It is making the broad scope of experience "clear" and the MOST salient feature of this, is affectivity, and certainly not the very useful movement on a dial in a statistical gathering of information. — Astrophel

The problem is that I read this sentence and feel utterly unconvinced by claims that affectivity = truth. Do I trust this judgement? What’s the next step?

The problem is that I read this sentence and feel utterly unconvinced by claims that affectivity = truth. Do I trust this judgement? What’s the next step? — apokrisis

You feel unconvinced because you think you are being asked to believe that the desire or for or feeling about something is a truth all by itself, and this patently absurd, because truth belongs to propositions. This is not at all being said.

What is being said is the when we affirm, deny, question, discover, intend, and all of the cognitive expressions of human experience you can imagine, we are not, in the basic description of the event of "doing " any of these, simply trying to make ideas clear. Ideas are events in time that are inherently affective, and apart from this affectivity one thereby talks about abstractions of experience and not reality.

Science hypostatizes this quantifying dimension of reason, and gives us a picture of truth as factual truth, and facts are quantifiable and abide by the law of excluded middle, and do not bear the fluidity of actuality we see in desire, love, pleasure, hate, despair, boredom and the rest. This is THE existential complaint.

Such an abstraction belongs to the "thinking world" of AI, I would hazard. Truth never was this kind ot thing. It is always truth/affectivity in a single reality.

the categorical thought takes up the experience AS a propositional abstraction. It is an abstraction from an unquantifiable source, which is the experience itself, — Astrophel

Yes, I've said as much myself, but that doesn't change the fact that the truth or falsity of the abstractive thought exemplified in propositional assertions is not the same as the idea of truth that Alethia represents; so I'm not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with what I've said, or of what point you want to make.

Kant's Transcendental Unity of Apperception is itself an impossible concept constructed out of the very concepts it is alleged to bring forth. Part of Wittgenstein's complaint in the Tractatus is about this kind of thing, which is why he was such a fan of Kierkegaard. — Astrophel

You haven't explained why you think Kant's Unity of Apperception is an impossible concept, what exactly Wittgenstein's complaint is and how it relates to Kant's idea, or what relevance Kierkegaard's philosophy has in this connection. You give me nothing to respond to unless you offer more than this kind of vague gesturing.

But to treat a proposition as a utility, as I am now writing this, philosophically, is a reduction of the world to a utility. And this is Heidegger's big complaint in his Question Concerning Technology. — Astrophel

Propositions are not necessarily "utilities", although they of course can be. The idea that the world is a "standing reserve", there to be exploited in whatever way we see fit, has no necessary connection with the fact that humans practice propositional thinking. In fact, the mutually contradictory ideas that it either does, or does not, have such a necessary connection are themselves examples of propositional thinking. Philosophy is impossible without propositional thinking, and that is why I say that it cannot capture the non-dual, non-discursive, affective nature of experience. Poetry is better suited for that task.

Is all doing thinking?…… — Astrophel

I’m going with an unqualified yes, except for sheer reflex or accident.

…..Implicitly, yes; I would say a cow standing in a meadow "thinks" when it sees taller more tempting grass. — Astrophel

If implicitly yes, as do I, but…..a cow??? And a cow “thinking”. Is that different than a cow thinking? Maybe “thinking” is a euphemism for instinct. Dunno, but I seriously doubt a majority of lesser animals, if not all of them, have any conception of relative heights as a function of temptation. He goes to taller grass because he doesn’t have to bend his neck so far, not because its tempting.

I agree with you, in that I know what it is to know. One thing I know, is that I don’t know what goes on in a cow’s head, and therefore wouldn’t ever suggest anything about it.
———-

….reason, left ungrounded in worldly confirmation, moves to inventing metaphysical nonsense. — Astrophel

Absolutely. But that isn’t so much a Kantian fallacy as the prime example of the human disposition to think beyond its logical authority. As true these days as it’s ever been.

….when reason conceives of what it is to be a "rational truth" according to its own model, it creates an abstraction out of reason. — Astrophel

Yeah, the intrinsic circularity of reason herself. Nothing to be done about the way Nature made us.
———-

Truth as a philosophical idea requires actual occasions of truth to be revealed for what they are PRIOR to analysis, not after. — Astrophel

I don’t think occasions of truth are antecedent to the philosophical idea of truth. How would we know a thing is true if we didn’t already know what form any truth must have? Are not universals prior to particulars? How could particulars be analyzed without the universal to which it necessarily relates?

If all truths are contained in propositions, and the simplest possible proposition that cannot possibly be false is the gauge by which all other occasions of truth would be judged, it follows that the idea is before the occasion.

