’s why. (Illustrative figure of speech here; reason doesn’t have wants)

For warrants that reason does not waste its time, there are twelve, but only three have bearing on this dialogue: we may be assured the properties we assign are justified 1.) if that which appears exists, in which case the properties will be dependent, because of cause and effect; 2.) if that which appears necessarily exists, in which case the properties we assign will be certain, because of non-contradiction; and 3.) if that which appears possibly exists, re: mirage/hallucination, physical indiscernibles, in which case the properties will be merely contingent and subject to falsification.

In all those cases, the commonality is the existence of something outside us. Hence, it is logically justified to conclude that existence is the necessary condition for reason to assign properties to things outside us. It follows that things merely thought, residing inside us, not given from sensibility, do not warrant properties, and if they don’t warrant properties, they don’t warrant existence. This is not to say things merely thought are not real in some way, but real with respect to the thought alone, whereas the real with respect to thought AND sensibility, is a different sense of real, which is given the name “existence”.

So to answer your question directly.....no, I most emphatically not saying existence is a property.

BOOM!!!!

Why would it be an issue to see experiences we call ‘love’ or ‘thought’ or ‘Neptune’ as all belonging to existence? — leo

Because the query presupposes without warrant, that existence is that to which it is possible to belong. Logic and parsimony suggest that existence is not that which is belonged to, but rather, is that which belongs.

It only matters when one needs to distinguish between what it means for Neptune to exist, and what it means for feelings to exist. The two are so completely different as to require the meaning of existence to be just as different. If he doesn’t make allowances, he is left with one conception authorizing two completely different things in the same way.

If you don’t have any trouble with it.....ok by me.

Law of Non-contradiction.

I always argue from the German Enlightenment tradition, which boils down, for all epistemological or moral intents and purposes, to Kantian Transcendental philosophy. What can I say....I’m attracted to paradigm shifts in any form. SR, GR, QM....all fascinating stuff. That, and maybe I just don’t know any better. (Sigh)

I do argue from what has become known as the transcendental argument, although Kant never called it that, but rather, justified his philosophies......

“.....by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector....”

......them being metaphysical disputes involving reason and knowledge, and ignorance standing for the improper use of the former to arrive at the impropriety of the latter. The Socratic method is dialectical, in which some arbitrary something is proven beyond doubt, in this case the logically irreducible truth of a priori synthetic propositions in mathematics, and adapting the same methodology which permits that logically irrefutable proof to a theory supporting something else, re: the limits of reason itself.

Coincidentally enough, one of the arguments which follow from all that, is (I think MetaphysicianUncover covered (?!?!) nicely).....existence (and all conceptions as categories) has no business being the predicate in a logical proposition, which is the empirical way we talk about stuff, nor do the conceptions as categories have any direct part in our thoughts, which is the rational way we talk to ourselves about stuff.

It’s quite simple really. If I say, “to be an object is to exist”, I haven’t added anything in the predicate “exists” that isn’t already given by the subject. The subject gives the predicate simply because I’ve already cognized “object” in order to use it as the subject of what I’m talking about. If objects didn’t exist, my proposition is unintelligible.

And the beat goes on......

[

Existence is minimally presupposed for experience to be the case. What more can be derived (needs to be derived) than that? — Pantagruel

Yes, that’s why it and the other categories is/are called a necessary condition(s). All that needs to be derived from that regulative principle, is the logical consistency for it. And the more fundamental the premise, the easier the logical consistency, re: for that which does not exist, experience of it is impossible. Another one is, for that which is not possible, experience of it is impossible. For that which is a cause, some effect must be dependent on it. For that which is a quantity, there is also a boundary.

Reason seeks the unconditioned, the bottom line. In the human cognitive system, the bottom line is the LNC. In any mental event where contradiction arises, something is wrong in the construction of the event. All the categories do is provide the ground under which the LNC becomes manifest, and THAT is the prime determinant of our kind of knowledge.

So are you saying that your experiences are not part of existence — leo

In effect, yes. My experiences are not things that exist, they are merely the termination of a rational process. Physical things in space and time are part of natural reality; real things cannot be part of that which is merely a pure conception, or, the schemata of a pure conception.

