CPR doesn’t treat of empirical ontology; it is a purely epistemological thesis, from a metaphysical perspective. — Mww

NO. Ontology and epistemology are two sides to the same existence. Causality, e.g., IS IN the existence of this desk in the logic of sensory intuitions being blind by themselves. What you acknowledge to BE a lamp is a synthesis.

What…..not a fan of freedom as sufficient cause? — Mww

You would have to explain your thinking here.

91 pages on sensibility, just under 400 pages on logic, all integral to the human condition. Fine if you wish to deny we are agents of logic, but I’m happily convinced human agency is necessarily predicated on it. — Mww

And what do you think Kant is saying about human agency?

Nope. Extrapolation from what is the case for us, to how the case is to be known by us. We understand the world; we explain the understanding. Language for the second, not for the first. — Mww

Extrapolation is the move from what IS the case to what must be the case to account for this. What is the case is is judgment. What must be the case given the way judgment is structured is pure reason, loosely put. This is basic. Logic is apriori, and Kant's arguments are apriori. But all things are first evidenced in the "world" and and here is where judgments appear. No manifestation in phenomena, then no ground for apriori argument.

Nope. What he means by “first” here, is merely that occassion given to a theoretical systemic procedure. There happens to be a particular theoretical system which presupposes a priori conditions, turning sensation into representation according to pure intuitions and productive imagination. — Mww

I wrote this: ""So when Kant says something like, "What must first be given with a view to the a priori knowledge of all objects is the manifold of pure intuition," this sentential construction is itself bound to the categories."

Obviously this is true since all sentential constructions are so bound. "First" here refers to what is logically first, or presupposed, as when reading this sentence there is a logical structure presupposed in the understanding of its meaning. Logical presupposedness is what the Critique is all about, this digging deep into what must be the case IN the presuppositional underpinning of everyday speaking.

When I write and think, about my notice of the world. While it may that the categories are always involved when I write, it being a phenomenal exercise, it is not the case for when I think, for it is possible that I think in pure a priori terms, that is, non-empirical, for which the categories are not involved. The logic of my a priori judgements still requires affirmation, at least to be productive, but there is no occassion to seize upon intuition. — Mww

How does the thought you may have about logic, or better, when, say, when you are actually doing symbolic logic, escape the very rigor that is at work in your thinking? How can any thought at all be outside of logicality?

I need not go beyond relations in time, to discover what is necessary for something to be possible, as I already mentioned. For something to be possible at all its representation must be determinable in any time. Necessity: determinable in all time; existence: determinable in a time. — Mww

There is no issue here. The reference is to what is logically possible. Simply that. It is logically not possible for an object to be two different colors at once or for an object to be at two different velocities at once.

Agreed, which justifies the claim there is no language in pure thought. — Mww

No language in pure thought? But what is Kant "talking" about? "Pure thought" is simply a language construct that Kant uses to talk "about" things that cannot be talked about. Clearly, one has to "talk" to conceive of pure thought at all, so the issue arises: Can one meaningfully talk about something that stands outside of talk? and it is Kant's own transcendental Dialectic that weighs down on this. In the end, he is just as bad as Descartes.

Correct, from which follows the rules for speaking are very far from the rules for transcendental deduction. — Mww

I don't see any sense in this at all. The rules are rigorous everywhere. They do not vary. I say, If you go out today, you should bring an umbrella, this has the logically essential structure of a conditional proposition. In everyday talk, of course, it is entangled in many affairs, but the logic is unwavering, and can be reduced to its basic structure in symbolic and then, predicate logic. It is IN tthe rules for speaking that logic is discovered in the first place.

Wait…..so all you’re talking about is justifying the origin of the categories, while I’m talking about justifying the use of them? What is necessary for the possibility of things makes little sense to me, but what is the ground for the possibility of transcendental deduction of the categories, is a whole ‘nuther ball of wax.

Dunno where your quote comes from, but in A88/B120 in Kemp Smith is shown that is precisely how the deduction is NOT served.

“…. they make affirmations concerning objects not by means of the predicates of intuition and sensibility, but of pure thought à priori….”.

Your a priori conditions upon which the possibility of experience rests”, are precisely those very intuitions my quote denotes as “not by means of”. — Mww

The categories have no use. They are theoretical postulates. No one can ever "see" such a thing, nor use it. The evidential basis for any discussion about it lies in exclusively in language and its logical features (which is, well, the absolute WORST kind of question begging, as these features which are being talked about are IN the structure of talking itself, and are assumed to be what they "are". Of course, he understood this; see the quote below. But in declaring an end to metaphysics, one has to draw a line, and he drew one, and this is impossible! He does this grudgingly! This is why Wittgenstein had to refer to it as nonsense, even as he talked about it, saying essentially, in the Tractatus, "what I am saying is nonsense."