I’ll grant that occasions of truth must be revealed for what they are prior to analysis of possible truths.

Science hypostatizes this quantifying dimension of reason, and gives us a picture of truth as factual truth, and facts are quantifiable and abide by the law of excluded middle, and do not bear the fluidity of actuality we see in desire, love, pleasure, hate, despair, boredom and the rest. This is THE existential complaint. — Astrophel

Were you a scientist or mathematician you might realize the desires, loves, pleasures, etc. arising from the practice of the profession. To the contrary these experiences give meaning to one's life.

But then all of this discussion falls by the wayside of actual physical experience. Go climbing.

:up: I love the idea, but heights are too daunting for me.

No, no; knowing is justified true belief — Astrophel

Yes, I have heard about that a few times. But this "No, no" implies that my definition was wrong and that only yours is true. Which is wrong. One can say, at best, that the your definition is acceptable too. But even so, the words "justified" and "true" are incompatible with "I think". The expression "I think that" can be replaced by "I believe that", which indicate as simple belief, not "justified" or "true".

if P is true, P is possible — Astrophel

"True" and "possible" are incompatible. If it is true that you have sent me this message, because I read it, it cannot be also possible, at the same time, that you did so. It would be possible only if I had not received or read it yet.

One has to conceive of the cogito as ... — Astrophel

Wow, that's quite an analysis! I'm sorry if I can't follow here. I lack the necessary background.

What does one observe as one observes a thought? — Astrophel

But you have just answered that just a while ago: "its existence s discovered the same way other things' existence is discovered: through observation."
Consider a thought as an image or a series of images. These are "objects" in your mind. You can perceive and observe them as you percieve and observe anything else outside your mind, in your surroundings. The only difference is that it is you who have created these "objects", which are images, whereas objects in your surroundings have been created by some other source than you.

I think that the following experiment will explain everything in the relation of knowledge and thinking and other things I have talked about. If this won't make sense to you, nothing else I could say would.

Just watch an object in front of you, e.g. your monitor, for a couple of seconds. Then close your eyes and think of what you just watched. You will create an image of the real object. This is what we call a thought. And the process of the creation of that image is what we call "thinking". This image is a representation of the real object and it may be very close to or very different from it, depending on your ability to recall. But there will be always a difference --however small-- between what you have actually observed (knowledge) and what you thought about it.
And this is the difference between knowing and thinking about something.

Yes, I've said as much myself, but that doesn't change the fact that the truth or falsity of the abstractive thought exemplified in propositional assertions is not the same as the idea of truth that Alethia represents; so I'm not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with what I've said, or of what point you want to make. — Janus

Are you alluding to Heidegger's alethia? Well, I certainly do not subscribe to the impossible idea of there being something that can be known but outside of human dasein. The idea is absurd. He does bring mood, caring, pragmatics and other dimensions of our existence into philosophy, but the complaint is that he doesn't discuss ethics (Levinas, e.g.). But I don't think one can dismiss his historical analysis of knowledge claims. And I do share his nostalgia for poetry and his belief that modern life suffers an estrangement from something deeply important, keeping in mind that he was educated originally for service to the church, and this use of words like "destining" and others suggest religious meaning, and I do approve of this; but then, and this would be a big point for me: His thesis is bound to finitude. There is the notorious "nothing" encountered at the "edge" of the Totality of historical interpretative possibility. This he derives largely from Kierkegaard, who put the nothing and its existential anxiety into play.

I consider this "nothing" a very important part of the idea sketched out here. Take thought to its extremity, where words and their historical meanings run out, and one faces something extraordinary, which is the bare existence of the world that denies interpretation. This nothing loses interpretative value because it defies all rules meaning making, like Kant's "(sensory) intuitions without concepts are blind; concepts without intuitions are empty." The idea is that reality has to be construed as affectivity (inserting my concern) that is "of a piece" with concepts, and cannot be conceived apart; and the "nothing" presents an intuition that has no conceptual counterpart, but will not simply disappear in a puff of logic. Because it is IN our existence, and not a flight of conceptual fantasy.

But when you ask if I agree with you: Yes, the extent you agree with this brief bit here.

You haven't explained why you think Kant's Unity of Apperception is an impossible concept, what exactly Wittgenstein's complaint is and how it relates to Kant's idea, or what relevance Kierkegaard's philosophy has in this connection. You give me nothing to respond to unless you offer more than this kind of vague gesturing. — Janus

It is impossible because it is conceived by the very unities it presents to us. To talk about what the TUA is, we would need a third pov, one that is objective and removed from the conditions assume what needs to be shown. This, of course, comes from Wittgenstein (but I can't remember where, exactly). Logic cannot explain is own nature because this presupposes logic to do so. Like talking about the eye that "sees" the eye. A brain that conceives a brain.