“....Experience is an empirical cognition; that is to say, a cognition which determines an object by means of perceptions...”

I think something is lost by saying experience exists. The term is then required to be far to broad to really mean anything.

it doesn't follow that it is "nothing more" than that. — Pantagruel

Actually, in accordance with the transcendental argument, it does follow necessarily. Existence, the pure concept of understanding, permits nothing else than a necessary condition. The pure intuitions space and time are the necessary conditions for phenomena; the pure conceptions of the categories are the necessary conditions for phenomenal experience. Neither phenomena not the categories are used in pure thought, such as the logical laws, geometric figures, transcendent notions......and of course, the dreaded, misbegotten noumena.

That’s quite reductive, how are you going to prove that statement? — leo

This isn’t mathematics; there are no empirical proofs in speculative metaphysics. The “necessary condition for the possibility of human phenomenal experience” falls out logically from the theoretical premises.

Different people, different theories, different understandings.

What more can we find? — leo

We find that only 1.) is true.

If 2.) is true, then one of the possible changes for existence is its negation. The negation of existence is, there isn’t existence, a contradiction.

If 3.) is true, existence requires the existence of its parts, or, existence requires existence, an absurdity.

Existence is nothing but a necessary condition for the possibility of human phenomenal experience. Nothing more, nothing less. Aristotle and Kant both called it, and others like it, a “category”. So they've been around a long time, and they’ve yet to be shown as false, illogical or un-necessary, no matter how hard we try to get rid of them.

They’re also entirely speculative, so.......there ya go.

How else could philosophy have existed this long? — BrianW

While the thesis is pretty good, the answers lay in what proper reason is, and, the danger for “greater functional representation” becoming too much greater, arising from what proper reason isn’t.

Philosophy....at least speculative epistemological philosophy.....has lasted this long because of the inherent circularity in reason itself, insofar as the only possible way to examine it, is in the use of it. Given that irreconcilable obstacle, we are always impeded in our investigations by both what we don’t know and are trying to figure out, and the care that must be taken to prevent reason from unjustifiably influencing the results. Philosophy has lasted this long because of the serious lack of agreement on the basics.

Einstein wouldn’t enlist himself in the Kantian booster club, and it shows in your quotes. Mathematics is indeed a product of human thought, hence independent of human experience for its rules, but is nonetheless always dependent exclusively on human experience for its proofs. Depending on where one stands between the extremes of empiricism and rationalism, the case can be made that math isn’t appropriate to the objects of reality so much as the objects of reality are appropriate to math. Especially nowadays, when the theoretical predictions are strictly mathematically grounded, which requires our experimentation to be set up in accordance to that which the math determines we should discover.

As far as imagination is concerned, Kant imbues imagination as a full-fledged rational faculty, just as much as understanding, representation, intuition and the rest, but holds imagination to be very far less important than knowledge, it being the source of our illusions.

Final note: all conceptions are mental, but imagination is not a concept producing faculty, according to at least one well-established purely speculative philosophy.

Good subject; hope you get some worthwhile comments, down the road.

Ok. Thanks.

Yeah, I understand those as subjective inclinations, wants, desires and such. Dunno how pragmatism got into moral judgements though, which does its best to thwart all those inclinations. And it isn’t practical reason for moral judgements, its pure reason, but with practical, objective, predicates. And civic morality has external legislation, but moral judgements have internal legislation, the former is juridical duty of right, the latter is ethical duty of virtue.

Just seemed all mixed up to me, even if the gist was pretty close.

According to Kant, the "conditions of the possibility of experience" in the context of human values — Enrique

First, I don’t know where the context of human values relates to the conditions of experience. If you’d said the “conditions of moral worthiness in the context of human values”, I wouldn’t take so much exception. But the conditions of human experience are space and time alone, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the pure practical reason of moral determinations.

Second, granting the general obscurity of Kantian prose allows us to somewhat freely interpret what he is saying. From that, it can be found that the will doesn’t act. Rather, the will chooses its principles, called maxims, from which the “commands of reason, re: imperatives, are derived, and such imperatives reflect pure practical reason, insofar as the imperative of categorical nature is treated as a law. The moral quality of a person is given by his respect for that law and the recognition of his duty in obligation to it, without regard to the object of his subjective inclinations.

