isn’t our natural/instinctual appreciation of ‘the world’ thus more telling of our subjective faculties prior to scientific knowledge being laid on top of them. — I like sushi

Telling, but maybe not more telling. But I was responding to empirical conditions, like seeing a table or a tree. Appreciation is not an empirical condition. Our natural/instinctual appreciation of the world gives rise to and sustains the other half of our subjective faculties........feelings.

we use our experiences to draw the inferences that make most sense of all the empirical data, — Marchesk

We do use our experience to draw inferences about something possibly derivable from it, yes. But not always. Sometimes the inference comes first, and experience is then called upon to verify them. Or falsify them.

From this can we rightly assume that the natural human instinct is to view our ‘seeing this tree or that table’ as projected outward rather than as given by external illumination? — I like sushi

Perhaps, but if that were the case, how would we account for knowledge with respect to that which we don’t project, or, which is the same thing, has nothing to do with sense? If we deny non-empirical knowledge, the science of mathematics would be impossible.

Other than that.......good stuff.

What are logical forms taking account of? — creativesoul

Illogical thought; irrational reasoning.
The difference between reality and knowledge.
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Would you agree that "that which exists in it's entirety prior to common language" is a category? — creativesoul

Yes.
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(...) grounded in pure reason.
— Mww

Pure reason? As in reasoning from an armchair? — creativesoul

No, that’s just plain ol’ run-of-the-mill thinking, or, practical reason. No one consciously thinks in terms of merely theoretical pure reason, armchair-bound or otherwise. That’s why pure reason is the ground, the antecedent rather than the consequent.

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The objective/subjective distinction is rendered inherently inadequate in that it's use cannot take proper account of what all experience consists of.

Discard it. — creativesoul

Fine. Go ahead. Try discarding it. You’re going to have to replace it with something, because it seems to be the case that the human rational system is entirely predicated on it. Besides, something can be inherently inadequate without being a complete failure.

So......shall we discard the physical state of affairs that represents the coolness of the room, or shall we discard the sensation of too cool that represents the physical state of affairs? Can’t discard both, because it is the distinction between them claimed to cause the problem, so elimination of the distinction should solve it.

Still, if you’ve got an alternative.....(once again) lay it on me.

Our armchairs await.

The test I'm using is negation. — tim wood

Good. But maybe for different reasons. And from a human point of view only.....

The fundamental criterion for the existence of things, is the possibility of its negation. If its negation is impossible, it must exist, even if we have no idea what it is; if its negation is possible, its existence is not given, but is necessarily presupposed as existing, in order to have something to which the negation would apply.

The proof is in the categories.

Not all senses of "categorical error" are commensurate. — creativesoul

Correct, which is why I mentioned Gilbert Ryle. I figure error in semantics or error in reason are the only two worth talking about. And because language philosophy is (insert pejorative terminology here), the only error worth a damn in philosophical discourse is grounded in pure reason.
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what counts as a category is completely and utterly determined by us — creativesoul

I suppose that’s right enough, although I would offer that we determine whatthey are, but not that they are; the former presupposes the latter. Nonetheless, all philosophy is theoretical, and if it should be the case that a foundational tenet of a particular theory is given as merely a condition for that which follows from it necessarily, and disqualifies such condition from any empirical determinant for it, it must be considered as existing in its entirety prior to being named as such, by the rational agencies that employ it in the normal course of its mental events, in accordance with the theory. The onus then falls on the opponent of the theory, to falsify the tenet by arguing successfully in the negative. He does his dialectical opposition no justice by merely claiming fallacious rationality used in the construction of the theory, but rather, is required to give qualifying justifications for it. It may be interesting to note that, at least since Aristotle, no one has been able to promote sufficient reason to nullify the need for, and function of, the categories. Doesn’t make the theory or its tenets fact, or even irrefutably the case, but standing the test of two millennia of argument is still pretty damn good.
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I seek to discover that which exists in it's entirety prior to our discovery process, therefore prior to the naming and descriptive practices commonly called common language use... — creativesoul

Cool. Let me know what you find? We can compare it to what has already been found. Or found acceptable, at any rate.
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For anything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices qualifies for that which exists in and of itself(Noumena). — creativesoul

Noumena is untenable. I've already offered adequate argument for that conclusion. It's been left sorely neglected. — creativesoul

In the first, the parenthetical suggest a “for instance”, as in, “that which exists in its entirety exists in and of itself, like for instance, noumena”.