The TUA is, after all, "transcendental" and noumenal. Kierkegaard I brought up because he was adamantly opposed to any kind of "rational realism". Wittgenstein's quasi-mystical position on the world and value can be found here.

Propositions are not necessarily "utilities", although they of course can be. The idea that the world is a "standing reserve", there to be exploited in whatever way we see fit, has no necessary connection with the fact that humans practice propositional thinking. In fact, the mutually contradictory ideas that it either does, or does not, have such a necessary connection are themselves examples of propositional thinking. Philosophy is impossible without propositional thinking, and that is why I say that it cannot capture the non-dual, non-discursive, affective nature of experience. Poetry is better suited for that task. — Janus

But I want to take a more basic look at all of this. I draw on "standing reserve" as a kind of objectionable reduction to something that divests human existence of its important foundational meaning. I am saying that philosophy with its endless discursivity is largely missing a big point. What is disclosure? Is it propositional? What is this? I think Dewey was right: the aesthetic/affective dimension of our existence cannot be separated from rationality and logic, and so when we make a proposition we cannot reduce this to a "fact", something on the logical grid that is imposed on a world. It IS the world; it has existence, and the most salient feature of this is its affectivity, its aesthetic/ethical dimension.

I am reminded of Rorty, who dropped philosophy to teach literature. Philosophy had become trite and repetitive and had no to say, but literature, this is existentially educational, putting forth the real drama of our situation in the world. But like Heiddeger, Rorty was committed to finitude and didn't understand religion. One doesn't encounter "nothing"' (see the above). One encounters affectivity (broadly conceived here as the "irrational" actualities we experience). The nothing is metaphysics. In metaphysics, I am saying, we encounter affectivity and its propositional counterpart, of course (otherwise I could not be writing about it).

Philosophy is actually what religion is: the encounter of affectivity "outside" of dasein, discovered propositionally/(historically, as Heidegger tells us). What Heidegger, Rorty and others fail to see is this existence is NOT confined to finitude. It is, apriori, if you like, eternal.

If implicitly yes, as do I, but…..a cow??? And a cow “thinking”. Is that different than a cow thinking? Maybe “thinking” is a euphemism for instinct. Dunno, but I seriously doubt a majority of lesser animals, if not all of them, have any conception of relative heights as a function of temptation. He goes to taller grass because he doesn’t have to bend his neck so far, not because its tempting.

I agree with you, in that I know what it is to know. One thing I know, is that I don’t know what goes on in a cow’s head, and therefore wouldn’t ever suggest anything about it. — Mww

Think of Heidegger's historical account of knowing. The cow has been grazing for years, say, and it looks up a sees what memory informs her to be 'good eating over there" but not conceptualized, obviously. She moves over there. To me, this bears the mark of reason's conditional proposition. A "proto propositional" response to an environment. Cow's have histories and memories and these inform "judgment". What makes us so different is language.

Absolutely. But that isn’t so much a Kantian fallacy as the prime example of the human disposition to think beyond its logical authority. As true these days as it’s ever been. — Mww

That "logical authority" is a loaded term. In the world, what authorizes logic, so to speak, is some kind of a posteriori presence, but this presence itself stands beyond classification. I hold that presence is metaphysics, and the latter is not some impossibly distant "other"; not impossible, but a "possible" other, meaning that metaphysics needs to be conceived as an essential part of our existence, the encounter with threshold of its concepts as they take on philosophy. The more philosophy "stays put" with its positivist priority of clarity in the familiar, the more distant it is from its own nature, which is openness. This openness is essentially affective, and so when we allow ourselves to face it, in the nothing, we face both the openness of the conceptual deficit as well as the desire or yearning that is IN the conceptual deficit itself.

In other words, we can't just think in some propositional incompatibility with a world that defies categorization, and we can't think all of this is off limits to "properly authorized' logic and thinking.

Yeah, the intrinsic circularity of reason herself. Nothing to be done about the way Nature made us. — Mww

I am suggesting that "the way nature made us" has been distorted by a belief that reason simply tapers off into the sunset of an impossible horizon, metaphysics. this kind of thinking takes recognized limits of established ideas to be authoritative existentially. My claim is that this occurs only when one ignores the affective dimension of rationality itself: It is wrong to think of rationality in terms of the abstract "authoritative" logic it produces. Logic is actually "of a piece" with affectivity, and the open ended nature of this is not the impossibility and foolishness of reason grasping beyond its means, but a desire that seeks consummation. Logic seeks, if you will, consummation in a valid conclusion, but this only part of what it does. Logics IS affectivity seeking consummation. The separation we routinely recognize is merely pragmatic and habitual.

