I could make the same case for the pistol shrimp and say that it is an ontologically distinct species because it has the unique faculty of shooting shockwaves out of it's claws — goremand
I suppose if you don’t find that significant, there’s probably nothing that can be said. — Wayfarer
I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we can interact with our environment in ways that insensate objects cannot; this is one of the markers of being alive. But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project.So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. And the Kantian system is caught by the "interaction problem". — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. But you seem to ignore the familiar point that the transformation of causal input into information requires a good deal of work.Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. — Mww
That's a very interesting take - and very helpful, Now I can see that, just as Berkeley, having acknowledged that there must be a cause of those of our ideas that are not under our control, plugs the gap left by his rejection of matter with God, Kant plugs the same gap with noumena. The fundamental problem arises from the idea that our senses do not put us in touch with reality, but separate us from it. Then generations of philosophers wrestle with a problem that is created from the way that the question is asked.Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug a logical hole. — Mww
I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we can interact with our environment in ways that insensate objects cannot; this is one of the markers of being alive. But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project.So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. And the Kantian system is caught by the "interaction problem". — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. But you seem to ignore the familiar point that the transformation of causal input into information requires a good deal of work.Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. — Mww
That's a very interesting take - and very helpful, Now I can see that, just as Berkeley, having acknowledged that there must be a cause of those of our ideas that are not under our control, plugs the gap left by his rejection of matter with God, Kant plugs the same gap with noumena. The fundamental problem arises from the idea that our senses do not put us in touch with reality, but separate us from it. Then generations of philosophers wrestle with a problem that is created from the way that the question is asked.Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug a logical hole. — Mww
You called it a “Kantian distinction”, which I think much more the case than separation. It is inescapable that the human sensory apparatuses are affected by things appearing to them, which tends to negate the premise the senses and that which is sensed are separated on all accounts. — Mww
I hesitate to admit the senses are causally affected, but rather think they are functionally affected, in accordance with the natural physiology, which makes explicit they are “out there” themselves, in relation to the cognitive system itself. That is to say, the sensory devices are just as much real objects as are basketballs and snowflakes. — Mww
Ahhhh, but they do not; the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation, again, in accordance with respective physiology. Not hard to understand the senses as merely a bridge between the real and the representation of the real. Phenomena belong to intuition, which is a whole ‘nuther deal than appearance/sensation, which might…..very loosely….be deemed the source of the internal images of the external things. — Mww
As stated above, the account does allow the senses to, maybe not partake in so much as distinguish between, the external and the internal. — Mww
It cannot be completely inaccessible. If noumena were inaccessible to the mind there could be no conception of it. Which highlights a misconception: Kant’s is a system in which different faculties function in unison. Mind may be understood as the composite of those faculties, but it remains that each faculty does its own job, and when examining the system, to overlay all onto mind misses the entire point of the examination. — Mww
Be advised: you lose absolutely nothing by neglecting noumena entirely when examining human knowledge. The only reason Kant brought it up was to plug an ever-so-abstract logical hole.
(Actually, some secondary literature accuses him of backing himself into a corner, from which his extrication demanded a re-invention of classic terminology, which in turn seemed to demand an apparently outlandish exposition, which really isn’t at all.) — Mww
At issue in that criticism is the claim that reason makes use of another faculty, apart from sensation and imagination, and it is this faculty which distinguishes the human intellect. As Jacques Maritain, another A-T philosopher, put it, what distinguishes the human from animal minds, is the ability to grasp universals - the universal 'man' for example. — Wayfarer
Philosophers get acclimatized to a very general use of words like "appearance". — Ludwig V
….the senses do nothing but forward information in the form of sensation….