Here is a quote from A 96, a good one:

Pure a priori concepts, if such exist, cannot indeed contain anything empirical; yet, none the less, they can serve solely as a priori conditions of a possible experience. Upon this ground alone can their objective reality rest. If, therefore, we seek to discover how pure concepts of understanding are possible, we must enquire what are the a priori conditions upon which the possibility of experience A 96
rests, and which remain as its underlying grounds when everything empirical is abstracted from appearances.

See, this is the way He says it, not me. "If such exist" is very important, for it is experience and its qpriori structure that warrants the Critique. The pure concepts are an abstraction, a mere postulation, noumenal and remote.

"Not be means of" is a quibble based on misunderstanding only.

Nope. This is the nature of a transcendental argument, which is a priori. But not all a priori arguments are transcendental, re: those of understanding in its categorical judgements. Transcendental arguments originate in, and are the exclusive purview of, pure reason alone. — Mww

Extrapolation is the logical move from what is taken as an assumption to what this presupposes. This is what "Upon this ground alone can their objective reality rest," in the above is saying. "This ground alone" refers to experience and the logical structure exhibited in judgment. A transcendental argument is nothing but extrapolation--one begins with what is there, and one infers from t his to what must be the case. All extrapolation is essentially logical, an inference from what is known to what is not known.

But this is the tricky part, isn't it: A deductive argument that is not like modus ponens, where the conclusion is discovered in the premises. Rather, here, in this transcendental argument, the conclusion is impossible to conceive! And so the conclusion is clearly NOT exhaustively possessed in the premises, or even possessed at all in them. So can it be properly called a deduction at all? Well, it can if you call it a transcendental deduction, but then, the issue turns to the premises and the warrant. SINCE the conclusion is indeterminate, the logic of the Critique is one from the known to an indeterminacy, not a determinacy, and so while it is an apriori argument, the conclusion is extrapolated from the premises, not deduced from this.

A good question, though: Is Kant's great Deduction, really a deduction at all? Of course, later, it will be put argued that deductions never were deductions in this pure sense because conclusions are never purely deduced as all premises themselves rest on the indeterminacies of language meaning. All bachelors are unmarried cannot be conceived as analytic because the ideas themselves are filled with different senses (Quine. See that argument in The Two Dogmas).

I said Dennett really DOES understand the world. I meant to say, that he does NOT. That this is what happens when all eyes are on how well one constructs an argument.

That’s in fact all understanding is about. It is the analysis of all that contained in the primitive representation “I think”.

“…. And thus the synthetical unity of apperception is the highest point with which we must connect every operation of the understanding, even the whole of logic, and after it our transcendental philosophy; indeed, this faculty is the understanding itself.…”

Thus it is that the function of understanding is distinct from that to which it directs itself when it thinks, or, when the subject exercises his innate capacity for thinking. To understand, on the other hand, presupposes the completion of that analysis, the affirmation or negation of constructed judgements relative to empirical conditions, not yet verified by experience.

All without a single solitary word, either expressed, or merely thought. — Mww

You had written:
So that which is not understood never appears? Guy’s walking down the street, hears a loud bang from around the corner. An appearance to his ears, manifesting as a sensation of sound is immediately given, without him immediately understanding the cause of it.

The issue was whether or not the understanding attends spontaneous events like hearing a loud bang. I said it did, for hearing at all, for us, is a structured affair, that is, when we "experience" anything at all, there is the implicit understanding thta this fits into a familiar course of events, and is not alien or threatening. The TUA is a temporal architectonics, so the recollections of prior loud bang experiences and the like are foundationally apriori, even if judgment is not explicitly brought to bear on what is occurring. This was the point. You were saying the loud bang was received without understanding, while I was saying the understanding is always already attendant, if implicitly.

And I reject that criticism, in that the thinking in CPR resolves the illusion of conceiving the world in any way except as the form of all that is relatable to it, hence hardly meaningless. We perceive things in a world; we don’t perceive worlds. From which follows world is conceivable only as the form of that in which all things are contained, but is not itself contained by it. — Mww

That is actually an interesting thing to say. What do you mean by "We perceive things in a world; we don't perceive worlds"?

He ignores it in CPR because the analysis of who or what we are is properly the concern of his moral philosophy, which is not transcendental. — Mww

It is a moral philosophy that doesn't understand the nature of ethics. Kant is metaethically out to lunch by conceiving a "good will" to be aligned with reason alone. It is, frankly, devoid of meaningful talk about the foundation of moral obligation.

The name given to it presupposes the grasp of the conception to which the name relates. It’s occurence in thought, its conceivability, is explicitly the very purity by which the language describing it, is even possible. Language doesn’t grasp, it merely represents what’s already been grasped.

The purity of language is in thought; the purity of thought is in logic; the purity of logic is in pure reason; the purity of pure reason is the irreducible human condition. — Mww

But there is no purity in thought; purity is never witnessed. It is transcendental, and can only be inferred, and inferences require meanings on both sides of the inference to make sense. One cannot say that X represents Y if Y is absent altogether. Thus, all representation does is place a division between what is "present" and what is not. But it is nonsense to do this, for a division requires both sides to be intelligible.