I don’t think occasions of truth are antecedent to the philosophical idea of truth. How would we know a thing is true if we didn’t already know what form any truth must have? Are not universals prior to particulars? How could particulars be analyzed without the universal to which it necessarily relates?

If all truths are contained in propositions, and the simplest possible proposition that cannot possibly be false is the gauge by which all other occasions of truth would be judged, it follows that the idea is before the occasion.

I’ll grant that occasions of truth must be revealed for what they are prior to analysis of possible truths. — Mww

Well, no one ever said at any particular time, let's call this a 'bottle" and from then on we had propositions like "the bottle is missing" and "look, a ship in a bottle." The term emerged in a language as part of an evolving system. There is no real beginning to this.

Anyway, I said, "here, I say when reason conceives of what it is to be a "rational truth" according to its own model, it creates an abstraction out of reason. Truth as a philosophical idea requires actual occasions of truth to be revealed for what they are PRIOR to analysis, not after." The idea here was that when reason is set upon something to "understand" it, it tends to produce something of its own abstract utility, a conclusion qua conclusion, which is simply a logical function. This is obviously a very useful way to address problems, but it gives the illusion of logic standing apart from its existential grounding, which is filled with interest and palpable meaning. These are not separate experiences, but one and the same. A rational inquiry IS an affective inquiry, and affectivity IS rational (we are so constituted. As I listen to music I "know" implicitly the many contexts that are there, in the constructed experience of listening).

Were you a scientist or mathematician you might realize the desires, loves, pleasures, etc. arising from the practice of the profession. To the contrary these experiences give meaning to one's life.

But then all of this discussion falls by the wayside of actual physical experience. Go climbing. — jgill

But this is just to the point I am making. But you need to make a further step into inquiry: when you analyze a star's light and bring forth a conclusion there is beneath this, or presupposed by it, a structured consciousness that does the bringing forth of the basic conditions for "receiving" anything at all.
What makes science singularly disqualified for philosophy is that it doesn't look at the world at this level of inquiry. Nor does it thematically take up the caring and value that you raise here. As a scientist you do indeed have more or less strong interest, occasionally exhilaration. But it goes further still: to speak at all, to have a thought and draw a conclusion or affirm a conditional or negation is inherently affective. the point I make here is that it is these analytical conditions, which are typical in everyday living, tend to reify the categorical analyses, reducing the world to its own abstract image. The actuality, intuitive givenness of things, if you will, of putting the eyes to the computer screen, implicitly drawing conclusions, rejecting others, then, consummating an inquiry! At this level the experience is a singularity.

Yes, I have heard about that a few times. But this "No, no" implies that my definition was wrong and that only yours is true. Which is wrong. One can say, at best, that the your definition is acceptable too. But even so, the words "justified" and "true" are incompatible with "I think". The expression "I think that" can be replaced by "I believe that", which indicate as simple belief, not "justified" or "true". — Alkis Piskas

To me, this is a bit confusing, Alkis Piskas. I doubt we disagree, in the end. Pls explain how "the words "justified" and "true" are incompatible with "I think." According to the traditional analysis, knowledge is justified true belief. This, of course, has issues; big ones. but this lies not in the analysis being wrong, but in how we define and make sense belief, justification and truth. You seem to have something in mind on making sense of these.

"True" and "possible" are incompatible. If it is true that you have sent me this message, because I read it, it cannot be also possible, at the same time, that you did so. It would be possible only if I had not received or read it yet. — Alkis Piskas

Only if you think something that is true cancels it being possible. It is true that I had chicken for dinner. Are you saying it is therefore not possible that I had chicken form dinner?

If you look at possibility as a future possibility only, then when possibilities come true they are no longer merely possible. But the term is not limited like this. There is logical possibility, something that does not violate the principles of reason. Uttering modus ponens doesn't cancel logical possibility. Same for something being causally possible, and so on. It simply says something is possible within certain parameters.

Consider a thought as an image or a series of images. These are "objects" in your mind. You can perceive and observe them as you percieve and observe anything else outside your mind, in your surroundings. The only difference is that it is you who have created these "objects", which are images, whereas objects in your surroundings have been created by some other source than you.

I think that the following experiment will explain everything in the relation of knowledge and thinking and other things I have talked about. If this won't make sense to you, nothing else I could say would.