In the second, noumena are claimed to be untenable, which of course, they are, for us.

By association, it follows that because categories exist in and of themselves, they are untenable noumena. This is false. Or, “That’s not only not right, it’s not even wrong!!” (Thanks, Herr Pauli!!!) Categories are neither untenable, nor noumena. In addition, I haven’t seen on these pages any adequate argument for noumena being untenable except from yours truly. Actually, him truly, me being the poor messenger. And because I probably would have agreed, and so remembered, if you’d presented adequate argument, I’m going to go ahead and say you haven’t. But surreptitiously with my fingers crossed.
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Logical forms are existentially dependent upon common language use. — creativesoul

No, I think not. Logical content is dependent on language use; logical form, re: the Greek laws of comprehensible, rational thought, are not:

“....Pure intuition consequently contains merely the form under which something is intuited, and pure conception only the form of thought in general. Only pure intuitions and pure conceptions are possible a priori...”

A = A, e.g., is the pure form the content must take when language fills out the form, to accomplish comprehensible, rational thought, and thereafter, comprehensible, rational communication. You can fill out the job application with any ol’ information you want, but your paycheck might end up in Alaska, just as you can fill in the logical forms any way you want, but your cognition “bird” might be everybody else’s cognition “bathtub”.

We can move on, if you like.

So, we must surely abandon Kantian language here. For anything that exists in it's entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices qualifies for that which exists in and of itself(Noumena). — creativesoul

The categories are not phenomena, there is no object that can be thought for them. That which is not phenomena is not thereby automatically noumena. Noumena, if they be given at all, are only given from an intuition different than ours. Dolphins may think with noumena rather than phenomena....we don’t know, and unless we communicate with mutual intelligibility, we won’t.
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Furthermore, we must have knowledge of both our premisses and that which exists in it's entirety prior to our premisses in order to perform a comparative assessment between the two. That comparison is required in order to know that one has indeed committed the error called "categorical". — creativesoul

Premises in syllogisms or propositional logic in language form, yes, but the categories enter the cognitive stream way before knowledge, which makes explicit categories are not knowledge-apt. Categories are conditions, and we know them only as conditions, only as part of non-linguistic logical relations alone.

, you haven’t really learned what you set out to discover, insofar as you’ve got the “how” but not necessarily the “how come”, because your subject himself may not even know.
— Mww

I don't think the 'how come' is a measurable thing by any metric, so it's not a relevant investigation. Pick your reason. — Isaac

I submit there is at least one metric for measuring at least one “how come”, and that measurable metric is behavior, with respect to the “how come” called morality. The former is directly proportional to, and directly dependent on, the latter. While behavior may only be observational, and hardly scientific, it can still be measurable by relation to some other behavior. And it would certainly seem to be relevant, considering the general proclivity for humans to piss each other off.

We have before us now, a listing of categorical errors...Which ones will be used to render judgment upon whether or not a premiss of our choosing qualifies as being guilty of categorical error as compared/contrasted to other kinds of errors? — creativesoul

Categorical errors can only be demonstrated by showing the falsity of the proposition from which they were originally given. I suppose one could list them, but recognizing them would seem to be sufficient.