Calling it "pure reason" is nonsense unless one can identify what this purity is outside of language.
And this not to say the term transcendental is nonsense. Understanding why this is is a great insight into what it is to be a human (to be a "dasein"). Kant had it right in that metaphysics had to go, but wrong to argue for a rationalistic transcendentalism. Reason "cares" nothing for anything, and to ground our practical matters on this can only come from a the mind of of an anal retentive logician like Kant (who, ironically, is labeled a mere fantasist by another anal retentive logician, Bertrand Russell. Go figure).

Science, as a philosophical ontology/epistemology goes absolutely nowhere, quite literally. And science doesn't even begin, again, literally, to talk about the most salient feature of your existence, ethics/aesthetics. — Astrophel

Science and aesthetics cannot be separated as they are two aspects of the same human imagination. Science depends on the beauty of the equation and aesthetic form cannot be created by the artists without reasoned and measured method.

Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Science can include the Natural Sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, which study the physical world. There are the Social sciences, such as economics, psychology, and sociology, which study individuals and societies. The Applied sciences, such as engineering and medicine, are pragmatic and practical. Finally, the Formal sciences of logic, mathematics, governed by axioms and rules and uses deductive reasoning rather than empirical evidence.

Analytic philosophy is a broad 20th C movement within Western philosophy. It promotes clarity of prose, rigour in argument, and is founded on logic and mathematics. It is characterized by an interest in language, semantics and meaning, also known as the Linguistic Turn. Central figures were Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The Logical Positivists included Rudolf Carnap, and Ordinary Language Philosophers included WVO Quine. With the decline of Logical Positivism, there was a revival in metaphysics, typified by Saul Kripke.

Analytic philosophy is closely aligned with the scientific method. Analytic philosophy uses clarity of prose, rigour in argument, logic and mathematics, Science systematically organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses. Several Analytic philosophers had a scientific, mathematical and logical background, including Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. Analytic philosophy and science have an interest not only in facts about the world but also about the individual within society. In science are the social sciences of economics, psychology and sociology and in Analytic philosophy are the Ordinary language philosophers, such as Quine.

Aesthetics is included within the philosophy of art, an investigation into the nature of beauty and taste. Aesthetics examines the value of, and makes critical judgments about artistic taste and preferences. It asks how artists imagine, create, and perform works of art, as well as how people use, enjoy, and criticize art. Aesthetics tries to find answers to what exactly is art and what makes good art. The philosophy of art asks what happens in our minds when we view visual art, listen to music or read poetry. As Aristotle said, mimesis is a natural instinct of humanity that separates humans from animals.

Continental philosophy is derived from the Kantian tradition, although is more a family resemblance across disparate philosophical views. Whereas the Analytic is technical, the Continental is literary. Continental philosophy has four main attributes. It generally rejects the view that the natural sciences are the only or most accurate way of understanding natural phenomena. It takes into account Kant's conditions of possible experience, which in large part depends on context, language, culture, history. It accepts that if human experience is contingent, then this opens up the possibility of personal change in the Marxist tradition of personal, moral, political. Continental philosophy can be foundational a priori, can investigates both the cultural and practical and can also be of the opinion that no philosophy can succeed, a position taken by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the later Heidegger.

Continental philosophy can be associated with the aesthetic more than the factual, being a subjective state of mind in the individual rather than the objective fact in the world. Continental philosophy rejects the view that science is the best way to understand the world. Aesthetics is about what happens in the emotional mind of the observer when they see paintings, listen to music or read poetry. Continental philosophy in the belief that human experience is contingent allows the possibility of change , persona, moral and political. In aesthetics, the individual is not a passive recipient of beauty, but actively criticizes the art they experience, can imagine different possibilities and can create their own new experiences and invent new performatives. Continental philosophy accepts that even philosophy may not succeed in its own goals, seen in Nietzsche's perspectivism, the existentialism of Kierkegaard and Heidegger's questioning of the meaning of being. In aesthetics, there is no final goal, but the journey is the experience. The experience is both pleasurable in itself and sufficient in itself .

Science needs aesthetics and aesthetics needs science. The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks, to the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus, between order, reason, and logic and chaos, emotion, and ecstasy. There is the sublime in both the aesthetic and the scientific, in both its theory and practice. The aesthetics of science is the study of beauty and matters of taste within the scientific endeavour. Aesthetic features like simplicity, elegance and symmetry are sources of wonder and awe for many scientists, thus motivating scientific pursuit. Both use representation and the role of values. Both combine the subjective with the objective, imagination with creativity, the inspirational and the pragmatic. In e = mc 2 is an aesthetic beauty.

Science and aesthetics need each other. Science lacking aesthetic form blocks human understanding and the aesthetic experience without a solid methodical foundation will lack import.