Just watch an object in front of you, e.g. your monitor, for a couple of seconds. Then close your eyes and think of what you just watched. You will create an image of the real object. This is what we call a thought. And the process of the creation of that image is what we call "thinking". This image is a representation of the real object and it may be very close to or very different from it, depending on your ability to recall. But there will be always a difference --however small-- between what you have actually observed (knowledge) and what you thought about it.
And this is the difference between knowing and thinking about something — Alkis Piskas

So you are saying the knowing lies in the open eyed perception, while the thinking lies in the encounter with the thought of that real thing that abides in memory or in the imagination? Is this right?

But it goes further still: to speak at all, to have a thought and draw a conclusion or affirm a conditional or negation is inherently affective. the point I make here is that it is these analytical conditions, which are typical in everyday living, tend to reify the categorical analyses, reducing the world to its own abstract image. The actuality, intuitive givenness of things, if you will, of putting the eyes to the computer screen, . . . — Astrophel

You write well, very impressive. More so if I were to understand what you say. But then as a mathematician I can not skillfully put into words the sensation of "knowing" when a theorem's proof resonates with me. :chin:

Thanks for your reply, Astrophel. Your thinking goes off on so many tangents that I am at a loss as to what to address in what you've said.

So, to keep it simple I'll just respond to what you've said about the TUA.

It is impossible because it is conceived by the very unities it presents to us. To talk about what the TUA is, we would need a third pov, one that is objective and removed from the conditions assume what needs to be shown. This, of course, comes from Wittgenstein (but I can't remember where, exactly). Logic cannot explain is own nature because this presupposes logic to do so. Like talking about the eye that "sees" the eye. A brain that conceives a brain.

The TUA is, after all, "transcendental" and noumenal. Kierkegaard I brought up because he was adamantly opposed to any kind of "rational realism". Wittgenstein's quasi-mystical position on the world and value can be found here. — Astrophel

My understanding of Kant's idea is just that we understand new ideas by relating them to a unified body of pre-existing ideas about ourselves and the world. The "I think" is the idea of a transcendental ego or unity. Kant did not follow Descartes in thinking this ego as a substantive entity; rather our selves are models that seem unified to us in terms of a coherent story of the self/ world relation. All of this is transcendental insofar as it is not empirically derivable from observations of the world, but rather constitutes the very condition that enables observation and understanding of the world.

So, it is not a case of knowing the noumenal, but via reflection on our experience, of thinking the necessary conditions for the possibility of that experience. We know that if we did not have a coherent, unified sense of ourselves in relation to a world that we experience, we would not be able to experience and understand the world the way that we know we do. I might not be understanding Kant rightly, since I am not a Kant scholar, but that is my take on it...

Do I have that right @Mww ?

certainly logic is not about nothing, nor is affectivity; but concepts like these that quantify and divide experience, because they are categories, do not represent the original uncategorized primordial whole. — Astrophel

"primordial whole"? Now I know you're talking nonsense.

That said I'm struggling to find the point to any of this. If it's suggesting that what we take as knowledge isn't reflective of reality, I'd hate to say that doesn't seem to be the case. The world outside our heads might be different than that which we experience every day, but unless you can provide evidence for such a thing it's useless speculation.

So far in my life everything I know seems to work out just fine and it's how we can interact and to some degree master the world as it is. Evolution may have evolved us for certain aspects of survival but I have no reason to doubt the world is what I see each day unless there is some dimensional break.

Though to be honest I've failing to see the point of your question or what you're aiming to achieve here since you're kinda all over the place. I'm guessing you're hounding for something that in reality doesn't exist, some foundational ground to make for knowledge. Hate to say it but there is no such thing. We take a few things as given, our axioms, and just hope for the best.

I will add that intuition isn't a special form of knowledge but still another form of cognition (something you seem to have a bone to pick with) as it is based on prior knowledge, culture, and personal experience. It's sort of like "thinking really fast". Even feelings are rooted in some form of cognition though not one you are aware of. Brains are weird.

PS: I do wonder if there is a way to write your stuff in a way that's easy to understand.

But this is just to the point I am making. But you need to make a further step into inquiry: when you analyze a star's light and bring forth a conclusion there is beneath this, or presupposed by it, a structured consciousness that does the bringing forth of the basic conditions for "receiving" anything at all.
What makes science singularly disqualified for philosophy is that it doesn't look at the world at this level of inquiry. Nor does it thematically take up the caring and value that you raise here. As a scientist you do indeed have more or less strong interest, occasionally exhilaration. But it goes further still: to speak at all, to have a thought and draw a conclusion or affirm a conditional or negation is inherently affective. the point I make here is that it is these analytical conditions, which are typical in everyday living, tend to reify the categorical analyses, reducing the world to its own abstract image. The actuality, intuitive givenness of things, if you will, of putting the eyes to the computer screen, implicitly drawing conclusions, rejecting others, then, consummating an inquiry! At this level the experience is a singularity. — Astrophel

Hate to break it to you but there isn't anything beyond that "abstract" image that you think science is reducing reality to, that's just what it is. It sounds like you really want reality to be something other than it is.