Again, even granting some interpretive freedom, the following seems to deny that freedom:

“...There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely, this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law....”

“It” is the maxim, not the act. The will does not determine the act, it determines the principle that becomes a maxim. The imperative doesn’t determine the act either; it just tells us the “ought” of our moral constitution. Pure practical reason determines the act.

Most imperatives are “hypotheticals” and do indeed do not prohibit us from succumbing to the influence of desires and wants. Only the categorical carries the power of law, and thus the possibility of moral worthiness, and for no other reason than to give ourselves an irreducible ground, a rational base for qualifying our sense of personal morality.

Anyway......just sayin’. Your writing is close enough for hereabouts, so you can leave mine behind as just another interpretation, if you wish. Thanks for your clarifications.

Bookkeeping device. Sad though, to be the device. After all, the appearance gets the name, while the device just is.

As Enlightenment Kant said, to the extent that our moral judgements are rational, this is "practical reason", a veneer of universal pragmatisms, not even close to satisfying human nature's vast assortment of personal preferences. That's why Kant describes the fundamentals of civic morality as a matter of duty, not pleasure. — Enrique

Can you unpack this a little more, for me? Specifically, I’m wondering where the notion of veneer of universal pragmatisms comes from.

The abstract mathematical playground was in use long before its application to the natural empirical one.
— Mww

I'm not so sure of this — John Gill

I’m arguing from the premise that the notion of quantity is not to be supposed as the abstract playground, but should be considered merely the use of empirical deduction, re: your example of tallying relative quantities on a stick, for instance. From the abstract mathematical playground is derived the principles of universality and necessity for mathematical constructs, geometric or algebraic, the proofs of which follow a posteriori. I used Thales just to show nothing’s changed since.
——————-

I read up on strong/weak emergence here: http://www.consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf, and concur.......no conclusion. No apodeictically justifiable conclusion, anyway. I hesitate, nonetheless, on scenarios where, say, we create a game, discover trends intrinsic to playing it, then somehow adapt those trends as a possible bridge in the explanatory gap in human mentality. Reason grasping at shadows, throw stuff at a wall.....see what sticks.

As my ol’ buddy Andy Rooney might say, if we can’t do any better than that, maybe we shouldn’t do anything.

mathematician's played around with numbers as an abstract exercise long before they applied it to the real world (?) — 3017amen

Maybe not so much numbers, for even the proverbial caveman had the idea of quantity and the ability to represent it to himself. I mean....who goes hunting with only one measly arrow? And if you’ve got two hands, why not carry two spears?

Geometry, on the other hand, well.........

“....A new light must have flashed on the mind of the first man (Thales, or whatever may have been his name) who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle. For he found that it was not sufficient to meditate on the figure, as it lay before his eyes, or the conception of it, as it existed in his mind, and thus endeavour to get at the knowledge of its properties, but that it was necessary to produce these properties, as it were, by a positive a priori construction; and that, in order to arrive with certainty at a priori cognition, he must not attribute to the object any other properties than those which necessarily followed from that which he had himself, in accordance with his conception, placed in the object....”

This is not to say all those produced properties arrived out of the blue. But however much trial-and-error the old geezer did, all of it without exception, was pure thought, and all could have been derived from a single example of a single triangle. What’s really amazing....sorta.....is, Thales lived around 600BC, but square roots had been known for 1000 years before that. So arriving at 1,1, sq rt 2 for one of the properties of the isosceles triangle, while seeming quite unlikely, actually wasn’t.

So, yeah, no doubt. The abstract mathematical playground was in use long before its application to the natural empirical one.

You: we have no means to understand them?
Me: we have no means to understand them, except.....

Please tell me you do actually see a difference there. If you do, perhaps you’ll accept the rest of your comment as superfluous.

↪Mww
The human rational agent has but one thought at a time.

Therefore...? — Zelebg

Therefore it is non-contradictory to say consciousness is a state of being conscious. Constantly changing states, because we’re always thinking as long as we’re conscious, which is where the process makes its Grand Appearance, whatever it might be, but that just means the state of being conscious changes as much as the thoughts.

Before cognitive neuroscience, this was the established metaphysical methodology for remembering stuff. You know....back in the good ol’ days.