(Using Wikipedia Science, Analytic Philosophy, Aesthetics, Continental Philosophy.)

Science needs aesthetics and aesthetics needs science. The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks, to the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus, between order, reason, and logic and chaos, emotion, and ecstasy. There is the sublime in both the aesthetic and the scientific, in both its theory and practice. The aesthetics of science is the study of beauty and matters of taste within the scientific endeavour. Aesthetic features like simplicity, elegance and symmetry are sources of wonder and awe for many scientists, thus motivating scientific pursuit. Both use representation and the role of values. Both combine the subjective with the objective, imagination with creativity, the inspirational and the pragmatic. In e = mc 2 is an aesthetic beauty. — RussellA

Quite a thing to say, and I wonder if Nietzsche would agree, being so close to his Birth of Tragedy. But keep in mind that science has no interest in the aesthetic features of science any more than knitting qua knitting has interest in the joy of knitting. Sure, scientists are fascinated, engaged, in awe, and the rest, but as a body of inquiry and the things it deals with, it does not and cannot touch the aesthetic or the ethical, and this is because what these essentially are cannot be empirically determined.

Arguing that science is essentially aesthetic is a defensible position, I believe. Rorty thinks like this and Dewey thinks like this, and the sense of it lies in the pragmatic reduction of all of our affairs to experience and its structure, a reduction that takes analysis beneath everyday categories to the
"essential" existential features, and here we find cognition, affectivity, anticipation, regret, resolution, and on and on possessed in the singularity of a conscious act. But, of course, these are philosophers, not scientists, who think like this.

But where you talk about continental philosophy, this I understand to be where your interests lie, no? You see in this thread I am arguing with Mww about Kant. Right, of course, to say phenomenology begins with Kant (but then, Kant begins with Aristotle, and Hume, and so on), but I am arguing that Kant is kind of like Hobbes, who wrote the Leviathan as a treatise on legitimate sovereignty: Nobody thinks like Hobbes now (well, Trump, maybe??), but he opened a door wide in the response to what he said, and in that, he is great because he started talk about contract theory. Kant was a rationalist, but reason, Hume said, cares nothing for human existence, for reason does "care" at all.

The nature of ethics/aesthetics is the most important philosophical issue there is. As Von Hildebrandt put it, it is the nature "importance" itself that is first philosophy. To understand ethics, one has to to phenomenology.

I'll stop here, but any thoughts you may have here or elsewhere are welcome.

First was…..

Kant's is an extrapolation from what is the case, to what has to be the case to explain this. — Astrophel

Nope. Extrapolation from what is the case for us, to how the case is to be known by us. — Mww

….second was….

Extrapolation is the move from what IS the case to what must be the case to account for this. — Astrophel

Except Kant’s is a speculative metaphysic, in which the transcendental philosophy constructed to account for it, may not properly account for what is the case. Thus, your notion of extrapolation can only refer to the move from what is the case, not to what must be the case to account for it, but only to a possible accounting. Regardless of how exact and internally consistent his system may be, it may not be what’s actually happening between our ears. He’s very specific in saying, if this way is sufficient then it is so only if it is done right. Hence, if pure reason is the way, then to critique it leads to doing it right.

What must be the case is determinable by the physical sciences alone, and he makes it quite clear that metaphysics is not a proper science, nor can it be, from which it follows that metaphysics alone cannot necessarily be the case that accounts for what is.

Knowing metaphysics is not necessarily right in accounting for what is, all that’s left to us is to make it less wrong.
————-

What is the case is is judgment. — Astrophel

Technically, what is irrevocably the case, is Nature. What must be the case to account for Nature, is guesswork originated by our intellect, and that conditioned by time and circumstance. Thus, what must be the case, is in fact quite contingent, the more parsimonious way to account for our intellectual errors.

If the perspective is limited to the human himself, Nature being given, what is irrevocably the case is nothing more than sensation, insofar as that is the point at which the internal mechanisms of human intellect….of whatever form that may be….become first apparent.

If you’re referring to aesthetic judgement as what is the case, as opposed to discursive judgement of the understanding, then we’re talking of two different conditions. But in relation to what is, aesthetic judgement respects only how we feel about it, rather than how we account for it.

What must be the case given the way judgment is structured is pure reason, loosely put. — Astrophel

Gettin’ pretty far into the weeds here, so “loosely put” is quite apropos. Those judgements structured by pure reason are principles, therefore called apodeitic or necessary, which serve as rules for the function of understanding in its empirical employment. The structure of judgements in general, called either problematic or assertorical, merely represents the unity between the conceptions in the subject to the predicate of any cognition, a function belonging to understanding alone. Whether or not this conception belongs to that conception, hence the truth or falsity of the cognition relative to those empirical conditions from which they arise, re: phenomena, THAT is the purview of reason.