If anything a lot of these posts just sound like extreme frustration or dissatisfaction with how things work.

What is it to know? If there is no way to account for this, then we are lost. I mean, if language is only self referential, and one cannot grasp even in the imagination what, at the most basis level, of knowledge claims could even possibly be, then knowledge isexistentially without meaning. What do I mean by existentially? Reference is to existence, and existence refers to the palpable "sense" of being here, and this refers to not simply raw physical feels and impositions, but, thoughts, and affectivity (a broadly conceived affectivity that comprises our ethics and aesthetics). Do thoughts exist? Of course. Existence is not to be reduced to "metaphysical physics". Does affectivity exist? A foolish question, really: nothing could be more palpable.

I think language gets lost in language, and it is the familiarity of language that removes for our sight an original existence, not original in an historical sense, as if once long ago, but original as in something primordial and "under the skin" of what we call experience.
Easy to access, in a way, because while language creates an analytic divided world, it also puts it back to gether again; in other words, language is also redemptive when the direction of inquiry goes to basic questions: those words you're thinking now, from whence to they come? I am thinking of Beckett's book Molloy. the idea is how to get around the extraordinary claim that it is language that speaks! Not "me". Molloy/Molone is dying, but it is not the death of the body, but of language, and words that linger to the end, grasping for existence, knowing soon words will not sustain the monologue that is the self. — Astrophel

If knowledge is without meaning then how are you writing this and expecting others to communicate? How do you even know there are others to communicate with?

I think it's as I said before, you're kinda searching for something similar to Descartes except he had to invent god to get out of his funk. But life doesn't work like that, nothing can be definitively known beyond all doubt, it just doesn't exist. Still total certainty was always a myth anyway and we never needed it before.

My understanding of Kant's idea is just that we understand new ideas by relating them to a unified body of pre-existing ideas about ourselves and the world. The "I think" is the idea of a transcendental ego or unity. Kant did not follow Descartes in thinking this ego as a substantive entity; rather our selves are models that seem unified to us in terms of a coherent story of the self/ world relation. All of this is transcendental insofar as it is not empirically derivable from observations of the world, but rather constitutes the very condition that enables observation and understanding of the world.

So, it is not a case of knowing the noumenal, but via reflection on our experience, of thinking the necessary conditions for the possibility of that experience. We know that if we did not have a coherent, unified sense of ourselves in relation to a world that we experience, we would not be able to experience and understand the world the way that we know we do. I might not be understanding Kant rightly, since I am not a Kant scholar, but that is my take on it... — Janus

This sounds reasonable, about Kant. But I would only add that the nature of what is noumenal cannot be grasped in our finitude. "Reflection on our own experience" can still give one no more than a representation. It sounds reasonable to make this move, but all of this presupposes the very thing that needs to be shown.

Kant knew this, and I'm sure you can easily find where he says this in the deduction and elsewhere. Transcendental means metaphysical, and what is "pure" reason is just this. Kant didn't do metaphysics (or did he? He certainly doesn't intend to, but his representational thinking sets up an epistemology and an ontology that is inherently metaphysical.)

I'm not a Kant scholar either. But I've read the Critique, and others, like you, I am guessing.

This sounds reasonable, about Kant. But I would only add that the nature of what is noumenal cannot be grasped in our finitude. "Reflection on our own experience" can still give one no more than a representation. It sounds reasonable to make this move, but all of this presupposes the very thing that needs to be shown.

Kant knew this, and I'm sure you can easily find where he says this in the deduction and elsewhere. Transcendental means metaphysical, and what is "pure" reason is just this. Kant didn't do metaphysics (or did he? He certainly doesn't intend to, but his representational thinking sets up an epistemology and an ontology that is inherently metaphysical.) — Astrophel

I, and as far as I understand it, Kant agree that the nature of the noumenal cannot be grasped. I keep saying that. for me, even the nature of our actual experience cannot be grasped as it non-dually is but can only be parsed discursively in dualistic terms. That is the essence of our finitude that we can only think in finite terms.

So, I agree with you that reflection on our experience, otherwise known as phenomenology, cannot escape that dualistic finitude. So the TUA is a part of our collective model of self and world, and is presupposed in the very possibility of such a model. I think Kant did indeed know this, and that is why, after establishing the limits (finitude) of thought he wrote the CPJ, purporting to establish our practical justifications for having faith in God, Freedom and Immortality.