As already mentioned, c.e. is a mistake in logical form, wherein a subject of a logical statement and its predicate do not relate, or, the subject isn’t given a predicate to which it can be related. In the case of human thought, the subject is always a phenomenal object, and the predicate is always at least one of twelve possible pure conceptions. For instance, when I perceive an object, a category of “quantity” must relate to it in the logical form “all x are y”, I must think of that x as having y belonging to it. Because I already know all dogs are canines, if I perceive an object, and I judge the concepts fur, missing frontal lobe, dew claw, chewing teeth as predicates of it, but do not judge it to be predicated by canine, I commit a categorical error by cognizing the object as a dog. It may very well have been a wolverine.

But that’s not very hard to grasp. Where the system becomes relevant is when the object perceived is unknown to me. I must follow the logical forms in order to call the resulting cognition of it, experience and thereby, knowledge. If every rose of my experience is red, upon perceiving an object with some measure of the predicates of the red rose of my experience (flower, scent, petal shape, thorns, etc.) but is not red, I am justified in denying it is a rose at all. The dog example is a judgement of category “quantity” using the subset “universal” in the logical form “all x are y”. When it is proven to me the object I perceived is a rose, but not a red rose, then the category “quantity” invokes the subset “singular” in the logical form “this x is y”, and from that, I am justified in thinking the third subset of “quantity” with the “particular”, in the logical form “some x are y”. Henceforth, I should have no logical inconsistencies in cognizing roses of different color.

In 1904, trains, tracks, terminals, lightning, tape measures, pencil, paper, and a myriad of other real objects were already well-known. When ol’ Uncle Albert was whiling away the hours at his ramshackle desk in his ramshackle office, he put two and two together and came up with a four nobody had ever noticed. It would have been absolutely impossible for him to think any of what eventually came to be SR without the “existence” of those listed objects, without the “possibility” of the objective validity of his thinking, without the “relation” of cause and effect, and without the “reality” of the end result, which in this case was merely mathematical. The “existence” of SR’s objective reality, over and above its objective validity, had to wait for technology to play catch-up, but that does nothing to diminish the fact the whole thing was the product of sheer imagination, that is to say, predicated on empirical means but having no empirical ends whatsoever.

The categories of understanding (SR) are the logical conditions for pure thought, or, a priori cognition, and thus possible experience. The categories of judgement (roses) are the logical conditions for empirical cognition, or, experience. Both are themselves pure a priori rational faculties, therefore their respective products are far and away antecedent to linguistic conditionals. It follows that categorical error is simply the non-employment of the proper category with respect to an object, such that the thought of it is contradictory, or the cognition of it is false.

As an aside, these categories are my rendition of those things which we had previously agreed must exist in their entirety before we are permitted to make our correlations in what you call thought/belief.

Pretty much, with the caveat that “categorization” might not carry the proper inflection. One shouldn’t confuse speculative categories such as Aristotle’s or Kant’s, with Ryle’s semantic categorical mistakes. Rush’s song “Time Stands Still” is a categorical mistake of semantics; space is a property of objects is a categorical error of reason.

Looking back, I see I could have registered the statement without including a mistake you wouldn’t have made.

It’s given that everything human, happens because of the brain. I reject out of hand that what it means to be human, can be discovered on an o’scope. And I reject it because I just don’t like it; it’s anathema to my ego. Pretty piss-poor reason for rejecting a form of relative proof, I know, but tell you what.....even if you get your

look at the behaviour as indicative of what the whatever-it-is does to the inputs — Isaac

, you haven’t really learned what you set out to discover, insofar as you’ve got the “how” but not necessarily the “how come”, because your subject himself may not even know.