When I think, and my thoughts succeed each other without conflict, my judgements are rational and/or logical. If I think, and then I have to think again or think otherwise, in which case there is a conflict in my judgements, it is reason’s judging that informs of the conflict, either regarding my understanding with itself, or my understanding with experience. Not what such conflict is, how it has manifested itself, but that there is one. Hence the transcendental nature of those judgements structured by pure reason as principles, that by which those discursive judgements is informed of its errors.

But all things are first evidenced in the "world" and and here is where judgments appear — Astrophel

If it is the case all things are first evidenced by their effect on the senses, where does judgement appear? Do we really need to judge whether or not our senses have been affected? That they are or that they are not, to be considered as judgements as such? If such is the criteria for the structure of judgements in general, on order for them to appear, what is to be done with the relation between a phenomenon and the conceptions by which it is cognized? And if such is the case, what does pure reason have to do with it?

It is the case, however, that judgement does appear by the cognition that the “world” is that in which all possible things are first evidenced, but that merely treats “world” as a general condition for things for which evidence is possible. In other words, “world” is the predicate of a principle given a priori in transcendental logic. There remains the need for the intuition of that space in which a thing is first evidenced, and a time by which that thing relates to a perception of it, in neither of which does a judgement manifest itself.
(Sidebar: here, “world”, in Kant, is “reality”) For whatever that’s worth…..

No manifestation in phenomena, then no ground for apriori argument. — Astrophel

No manifestation of discursive judgement in phenomena, but there is imagination, every bit as facilitating as judgement, for a priori argument. As I mentioned above, aesthetic judgement is manifest in the subject as his underlying condition, or, which is the same thing, how he feels about what he perceives. But that relates more to what he feels ought to be, rather than what is.
—————-

Nope. What he means by “first” here, is merely that occassion given to a theoretical systemic procedure.
— Mww

I wrote this: ""So when Kant says something like, "What must first be given with a view to the a priori knowledge of all objects is the manifold of pure intuition," this sentential construction is itself bound to the categories."

Obviously this is true since all sentential constructions are so bound. "First" here refers to what is logically first, or presupposed, as when reading this sentence there is a logical structure presupposed in the understanding of its meaning. Logical presupposedness is what the Critique is all about, this digging deep into what must be the case IN the presuppositional underpinning of everyday speaking. — Astrophel

This part of the conversation originated in….

….when one asks basic questions about the world…. — Astrophel

…and my “Nope” referred to my contention Kant wouldn’t have constructed that sentence. But I guess that wasn’t the point, in that whatever the sentence being constructed by anybody, it must first accord with some logical or presupposed condition by which the subject doing the sentential constructing understands himself.

Now, I’m summarily rejecting that idea, because I contend he who constructs a sentence already understands himself, the constructed sentence merely an expression of that understanding. I’d further stipulate that he wouldn’t construct a sentence at all if he didn’t understand himself, or, if he did stab at in in hopes of expressing himself accurately, he wouldn’t have a clue whether or not he actually did.

So when I, e.g., tell you about the time I fell out of a tree, there would certainly be a logical structure presupposed in the construction of the sentence by which I relay my experience, but if we both look a little closer, we find that all I’ve done is replicate the very logical structure and presuppositions which gave me the experience to tell you about. And here, the categories would fill the bill as logical structural predicates and necessary presuppositions.

But if I tell you about, e.g., the merely qualitative effect imposed on me by the observation of Starlink…..breathtaking, by the way, jaw-dropping in its unexpectedness. I mean…WTF was THAT??? I had to look it up. Didn’t know there was such a thing. Too far removed from my acid days, so I wasn’t afraid I’d lost it. Anyway….point being, categories required for the observation, but not for the qualitative effect of it on me.

So, while I might agree logical presupposedness is what the Critique is all about, I’d maintain it is the logical presupposedness of thought and reason, and thought, in its turn, is the presupposedness of language.

And ya know what….logical structure presupposed in understanding a sentence’s meaning, might be restricted to the form of logic, yet the sentence itself by which it is expressed, necessarily concerns the content of that logic. I mean…you can’t really presuppose content, can you? It being as varied and indiscriminate as circumstance permits.

….which justifies the claim there is no language in pure thought.
— Mww

No language in pure thought? But what is Kant "talking" about? — Astrophel

Are we mistaking the description of a system, for its operation?

Kant is “talking” about his own idea of what’s happening when the human animal uses his intellect.

What’s the problem with talking about pure thought using language, and exercising pure thought without it? Please don’t tell me you talk to yourself, prescribe in words or logic symbols the individual actions required to tie your shoes. Odd that you can tie your shoes faster than you can prescribe each act required in order to tie your shoes, innit?

When you’re reading something particularly engaging….ever notice the words merely represent a certain assemblage of conceptions you already have, and the author is only trying to make you mentally image what’s he’s already done for himself. And it’s only in the case where you don’t have for yourself this certain assemblage, that you have to stop and read again, or look up to the sky and….you know, think….about what the author wants you to imagine.

