I have an idea—why don’t we close out this thread for now. It’s getting sort of personal.

I have had different times when I broke off from the discussion for different reasons. I miss some of those who have wandered off. — Paine

Yes. I feel the same way.

Too bad. I kind of liked them, even though we did bark at each other once or twice.

OK, I will take your suggestion and go elsewhere.

No it was addressed towards everyone. I think it would be better, if one of you were to conclude that i'm beyond "getting it", to either leave or try explaining again rather than insulting me, don't you? — ProtagoranSocratist

What did I say to you that was insulting? I only said I thought what you wrote was wrong and then I explained my reasons. I don’t understand.

"When I think in language, there aren’t ‘meanings’ going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought." — PI §329 — Hanover

This of course is the problem. Assuming all thought is verbal is clearly not right.

As I noted elsewhere, the answers to your questions are not philosophy, they’re science. I doubt anyone likely to participate in this discussion knows enough to have a credible opinion about this subject.

Nuff said.

Keep in mind you can leave the conversation anytime you want if i seem too obtuse or stupid, but i do think remembering a word does have to do with the specifications i've layed out here. — ProtagoranSocratist

I’m not sure, is this addressed to me? Are you saying if I don’t agree with something you write, I should go away?

because so far, nobody has been able to give a clear and distinct definition to the term: — ProtagoranSocratist

I don’t think this is true. I gave a clear and distinct definition that you and most others don’t like. The confusion can only be resolved by consensus, which is unlikely, as evidenced by this and past discussions here on the forum. There will be another one just like it within a month and the same arguments will be regurgitated over and over.

we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense.

However, as I understand it, this is not how Kant uses the term a priori. — RussellA

We have reached the end of what I’m willing to say about what Kant described. You certainly know more about that than I do. I haven’t read the Lorenz article in several years, so I think I’ll go back and reread it.

Hey Clarky — javi2541997

Thank you for looking out for my cultural education.

Reason must have content, As Kant said "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”. Reason must be about something. Pure — RussellA

I’m taking a shot at this, but as I noted, Kant's work is not something I have deep insight into.

I come to this question through the back door–through my interest in psychology and cognitive science. It is my understanding--and there is evidence to support it--that human nervous systems, sense organs, and minds are structured in such a way that we exhibit the mental processes we observe and experience. Example–studies by Karen Wynn show that children only a few months old exhibit behaviors that show a capacity for simple moral and mathematical thinking. Another example–Stephen Pinker and others have described innate language acquisition. It's not that they have innate knowledge, what you call content, it's that they have the capacity to gather and process that content–to think in structured and organized ways. To be fair, these claims are not without controversy.

The thing that jumped out to me when I read about the critique of pure reason was that Kant identified space and time as being known a priori. These strike me as exactly the kind of structured principles I described above. Time and space are not what you call "content," they are principles that allow us to organize and process content provided by our senses. Is this the same thing you meant when you wrote what I've quoted below? I don't know.

As I wrote before: “Kant did not propose that we have knowledge prior to our sensibilities, which we then apply to our sensibilities. Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities.” — RussellA

The question is, did Kant mean by “a priori” what today is meant by “a prioiri”? — RussellA

Well, Lorenz certainly thought so and he was a pretty smart guy. He was also much more familiar with Kant’s philosophy than I am. I suggest you read the article.

Although I am very far from a Kant scholar, I’ll go back and take a look and see if I can answer your question myself later today.

Do you have access to a clean copy of the article. From the Internet Archive, the “full text” comes out as: — RussellA

If you go to the linked page and scroll down, you’ll find options to provide the document in various formats. Push on PDF with text then download to your files. What you get is a fairly bad scan of the article, but it’s searchable and you can copy text out of it.

However, if we are talking about Kant, this is not what Kant meant by “a priori”. In this different context, the term “a priori” as used by Kant has a different meaning — RussellA

In case you’re interested, here’s a link to an article by Lorenz—“Kant's Doctrine Of The A Priori In The Light Of Contemporary Biology.”

https://archive.org/details/KantsDoctrineOfTheAPrioriInTheLightOfContemporaryBiologyKonradLorenz

From that if/then, follows necessarily that because noumena are not phenomena, noumena cannot be entities, insofar as phenomena are necessarily representational entities, within that metaphysics demanding that status of them. — Mww

Agreed.

But there isn’t talk of noumena other than the validity of it as a mere transcendental conception, having no prescriptive properties belonging to it. There is no possible talk whatsoever of any specific noumenal object, which relegates the general conception to representing a mere genus of those things the existence of which cannot be judged impossible but the appearance of which, to humans, is. — Mww

In the context of Taoism, I think of speaking the unspeakable as something of a joke, or at least a self-aware irony. Hey… What else are you gonna do?

As I wrote before: “Kant did not propose that we have knowledge prior to our sensibilities, which we then apply to our sensibilities. Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities.” — RussellA

Yes, this is the quote I responded to. Unless I’ve misunderstood you, this is not how I understand what Kant was saying.