Perhaps you’re drawing off the fact science can monitor the stimulus/reaction complex, and thereby affirming the antecedent, by re-naming the stimuli as disposition to act, hence, belief. (?)
— Mww

In a sense, yes, but any problem with doing so would only arise from a position that some previous definition existed whose only flaw was its inability to be thus monitored, and I'm not at all convinced that such a definition existed. — Isaac

Here, I suppose such a problem would arise, because if belief is held to be a subjective institution, re: judgement, and thereby defined with a priori predicates alone, it certainly cannot lend itself to empirical monitoring.

pieces can be removed from an item, but ‘moments. cannot be removed — I like sushi

I go with matter can be removed but form cannot.
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but I do find it interesting even though I don’t grasp what he meant/means exactly. — I like sushi

There doesn’t seem to be any general consensus in the literature for either Brentano’s or Husserl’s intended meaning for noesis and noema either, so you’re not alone. Seems to me they’re trying to give the mind some character, instead of treating it as an abstract apex placeholder.
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There is certainly more than a hint at the distinction between ‘act’ and ‘object’ yet they are more like different sides of the same ‘object of intentionality’. — I like sushi

Again, for me this reduces to the distinction between intuition and appearance. As Brentano claims, “...Every mental phenomenon is characterized by (...) the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call (...) reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity...”.

Everybody says the same thing, just in different ways.

Good luck with the fresh perspective.

I am heartened to see the third one mentioned, the Critique of Judgement brought into view. — Valentinus

Yeah....the proverbial red-headed step-child of the Critical Period, huh. By far the most difficult from which to extract the good stuff. That, and it took about 150 years before anyone thought there was any good stuff in there to extract, probably because it didn’t take Schopenhauer long at all, to jump all over what he considered to be massive inconsistencies with respect to the two preceding Critiques. Nowadays of course, some philosophical academia acknowledges CoJ for its insights and ground for modern aesthetics, re: Derrida, and equally dismissed by the modern analytic school, the so-called deconstructionists. (Sigh)
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The matter of what is peculiarly "continental" seems deeply connected to to whatever getting beyond the Scholastics was about. — Valentinus

Bullseye!!!! It may be argued the Renaissance put the proverbial nail in the Scholastic coffin, but the Enlightenment drove the nail with a very large hammer. Nevertheless....sign of the times....even Enlightenment philosophers in general needed to maintain sponsorships and benefactors for their respective university chair appointments and publishing, the benefactors themselves being invariably religious, so metaphysical efforts centered more on elevating humanism rather than ostracizing idealistic spiritualism.

Fun times in the world of human thought, and long since dissolved by.....er, dare I say....less than interesting......philosophy.

Good synopsis. Thanks.

I’m ok with intentionality, subjective requirements, pure subjectivity/objectivity. Not too keen on categories being similar to, or synonymous with, “aboutness” of experience; I see them rather as that which makes experience possible.

Different strokes, same game.

often is the case, that assumptions involve an unrecognized categorical error.
— Mww

Are such errors determined by categories of our own choosing... — creativesoul

The categories don’t determine errors, and we don’t choose them. Errors arise from irrational or illogical associations the subject thinks, and categories are merely the theoretical conditions which make cognition possible, so they exist in their entirely long before we give them names. Obviously, because we always cognize first, speak later, and never the reverse, about any one thing.

The idea of categories solves a problem, If you think it just causes another one, that would be on you, wouldn’t it?

And the phenomenological approach would be to investigate the subjective requirements we hold to in order to talk about this ‘thing’ called ‘size’. (...) So what is it like to experience ‘size’? — I like sushi

Does phenomenology hold with “categories”, have them in its doctrine? I understand subjective requirements we hold in order to talk about things, just wondering what your name for those requirements would be.

Recognizing the assumptions are key I think. — creativesoul

Indeed. But often is the case, that assumptions involve an unrecognized categorical error, in that this theory/model/logical conclusion doesn’t necessarily follow from that assumption.

I was under the impression methodological naturalism was created to circumvent the likelihood of error, by restraining investigations to measurable domains? What error do you consider built in to it? The fact it is humans doing it?

You’d have to ask fdrake for his broader point, but for me, it was his highlighting assumption and fallible modeling processes, with respect to them.