I have no problem whatsoever asserting that’s the way my system works, and I’m almost as certain that’s the way your system works, too. That language must take precedence, is “….beneath the dignity of philosophy….”**, yet at the same time perfectly authorized to ground “…..philosophizing in an orderly manner….”***
(**1787; ***1644)

Clearly, one has to "talk" to conceive of pure thought at all, — Astrophel

Nope. One has to think to conceive of pure thought, which may then be talked about. One doesn’t talk about that of which he has no conception.

Can one meaningfully talk about something that stands outside of talk?…. — Astrophel

You’re asking about justifying a contradiction? Of course one cannot talk about what stands outside of talk. You must realize we invent the objects used to represent our thinking, the words. For whatever is used for thinking, a word can be invented to represent it. Whatever is thought about, a word can be invented to represent it.

There are no words possible to represent, we cannot meaningfully talk about, only that which cannot be thought, on the one hand, and, we never invent a word then think a conception belonging to it, on the other.

….and it is Kant's own transcendental Dialectic that weighs down on this. In the end, he is just as bad as Descartes. — Astrophel

Given the subject matter of the Dialectic, I gather that somehow you’re saying Manny’s exposè demonstrating the illegitimacy ol’ Renè’s cogito principle, is just as bad as the principle itself.

Interesting, but I’d have to think awful hard nonetheless about how sophistical arguments and paralogisms are just as bad as that which guards against them.
————-

It is IN tthe rules for speaking that logic is discovered in the first place. — Astrophel

Ya know….Kant used mathematics to prove the very possibility of synthetic a priori cognitions. Once their possibility is proved, he then goes about finding them in cognitions other than mathematical. So if it is proven there are rules for understanding, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose there are rules for speaking. On the other hand, while it is perfectly reasonable that to misuse the rules of understanding results in incorrect thinking, it is absurd to suppose the misuse of the rules for speaking results in incorrect speech, or language in general.

And if I don’t agree logic is discovered, then it follows that the discovery of logic in the rules for speech is beyond the agreement pale.
————-

The categories have no use. They are theoretical postulates. — Astrophel

Maybe they are, but why can’t a postulate have a use in keeping with the theory to which it belongs. Sorta like Newton’s g: no such thing but a necessary component in the law of universal gravitation.

No one can ever "see" such a thing, nor use it. — Astrophel

It isn’t a thing to see, and one doesn’t use it like a tool or a device of some kind. It is….they are…..merely explanatory devices used by the intellect, in accordance with a particular theory. Avoided or dismissed by a different theory of course, but no less a component of the theory to which they belong.

The evidential basis for any discussion about it lies in exclusively in language…. — Astrophel

Yes, but the evidential basis for their use lies exclusively in some speculative idea of a system. One who thinks a metaphysical system comes to be on account of the speaking of it, still has to explain where the speaking came from. Not only that, but how to explain, in one example of a veritable plethora thereof, how Joyce and Gell-Mann related the same word for entirely different chains of thought.

…..if such exist, cannot indeed contain anything empirical; yet, none the less, they can serve solely as a priori conditions of a possible experience. Upon this ground alone can their objective reality rest…. — Astrophel

A proper understanding of the theory in its entirety leads to the recognition that “exist” is not meant in its categorical sense. One is supposed to connect the conceptions in conjunction with the context of their appearance, rather than strict accordance with some classification which forces a contradiction.

It is nonsense like that, for which the supposed remedies were to be found in “language games” and “intentionality”. Which reduces to….paraphrasing his words…..don’t bother with the rationality of theoretical speculations, but instead, waste effort on faulting its presentation.
————-

The issue was whether or not the understanding attends spontaneous events like hearing a loud bang. I said it did, for hearing at all, for us, is a structured affair, that is, when we "experience" anything at all, there is the implicit understanding thta this fits into a familiar course of events, and is not alien or threatening. — Astrophel

It doesn’t. Cognitive faculties attend mediately to first-order events, immediately to second-order events that are representations thereof; sensibility attends immediately.

Hearing is indeed a structured affair, a physiologically structured affair predicated on physical attributes.

For any experience, yes, there is an implicit course of events, pursuant to the method by which experience is even possible. What those events are, and the course they take, depends on the theory in which they are the constituents.

And yes, threats may themselves be experiences. And technically, any experience having no antecedent consciousness relating to it, is alien. Foreign. Previously unaware.

Kant had it right in that metaphysics had to go…. — Astrophel

He was quite explicit in declaring that there will always be some form of metaphysics in any human who “…rises to the height of speculation….”.

Metaphysics had to go iff it was intended as, or attempted to be made into, a science. So don’t; no problem.