I don't think 'transcendental' means 'metaphysical', at least not in the traditional sense of 'metaphysical'. 'Transcendence' means 'metaphysical' in that sense, and I believe Kant was at pains to distinguish between the ideas transcendental and transcendence.

Transcendence purports to be saying what the absolute nature of reality is, and I don't believe Kant can reasonably be charged with doing that. Kant attempted to analyze and lay before us what the nature of human reality, the human situation, epistemologically speaking, is. I see Kant as being primarily a phenomenologist, not a metaphysician.

All you're really gonna get is a representation. Even our brains only give us a best guess about what the world around us is like, and even then you still run into the Evil Demon and other issues. You can think you found the ground level but that will still remain a belief.

But I'm pretty sure that Kant said you CAN'T know truth through pure reason alone.

But I'm pretty sure that Kant said you CAN'T know truth through pure reason alone. — Darkneos

As I understand it Kant believed that we can know some things via pure reason. He called this kind of knowledge "synthetic a priori". But this knowledge is dependent first and foremost on the prior experience that our memory allows us to reflect upon and to discover its general characteristics. Once those are discovered and synthesized, then we can say, without any longer needing to check our experience, what the nature of any possible experience must be; the primary attributes being spatiality and temporality.

So, Kant attempted to harmonize rationalism with empiricism, while defining the limits of each.

From what I read it's more like he is saying that reason alone, absent experience, can't lead to any real knowledge. It's sort of like trying to form an untainted truth about the world.

It just seems to me like OP is after some untainted source.

Yes, I think Kant does say that knowledge begins with experience, but that not all knowledge is dependent on experience. As with the example I gave concerning knowing that all experience must be spatially and/ or temporally given, it is not a matter of that being confirmed by experience, because like any conjecture, experience cannot confirm its universal applicability.

It just seems impossible to us that possible experience could fail to be either spatial or temporal or both. I suppose we could deny that this is synthetic a priori and say instead that it is analytic, in the sense that only spatial or temporally given phenomena count as experiences. That said, it does seem impossible to imagine what a non-temporal, non spatial experience could be.

It just seems impossible to us that possible experience could fail to be either spatial or temporal or both. I suppose we could deny that this is synthetic a priori and say instead that it is analytic, in the sense that only spatial or temporally given phenomena count as experiences. — Janus

Perhaps a silly question - but if, as Kant and subsequent others suggest, space and time are built into our cognitive apparatus and not the universe , does this not suggest that the laws of physics are a reflection of how we process reality, not reality as it is in itself (the ineffable noumena). And does it follow from this that hypothetical sophisticated aliens who do not utilize human cognition might have developed an entirely different and efficacious alternative to our physics? A physics which appears to map onto their world the way ours appears to map onto ours? And there's the possibility that even this account of reality, however it might appear, is still just an appearance...

I don't think it's a silly question at all. Since Kant posited things in themselves, I don't see why he could not equally posit space and time in themselves. So, rather than saying that things in themselves do not exist in space and time, he could have said that they do not exist in cognitive space and time, which actually "goes without saying", as the saying goes. The very idea of things in themselves suggests difference and duration, which seems to depend on the ideas of space and time.

I don't know whether an alternative physics would be possible for an intelligent alien, presuming that they shared the same (or some of the same) senses as us. We can imagine augmentation of the senses we are familiar with, but I don't think we can imagine entirely different senses.

Perhaps a silly question - but if, as Kant and subsequent others suggest, space and time are built into our cognitive apparatus and not the universe , does this not suggest that the laws of physics are a reflection of how we process reality, not reality as it is in itself (the ineffable noumena). And does it follow from this that hypothetical sophisticated aliens who do not utilize human cognition might have developed an entirely different and efficacious alternative to our physics? A physics which appears to map onto their world the way ours appears to map onto ours? And there's the possibility that even this account of reality, however it might appear, is still just an appearance... — Tom Storm

According to general relativity that isn't the case. The laws of physics do explain how we process reality (partly, rest is neuroscience).

Kant many have posited a lot of things but that didn't make him right. I mean...he did exist prior to all the massive scientific discoveries that rocked our understanding of reality. IF anything science demonstrates that our intuition isn't a good measure of reality.