— Mww
Well, that's how we think of them, especially when we have little or no idea how they work. — Ludwig V
….the fact that we can tell that some experiences are misleading means that we can distinguish appearances that are not misleading from those that are. — Ludwig V
Sweeping up all sensations under one description is misleading and creates unnecessary problems. Look at the details. — Ludwig V
If the senses are affected by the things sensed, then the senses are noumenal…. — Metaphysician Undercover
If the senses are out there, and what appears to the mind is in here, then where does the boundary between these two lie? — Metaphysician Undercover
If I say that the senses are out there, then the idea of a boundary between in here and out there makes no sense, because the sensations are in here, yet also in the senses, which are out there. — Metaphysician Undercover
….you have phenomena as belonging to intuition, a completely different thing from senses providing "internal images of the external things". — Metaphysician Undercover
If mind is assumed to be the composite of those faculties, and all the faculties cannot be shown to co-exist as a unity of "mind", then there is an incoherency within the conception. — Metaphysician Undercover
This capacity, to distinguish between external and internal, which you assign to the senses is an arbitrary judgement. That, distinction is a spatial judgement, so it requires intuition. — Metaphysician Undercover
So the Kantian system is really inadequate to account for reality because it doesn't allow that the senses partake of both, the external and the internal. — Metaphysician Undercover
So the whole is filled with a self-contradicting idea, an intelligible object which is unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is what I think is required to support your claim of an ontological difference of kind. — Metaphysician Undercover
The ‘faculty of reason’ is a perfectly intelligible expression, and the idea that humans alone possess it fully developed, and some animals only in very rudimentary forms, ought hardly need to be stated. — Wayfarer
humans seem to have an innate ability to determine that we are favoured creatures of gods, and better/smarter than everything else on the planet. — Tom Storm
It might even be argued that our particular brand of reasoning makes us inferior to animals who have and can find and do everything they need much more simply and elegantly than humans. — Tom Storm
But, of course, in order to establish that one has to persuade people that the phenomena (appearances, ideas, impressions, sense-data) are not a veil between us and our environment, but a window. It's not an easy or straightforward project. — Ludwig V
In the faculty of intuition, where that which appears acquires its representation, called phenomenon. — Mww
Sensations are in the senses? — Mww
If there were the case, why would we have both? You want the hand to tell you the thing is heavy when all it can do is tell you of the appearance of cellular compression. You want the ear to tell you there is a sound when all it can do is register the appearance of variations in pressure waves. And so on…. — Mww
I didn’t say all the faculties couldn’t co-exist. In fact, I said the mind could be called the composite of all the faculties, which makes explicit they do co-exist. Each faculty can still be imbued with its own dedicated functionality without contradicting the notion of a unity. — Mww
Kant defines reality as “….Reality, in the pure conception of the understanding, is that which corresponds to a sensation in general…”. From that definition, insofar as only from the senses, and correspondingly by the sensations given from them, is any account of reality possible. This just says reality is given to us if or when the senses deliver sensations. So it is that the senses are in fact involved in both the external (input: effect of that thing which appears) and the internal (output: as affect corresponding to the appearance, which just is sensation). A completely legitimate explanatory bridge. — Mww
It is not itself a self-contradictory idea, but it is an unintelligible object. — Mww
And Kant doesn’t, indeed cannot, deny the possibility of noumena, insofar as to do so is to falsify the primary ground of transcendental philosophy, re: “….I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself…”, which just says if I do think noumena, which is to hold a certain conception, and then prescribe to myself an object corresponding to it, then I immediately contradict the mechanisms I already authorize as that by which corresponding objects are prescribed to me at all, from which follows I have contradicted myself. The warning ends up being.…think noumena all you like; just don’t try to do anything intuitive with it. And if you can’t do anything intuitive with it, don’t bother thinking it in the first place. — Mww
On what basis did Aristotle designate man the ‘rational animal’?
The ‘faculty of reason’ is a perfectly intelligible expression, and the idea that humans alone possess it fully developed, and some animals only in very rudimentary forms, ought hardly need to be stated. Yet for some reason whenever it is stated, it provokes a good deal of argument. Which I attribute to the irrationality of modern culture! — Wayfarer
If the senses are out there, and what appears to the mind is in here, then where does the boundary between these two lie?
— Metaphysician Undercover
In the faculty of intuition, where that which appears acquires its representation, called phenomenon. — Mww
OK, you say that intuition provides the boundary between the senses as out there, and the appearances in the mind, as in here. — Metaphysician Undercover
So "the faculty of intuition", may in this way, provide the mind (the internal) with the capacity to be receptive to sense activity…. — Metaphysician Undercover
All of my sensations appear to me to be right in the organs which sense them. — Metaphysician Undercover
A completely legitimate explanatory bridge.
— Mww
I wouldn't say the gap is bridged legitimately. You have conveniently left out the role of intuition here, — Metaphysician Undercover
An object necessarily has a form, as its identity, and "form" is intelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover
Notice that "intelligible" signifies the possibility of being grasped by an intellect, so actually being apprehended by a human intellect is not required. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is how Kant turns things around from the traditional Christian perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover
There is nothing to be gained procedurally speaking, by asking for a boundary, when all that’s necessary is a transformation of whatever kind, between out there and in here. — Mww
And that’s all we need to move on to the next faculty, the next procedural step on the way to determining how the appearance is to be known. There is an explanation for what intuition does pursuant to speculative metaphysics, but, again, the subject himself, being unconscious of the what, has even less need of the how. — Mww
All I need is an input to the faculty of intuition, something from which phenomenon can be constructed. This is required in order to determine which sense has been affected, and what
a posteriori material is being processed, in which form may be imagined as belonging to it, and, VOILA!!!…a very basic image is born. — Mww
Intelligible means necessarily cognizable by the human intellect, re: all logical criteria have been met. Unintelligible, then, merely means a cognition is impossible, even if a representation relating to a conception, is not. So what makes a conception a legitimate thought, but for which schemata representing it, is not at all possible? What’s missing? — Mww
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