The curse and the beauty of human cognitive power.

decided it wasn't relevant. — fdrake

Yeah, fractal curve lengths tend to infinity, which hardly works for measuring coral boundaries.

I like your attitude on assumptions. We all got ‘em, we all make em. We all live by ‘em.

Similar to, if not taken from, The Coastline Paradox, L. F. Richardson, 1951.

A disposition to act can be represented (theoretically) in neural architecture — Isaac

It would seem to be buried in there somewhere, somehow, inasmuch as if not, we are left with (personal subjective) absurdities as universal consciousness, and such even less empirically obtainable possibilities. I am drawn up short by the fact we do not think in the same terms we use to model the mechanisms we think with, and as things stand in the current state of our knowledge, belief is still something we think. So I hesitate to grant belief can be.....or soon will be.....attributed to neural architecture, but I don’t have a problem with the idea that disposition to act can be.

Perhaps you’re drawing off the fact science can monitor the stimulus/reaction complex, and thereby affirming the antecedent, by re-naming the stimuli as disposition to act, hence, belief. (?)

And yes, invoking the faculty of judgement does indeed kick the can down the same speculative road.

but we mustn't sublime consistency. It is only what it is, no holy grail, nor marker of truth — Isaac

Agreed, sublime here I understand to mean exalt to higher worth, so we mustn’t attribute to consistency more than it avows on its own. It isn’t a marker of truth, but merely an example of the form of its possibility. Nevertheless, we in our human endeavors naturally seek to lessen our own confusion, the means to which we demand of logic, which in turn absolutely requires consistency. Of course, logic itself is nothing if not a model of consistency.
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I don't think proximity to reality measures the usefulness of the model. — Isaac

Perhaps not, but it remains for a model’s usefulness to relate to something, just from the fact it is a model. I’d say an empirical model, or, a model constructed on empirical principles, should proximate reality as much as the principles admit. A purely rational model, built on a priori principles, those of which no proper object belongs, do not get us any closer to reality, but rather, prevent us from straying too far from it.
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Nothing special about consciousness in that respect, as far as I can see. — Isaac

I’m not sure how consciousness got into this. Did someone lay the whole “what it’s like” thing on human consciousness? If one employs reductionism far enough, and under certain conditions, he should arrive at consciousness as the ground of all human a posteriori experience, thus diametrically opposed to a priori suppositions of “what it’s like”.
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As I've said already, for me, a belief is simply a disposition to act. — Isaac

On another note: I rather think belief is a judgement of relative truth. One’s disposition to act is every bit as much a judgement he makes relative to some truth he has already considered. Close enough?

I can't remember why we got talking about model dependent realism in a thread about the expression 'what it's like'. — Isaac

Nor I, but there is precedent galore for these types of discussions wandering off into the subjectively-driven hinterlands.

Ehhhhhh...from where I sit, what it’s like to experience something, when push comes to shove, is none other than the experience itself. In other words, it’s a pretty dumb question to begin with. I mean, what it’s like to experience stubbing your toe is a lot like the experience of hitting your thumb with a hammer, which isn’t saying much, but what the experience of stubbing your toe is exactly like is .......well.....stubbing your toe, which isn’t saying anything at all, because we already knew that.

I think people ask what it’s like because “what does it mean” is just too hard.

As we say out here in the hinterlands......

How does nature inform us of an error in our models when we have no direct access to nature against which to check them, only other models? — Isaac

Good point, and pardon my speaking too loosely. I claim dialectic license.

We do have direct access, but that doesn’t mean we are given Nature as it is in itself, but only as we perceive it. It follows that Nature doesn’t inform us so much as we inform ourselves, of errors in our models, when some model of ours isn’t consistent with another of ours, or isn’t consistent with subsequent observations of ours from which all models with empirical predicates are constructed, Nature merely giving the occasion for such possible disparities to be cognized.

Still, models are useless without something to which they relate, wouldn’t you agree?