That is the best way to figure out how a chimp 'thinks'. — ovdtogt

Even if we disregard the fact that thinking requires certain physiological attributes, and merely observe creatures in their own undisturbed environment, we have absolutely no way to understand what we’re seeing about them, except by means of our own rational system. When they do things we don’t understand, how the hell are we supposed to understand why or how they do it? The very idea of thinking itself, is ours alone, so what are we going to compare what we see in other animals, except in relation to us?

The whole point of Nagel, 1974.

Am I forgetting something? — Zelebg

Yep.

The human rational agent has but one thought at a time.

If you believe only the (human) brain can be conscious, you are applying anthropomorphism. — ovdtogt

Correct. But I don’t. So I’m not.

read up on studies into animal psychology. — ovdtogt

Yeah, I will. Just as soon as it is apparent to me, that the mental explanatory gap in an animal with 2B neural connections per mm3*, 16B in the most paradigmatically distinguishing section**, can be bridged by animals with 7B in his entire brain.
*Penrose, 1998
**Herculano-Houzel, 2009

Hey....it’s a free country. Think what you like.

A photo-receptor cell is 'conscious' of light. A cochlear hair cells is 'conscious' of sound...etc — ovdtogt

What wayfarer said, plus.....(shudder) ......anthropomorphism: attributing congruency between being conscious of and being merely reactive to.

If you give 4 peanuts to one monkey and only 1 to another, that one will get pretty pissed off. — ovdtogt

Hmmmm....yeah. If it can’t be proven the one was pissed because he understood “3 more than me” as opposed to just recognizing “that sorry sack of elephant droppings has got my damn peanuts”.....then it cannot be said he was doing math. Even if we grant monkeys the capacity to recognize relative quantities, which isn’t that far-fetched, we haven’t explained that his anger is because of it. Maybe he’s just selfish. Or worried what his ol’ lady will say if he don’t bring home the......er.....peanuts.

And if everything in Nature uses math, and if the math everything in Nature uses isn’t the same as the math we use, where does that leave us? Maths are different depending on who is using it? And if we can’t prove it is the same math, how do we know it is math at all?

Something to think about.....

As for me, consciousness - as in "that which is aware of" - is itself other than information - as in "that which informs". The former is informed by the latter. — javra

Seems pretty simple to me. If “redness” is the state of being red, “fitness” is the state of being fit, why shouldn’t consciousness be the state of being conscious? And if the state of being conscious is the condition of our attention (that which is aware of) with respect to the information presented to it, why wouldn’t that be “consciousness”?

So....all we need is a meaning, or an understanding, of what that “information” actually is.

Oh. And of course, what is meant by “attention”. And what does that “attention” belong to.....

AAARRRGGGGG!!!! Too many notions, too few facts.

I do consider mathematics as a kind of fundamental law of nature independent from human experience. — ovdtogt

Lots of folks would follow suit.

I rather think that Nature has its intrinsic relations, which we observe and explain to ourselves by means of mathematics, specifically developed for that purpose alone. We also create the laws, but the laws represent the principles under which Nature seems to operate, at least as far as humans are concerned, and also at least as far as we can tell.

Events in Nature occur in succession, which is independent of human experience, but only humans call that succession “time” and only humans recognize “cause and effect” from it, which are hardly independent of human experience.

If you think math is independent of human experience, how would you explain how we came to be in possession of it?

For all practical purposes (science), what we perceive as concrete objects and physical effects is what is Real. But for theoretical purposes (philosophy), our perceptions of those objects are mental constructs. So discussions about Consciousness must make that distinction clear, or else, by reifying Consciousness, we run into the paradoxical "hard problem". — Gnomon

Yep. Paradoxical indeed: we think consciousness as that which that belongs to us because of our nature, then attribute to it qualities we can’t figure out how it has.
——————-

what Einstein was talking about in his Theory of Relativity. What's real depends on who's looking. — Gnomon

Exactly right. In Einstein (1905), the simultaneity of relativity depends for its direct explanation on a third observer for the two participants in the events relative to each other. The relativity can only be immediately witnessed by an observer outside both, even if each participant can afterwards compare information.

Good stuff. Fun to think about. ‘Preciate the references; mine would be different, but close enough to see each other.