That said I'm struggling to find the point to any of this. If it's suggesting that what we take as knowledge isn't reflective of reality, I'd hate to say that doesn't seem to be the case. The world outside our heads might be different than that which we experience every day, but unless you can provide evidence for such a thing it's useless speculation. — Darkneos

Evidence of what? Evidence for the claim that the world outside our heads is not what we experience? Well, it's really not to the point. But since you asked, the world "outside" of one's head, how is it that is actually get into the head? I'm saying it doesn't because there is no way to even conceive of this. Therein lies the evidence: one way of justifying a denial that P to be true, to show that P is nonsense.

So far in my life everything I know seems to work out just fine and it's how we can interact and to some degree master the world as it is. Evolution may have evolved us for certain aspects of survival but I have no reason to doubt the world is what I see each day unless there is some dimensional break. — Darkneos

Keep in mind that if your belief that the world is what you see rests with "things working" then your claim would rest with pragmatics. Then you would have to show how pragmatics reveals the way the world is. That is, if S knows P, and to know is to be able to use for some purpose, then knowing is mere pragmatics, but what one knows IS the pragmatics and not the world

Generally science takes a stronger view than this, affirming the nitro's independent existence apart from the pragmatics we experience. But this, again has to be explained. I think it nonsense.

Though to be honest I've failing to see the point of your question or what you're aiming to achieve here since you're kinda all over the place. I'm guessing you're hounding for something that in reality doesn't exist, some foundational ground to make for knowledge. Hate to say it but there is no such thing. We take a few things as given, our axioms, and just hope for the best. — Darkneos

I can understand this. But a pragmatist like yourself should have an epistemology, just so your claims can be useful philosophically. Reread the things you object to, and consider the simple thesis that philosophy's pursuit of truth is REALLY an affective endeavor. So looking for truth as a propositional affair that only looks to facts is going to lead only to other facts and these the same. It is not about a quest for information about meaning. It never has been. This is the historical error that has made philosophy so intractable.
It has historically been the purview of religion to deal with value/aesthetics/ethics (the same thing in essence), and philosophy has been about analytic arguments at the basic level. I hold that philosophy IS the only authentic religion.

I will add that intuition isn't a special form of knowledge but still another form of cognition (something you seem to have a bone to pick with) as it is based on prior knowledge, culture, and personal experience. It's sort of like "thinking really fast". Even feelings are rooted in some form of cognition though not one you are aware of. Brains are weird.

PS: I do wonder if there is a way to write your stuff in a way that's easy to understand. — Darkneos

Not just a form of cognition, but cognition itself. After all, how do you know modus ponens is right? How do you know objects can move themselves? The world of our understanding rests entirely on intuition.

Talk about brains: perhaps hard to see this, but brains are supposed to generate experience, and thereby give a reductive account of what experience "really" is. This is what I infer from your thoughts. but how is it one knows the brain is there to be this generative source? Why, it is through the phenomenon of the brain which the brain generates.

You DO see the issue here, yes?

But I'm pretty sure that Kant said you CAN'T know truth through pure reason alone. — Darkneos

Yes. I did affirm this.

See above: How do you know objects cannot move themselves?

So, rather than saying that things in themselves do not exist in space and time, he could have said that they do not exist in cognitive space and time — Janus

Oh nice..

We can imagine augmentation of the senses we are familiar with, but I don't think we can imagine entirely different senses. — Janus

I agree we can't image the different senses, but can't we imagine that they might have an entirely different dimensionality to inhabit? As 'off limits' to us as the hypothetical noumena.

The very idea of things in themselves suggests difference and duration, which seems to depend on the ideas of space and time. — Janus

Indeed. One gets the feeling that at some point we just have to use inadequate terms to give an impression of what is meant because there simply isn't the vocabulary or conceptual framework to explore it. We are stuck with 'us' to speak of 'them'...

According to general relativity that isn't the case. The laws of physics do explain how we process reality (partly, rest is neuroscience). — Darkneos

Could be. I don't know if this is true and it is contested space so all I'm doing is following the speculations without commitment.

IF anything science demonstrates that our intuition isn't a good measure of reality. — Darkneos

Certainly - although I understand it sometimes took intuition to formulate a hypothesis science later demonstrated.

If knowledge is without meaning then how are you writing this and expecting others to communicate? How do you even know there are others to communicate with?

I think it's as I said before, you're kinda searching for something similar to Descartes except he had to invent god to get out of his funk. But life doesn't work like that, nothing can be definitively known beyond all doubt, it just doesn't exist. Still total certainty was always a myth anyway and we never needed it before. — Darkneos

Not quite. Nothing can be known definitively? Put your hand in boiling water for a few seconds. Can this pain be doubted?

Put your hand in boiling water for a few seconds. Can this pain be doubted? — Astrophel

The pain perhaps not, but is this any more convincing of a material reality than Dr Johnson attempting to refute Berkeley by kicking a stone?