What I'm arguing for here is model dependent realism — Isaac

The human cognitive system is predicated on models it constructs of its own accord. Whether or not the models so constructed correspond one-to-one with reality is only governed by logical law.....which we also invented. On a smaller scale, if Nature informs us of an error in our models, we just start over. On a large enough scale, if our models are in error, Nature will treat us as any other non-evolutionarily viable entity, and rid itself of us.

I'm asking what features of 'my' actions allow you to distinguish them from actions caused by 'the forces of nature'. — Isaac

No member of Nature can act contrary to the forces of the Nature of which he is a member. None of my actions can be distinguished from forces found naturally, even if I am permitted to modify them to my advantage or interrupt their natural progression. Even the act of pure spontaneity, which we formerly considered the ground of pure thought, has its natural exhibition in random....a form of spontaneity.....nuclear decay, and theoretical quantum physics.

becasue of a failure to feel satisfied with any objective criteria for distinguishing objects — Isaac

Objective criteria, granted. But the human species in general, as observer, does distinguish objects, from himself and from each other, which implies there is some criteria for doing so.

Would the subjective criteria of space and time be sufficient for distinguishing objects?

If value is understood to be a noun:

.....under what conditions would values be non-subjective, and,

.....under what conditions would a hypothetical imperative be a value, non-subjective or otherwise?

Quick synopsis is good enough, if you’re so inclined.

I was just wondering whether there was something specifically continental about Kant's philosophy. — Echarmion

Specifically continental about Kant’s philosophy is more along the lines of geo-political and religious turmoil, and his response to it, than having to do with some philosophical dichotomy, as I’m sure you’re aware.

Kantian epistemological philosophy was, by his own admission, with respect to Hume’s lackadaisical dismissal of a priori knowledge...slave of the passions and all that empiricist foolishness.....but it wasn’t for that, that the continental aspect for his philosophy came about. The tripartite Critiques taken as a whole, which were much more than merely epistemological, were a subtle rebuke of the writings of Jacobi (con) and Mendelssohn (pro), with respect to Spinozan pantheism, the religious turmoil of which was rampant in continental academia. While not naming any of them in more than passing, nor criticizing the general religiosity of the time, one can find a few anti-pantheisms hidden in those massive, paragraph-long sentences. In addition, throw in the French Revolution, which Kant tacitly condoned, at least in form, as shown in “The Science of Right”, it is clear how “continental” relates to Kant.

However, Kant denies direct perception of reality. — creativesoul

No, he does not. Direct perception is given; direct knowledge is denied.
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Thus, Kant did not and could not draw and maintain a distinction between non linguistic thought and linguistic thought. — creativesoul

He didn’t want to because he didn’t have to. There is no such thing as linguistic thought, if thought be understood as the human rational system in action. No language is used whatsoever, until or unless that action is to be expressed, either subjectively in which case a subject immediately expresses to himself, or objectively in which case the subject mediately expresses beyond himself. When I ask or tell myself what I’m thinking, I must have already thought it, in order to have something to ask or tell myself about. The split second before I reach down to tie my shoe, is not filled with the words “hey, dumbass....your shoe’s untied”. And I certainly don’t go through the maze of linguistic representations telling me all that possibly happens because of it.

Why do you think the phrases like “it all happens behind the curtain”, or “sub-consciously”, or any of a myriad of expressions typifying the speculation that our system of thinking is all accomplished without our thinking about it. When someone says, “I just don’t have the words for it” all they are meaning is their understanding of such experience does not abide with the language to relate it, even thought the experience itself is fully resident in the subject. Which makes explicit the experience, which is nothing but the rational system in action, cannot be predicated on its expression. This reflects to my assertion the other day, in that all words are invented, which means language is invented, which makes explicit thought is always antecedent to the language it invents. The case is equally well served by the fact that different words used by different thinking subjects express the same thought in each subject respectively.