Except Kant’s is a speculative metaphysic, in which the transcendental philosophy constructed to account for it, may not properly account for what is the case. Thus, your notion of extrapolation can only refer to the move from what is the case, not to what must be the case to account for it, but only to a possible accounting. Regardless of how exact and internally consistent his system may be, it may not be what’s actually happening between our ears. He’s very specific in saying, if this way is sufficient then it is so only if it is done right. Hence, if pure reason is the way, then to critique it leads to doing it right. — Mww

What is the case is the synthetic apriority in language relations with the world. Clearly the move from this is not going to be something determinate, and I did say this earlier when I was talking about the conditions of a proper logical deduction. What must be the case is always going to be the unknown X, but the point is that it must be something, and if one must give a reason why there must be something, one does the Critique. Extrapolations do not lead to certainies, only indeterminacies, and this is why I think this term right, because Kant's argument does not give us determinacy, for this is impossible.

Then what kind of deduction is this? Kant tells us it is a quid juris matter, and this is curious, isn't it? This is a legal term, not a matter of fact (quid facti), but one of right, and so he tells us such cases are never perfectly conceived. I think what he is up to is that in dealing with facts of the world, states of affairs, deduction moves to conclusions in the regular way, and an "empirical deduction" is loosely conceived (as Sherlock Holmes "deduces") and not in terms of the deductive argument contra inductive argument distinction; but in dealing with legal determinations, one is not given merely facts. He says this (A 85), speaking of the way the law faces its uncertainties:

But there are also usurpatory concepts, such as fortune, fate, which, though allowed to circulate by almost universal indulgence, are yet from time to time challenged by the question: quid juris. This demand for a deduction involves us in considerable perplexity, no clear legal title, sufficient to justify their* employment, being obtainable either from experience or from reason.

That is a big confession, for legal outcomes are never certain when "fortune and fate" are duly considered; because fortune and fate take the argument into a sea of uncertainty impossible to calculate. Justice is not quid facti, nor is the transcendental deduction. This is the best he can do, analogize the transcendental deduction to dejure legal thinking, and the question of whether the logical move is one of extrapolation then goes to whether such quid juris inquiry is extrapolatory.

Not sure about that. I'll have to think about it.

What must be the case is determinable by the physical sciences alone, and he makes it quite clear that metaphysics is not a proper science, nor can it be, from which it follows that metaphysics alone cannot necessarily be the case that accounts for what is.

Knowing metaphysics is not necessarily right in accounting for what is, all that’s left to us is to make it less wrong. — Mww

I would argue against the way you put things. Not that science can ever determine what must be the case, but that science deals through premises that are a posteriori, but the logical structure of the judgments in play are apriori in their form. But then, yes, if things fall with repeatable results to the ground, and not otherwise, then a scientific principle can be conceived, and IN this principle there is acknowledged the category of universality (as opposed to an existential quantifier). The logic, not the science, gives this the "what must be the case" in the apodicticity of the universality of the judgment "All things fall toward and not away".

Less wrong? But how can one be more or less wrong about something transcendental? One is confined entirely to what is given and this is certainly limiting, for what is, after all, the evidence? It is apodicticity in judgment and experience, the so called apiority in synthetic judgments.

Rather, consider that what is transcendent is discovered IN what is immanent, and here the language that is deployed attempts to step where it has no place.

So it is the language that sets up Kant's thinking, and this is the language of finitude. The term transcendental is borrowed entirely from mundane thinking, or is it? This, to me, is the fascinating question. Take the "evidence" for the deduction, the structural logical properties of language. One can at best say that this is in the simple giveness of the world, but then, and this is the important part of this, everything is simply given. Kant's move is a metaphysical move, yet the metaphysics that inspires it issues not from some impossible to conceive transcendental foundation for reason, but rather from the transcendence that permeates, if you will, the entire horizon of the world's givenness. To see where Kant ends and the full analysis begins, see Heidegger, then the post Heideggerians, then the post post Heideggerians.

If one takes the idea of transcendental idealism seriously, one will have to eventually drop the rationalistic reduction, and acknowledge that philosophy must perform a reduction on the entirely of our existence. Husserl begins this, Heidegger continues this with, if you will, the first radical exposition of the human soul (dasein. Soul is my choice of words, but this is just because Kant and early Heidegger's attempt to finitize what we and the world are--notwithstanding the transcendental deduction abstract attempt to go beyond this---are a failure). Radical because we have left the Kantian abstract reduction and stepped into the reality before our waking eyes. You do not stand before a foundational logical anomaly (Kant); you ARE a foundational "anomaly" (though, this opens up other matters, like the what makes something an anomaly).

Technically, what is irrevocably the case, is Nature. What must be the case to account for Nature, is guesswork originated by our intellect, and that conditioned by time and circumstance. Thus, what must be the case, is in fact quite contingent, the more parsimonious way to account for our intellectual errors.

If the perspective is limited to the human himself, Nature being given, what is irrevocably the case is nothing more than sensation, insofar as that is the point at which the internal mechanisms of human intellect….of whatever form that may be….become first apparent.

If you’re referring to aesthetic judgement as what is the case, as opposed to discursive judgement of the understanding, then we’re talking of two different conditions. But in relation to what is, aesthetic judgement respects only how we feel about it, rather than how we account for it. — Mww

But Kant's analysis of nature is merely an analysis of logic. Calling the world "sensible intuition" is just dismissive. And the logicality of language is an abstraction; an abstraction from the totality of engagement. The full transcendental dimension of our being-in-the-world is untouched. To say "only how we feel about it" is simply to ignore it. Consider that this feeling is the very basis of, as Von Hildebrandt put it, importance. Wittgenstein refused to talk about value, feeling, aesthetics, not because, as the postivists held, there was nothing there, but because it was too important to allow philosophy to undermine and trivialize it. Wittgenstein was right AND wrong.

Gettin’ pretty far into the weeds here, so “loosely put” is quite apropos. Those judgements structured by pure reason are principles, therefore called apodeitic or necessary, which serve as rules for the function of understanding in its empirical employment. The structure of judgements in general, called either problematic or assertorical, merely represents the unity between the conceptions in the subject to the predicate of any cognition, a function belonging to understanding alone. Whether or not this conception belongs to that conception, hence the truth or falsity of the cognition relative to those empirical conditions from which they arise, re: phenomena, THAT is the purview of reason.

When I think, and my thoughts succeed each other without conflict, my judgements are rational and/or logical. If I think, and then I have to think again or think otherwise, in which case there is a conflict in my judgements, it is reason’s judging that informs of the conflict, either regarding my understanding with itself, or my understanding with experience. Not what such conflict is, how it has manifested itself, but that there is one. Hence the transcendental nature of those judgements structured by pure reason as principles, that by which those discursive judgements is informed of its errors. — Mww

I have no issues with this, I don't think. I mean, sure, this is the kind of thing Kant is saying. It is just that the weeds are off and away from this. Kant's is a well trimmed lawn with pink flamingoes facsimiles and Snow White dwarf facsimiles here and there.

If it is the case all things are first evidenced by their effect on the senses, where does judgement appear? Do we really need to judge whether or not our senses have been affected? That they are or that they are not, to be considered as judgements as such? If such is the criteria for the structure of judgements in general, on order for them to appear, what is to be done with the relation between a phenomenon and the conceptions by which it is cognized? And if such is the case, what does pure reason have to do with it?

It is the case, however, that judgement does appear by the cognition that the “world” is that in which all possible things are first evidenced, but that merely treats “world” as a general condition for things for which evidence is possible. In other words, “world” is the predicate of a principle given a priori in transcendental logic. There remains the need for the intuition of that space in which a thing is first evidenced, and a time by which that thing relates to a perception of it, in neither of which does a judgement manifest itself.
(Sidebar: here, “world”, in Kant, is “reality”) For whatever that’s worth….. — Mww

Go with, the world is that in which all things are evidenced, and leave it at that. The predicate you have in mind would be, For every possible X, if X IS, then X is in and of a world. Something like that. Of course, the burden the is upon the verb 'to be' and this is where works like "Being and Time" come in. That copula 'is' is what needs to be examined.

No manifestation of discursive judgement in phenomena, but there is imagination, every bit as facilitating as judgement, for a priori argument. As I mentioned above, aesthetic judgement is manifest in the subject as his underlying condition, or, which is the same thing, how he feels about what he perceives. But that relates more to what he feels ought to be, rather than what is. — Mww

Then the feeling about what she ought to be has status as a phenomenon. Depends on who you read, but I see nothing to stop imagination to have equal ontological standing to this lamp on the table. Both are interpretatively grounded and both appear before me. Of course, these are classified "ontically" (in the usual ways) differently, but so is everything.

The question about affectivity, the "pathos" of our existence, is one that, like Kant's pure reason, begs for a transcendental accounting. But where Kant seeks the ground for an abstraction, inquiry into this "existence" begins with something palpable and inherently important. For example, a spear to the kidney. Now, do an transcendental deduction on THAT. No, I mean literally, do a Kantian styled deduction, keeping certain things keenly in mind: The pain, like the formal dimensions of experience, is a given, and as such has its transcendental ground outside of the interpretative possibilities of the finite totality of what is known. But what is transcendental here is not the impossible abstraction of pure reason, but the existential reality of the "pure" affectivity. What is meant by "pure" affectivity (the word taken here to encompass the ethical/aesthetic dimension of our world).

LIke Kant, we reduce experience by freeing it of all incidentals, the quid facti states of affairs, so that the essential nature can be revealed. This is an inquiry into the bonum and the malum, and is the most salient feature of our existence being carried to its foundation. The deduction is, of course, to a purity that is, granted, abstracted from ordinary matters, but what is left after the reduction is very different from conceptual form as such. We have touched upon, as Michel Henry puts it, life.