Thought takes time. Why would Nature require the time necessitated by the manifestations of natural law in our brains, to be heaped upon the time require to transpose each constituent of thought, re: manifestations of natural law, whatever they are theorized to be, into a linguistic representation? When someone says, “it flashed before my eyes!!”, do you think they meant some words flashed, or was it an event that flashed? It was some experience that flashed, without a single linguistic representation attached to it. In that instantaneous, infinitesimal split second before I bend down to tie my shoe......well, you know what really happens, I trust.

QED!!!!!! Dammit!!!!

Is it any wonder philosophy never really solved anything? If it did, what would we have so much fun with?

Down time for service outage.

Eventually.....maybe....we would have arrived here, at this very place. It is not correct to say everything is phenomenon, but rather, every object of sensibility, called appearance, united with an intuition by imagination, is phenomenon.
— Mww

Spoken like someone who likes Kant's Noumena. — creativesoul

Sorry, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with Kant’s noumena. I hate noumena. He made it so farging difficult to understand what he means by it, says one thing here, something else there. There is one particular definitive rendering I use for reference, because gives, not what it is, but an unambiguous place for its use, in juxtaposition to what humans usually use. And I’m human, so.......

In short, as we all know, for every this there logically is a that. Humans cognize this way, but there is logically a way to cognize humans don’t use, completely unknowable by us. Phenomena for us, noumena for those other guys that ain’t humans, but are some other kind of rational agency.
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That which exists in it's entirety prior to humans is relegated to Noumena, and as such is grossly neglected. — creativesoul

Humans since the dawn of the age of reason have speculated on all sorts of stuff supposed to exist long before us, so I wouldn’t think such was neglected. If you wish to term those things existing in their entirety before human as noumena, I have no problem with it, even if I wouldn’t. Maybe the Greeks did tag such things with that nomenclature....dunno. Pretty sure German Enlightenment epistemologists didn’t.

On the other hand, you may be referring to existences in their entirety that are not physical existences, but instead are existences in thought. I see where the negative kind of noumena would enter the fray, for they are called “intelligible existences”, in opposition to existences of sense, which are phenomena. And they are neglected, because they must always lack intuitions because there are no “intelligible intuitions” to be given from the kind of existences which must give rise to them.

Now, this is the Kantian understanding. If you have a way to give noumena an otherwise respectable life, what process have you developed to accomplish it?
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Nah, metaphor is poor philosophy. — creativesoul

Agreed. Lipstick on a............Oh.

Never mind.
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I see trees, not phenomenal representations thereof. — creativesoul

This presupposes you know what “tree” is. What do you see when you see a thing unknown to you?

I'm not sure what we're getting at here. — Terrapin Station

Interest in the pretty rock raises the question of how the interest came about, with respect to the rock’s characteristics/properties/qualities.

I was asking you. After establishing interest, he takes it home. End of story?

The making of no sense is a comparison of necessity.

I suppose one can just look at something and not consider anything about it. But what if it interests him?

Ok. So a thing has characteristics because it is ontologically necessary?

Thanks for the edit; clearer to me now.

All “likes” as characteristics/properties/qualities are themselves comparisons. An observer of the world’s characteristics compares them to the affect they have on him. As esoteric as that may sound, how else do we learn about them?

Observation shows you what things are like, properties they have, patterns that occur, etc. It tells you all sorts of things. — Terrapin Station

Of course. As a general rule, nonetheless, when I investigate anything at all, “what it’s like” and “all sorts of things” is inversely proportional to the importance I give to the investigation.

But I understand what you mean: I observe a ZR1 and recognize it is like a Yugo.

Token and type. I can understand the function of a box, or even every box I encounter or can imagine. None of that gives me the first clue as to what a box is and isn't as a type — Isaac

Us old-fashion types would say....nothing in the form of a thing can ever give me the first clue as to the matter of it, but only that the matter of it is conceivable. But I guess that is a first clue, so.....