As an analogy, suppose you fly over an island about which you have no previous knowledge. You observe stones on the beach in the form of the letters SOS. You may have the thought that these stones rolled into that position accidentally through the forces of nature, whether the wind or waves, but find such a thought almost impossible to believe. The only sensible explanation for your observation would be the existence of a human agency, even if you have no direct knowledge of such human agency. — RussellA

Again, this is not my understanding of what a priori means. As I wrote previously, I see it as knowledge we have as part of our human nature. It’s built into us.

I don't buy this mystical woo woo interpretation of most ancient philosophers. It amounts to cognitive & spiritual nihilism if taken seriously. — Sirius

Then we probably don’t have much to talk about.

Noumena is in the plural. If it's just that which is unknown or beyond naming, then why does it have a singular & plural form which Kant uses (knowingly) throughout his book ? — Sirius

As I mentioned in that post, the Taoist idea of the Tao is similar to Kant’s noumena, but there are differences. At the same time, I think they’re talking about the same unnameable… The Tao is not spoken of in the singular and plural. There is only the One.

I see this common misinterpretation of Kant a result of Schopenhauer's conscious reinterpretation of Kant gaining currency in the public imagination. Unfortunately, even this involves misunderstandings since Schopenhauer has no room for "thing in itself" in his philosophy — Sirius

The idea that reality is an unnamable One is not limited to Kant or Lao Tzu. It is common in many philosophies. There comes a point when you can’t count on what other people say and you have to just look for yourself.

It is obviously, clearly, not unintelligible to posit unintelligible objects. Its just pointless. It would be unintelligible (and its obviously, because this isn't possible - which is essentially what the term claims) to posit a specific unintelligible object. That is not what's being done in those sorts of theories. — AmadeusD

This is something I’ve struggled with, but I will say it is not obvious and clear.

Kant did not propose that we have knowledge prior to our sensibilities, which we then apply to our sensibilities. Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities. — RussellA

I am certainly not a Kant scholar, but it’s my understanding that he did see a priori knowledge as coming before any sensory input. It’s part of our human nature. Konrad Lorenz claims that that knowledge results from biological and neurological Darwinian evolution. That makes a lot of sense to me.

The proof: there is no such thing as a noumenal entity, for the human intelligence, which is to say Kant does not allow positing entities beyond intelligibility. To posit that which understanding cannot think, is impossible. — Mww

I think you’re right. If noumena aren’t phenomena, then they aren’t entities. In Taoism, the Tao, which cannot be spoken, is, as I understand it, not a thing at all. If it’s not a thing, then it doesn’t really exist at all. Taoists sometimes call it non-being. If it doesn’t exist, then it can’t be posited.

Of course, that leads to the irony that we’re here talking about what can’t be talked about. Eastern philosophies seem more comfortable accepting that than western philosophies do.

I don’t remember that at all. It doesn’t sound like something I would agree with. — T Clark

You’re right. This is the quote from three years ago that you linked.

A charitable interpretation of T Clark’s position is that he is not saying, for example, that in a discussion entitled “What is truth?” we have to agree on what truth is at the start to make any progress—that obviously couldn’t work—but that in a discussion about something else, some other concept, one that depends on the concept of truth, a way of directing the debate is to decide on the definitions of those dependencies, otherwise the wrangling over definitions never ends. — Jamal

I did agree with that then and I do agree with it now. It was misleading for me to call you out on that in my post to @Ludwig V.

which is that you don't begin a philosophical discussion with the definition of the concept you centrally want to discuss, but it can help, for the sake of argument, to define any supporting concepts. — Jamal

I don’t remember that at all. It doesn’t sound like something I would agree with.

He was banned 3 years ago. — Tom Storm

It still makes me sad, although those fucking Australians are always causing trouble.

But no definition (rule) can cater for all future possibilities - there can always be cases where interpretations of the rule differ. There's no reason why these can't be sorted out, but they can only be sorted out when they appear; they cannot be sorted out in advance. — Ludwig V

As I noted previously, this is why our discussions of metaphysics never get beneath the surface—why we repeat the same arguments over and over again.

It’s good to see @Streetlight’s byline back on the front page.

I understand where you are coming from. — Sirius

Well, I must admit I have no idea where you’re coming from. I learned a new word recently— incommensurable. That’s what your philosophy and mine are. That’s not a criticism, you really sound like you know what you’re talking about. It’s just that I see things really differently.

The possibility of metaphysics hinges on metaphysical naturalism & its adjacent views like materialism, empiricism (YES), nominalism, mechanism being flawed or incomplete. — Sirius

It is my understanding, which admittedly is not deep, that ancient philosophers were not materialists or empiricists. For them, the world was infused with spirit and human value.

This is an interesting idea. I have so many questions. But it seems better to read the book and then ask questions. It's 200 pages, so that will take time. It's a pity, but perhaps there will be an opportunity on another occasion. I have downloaded the book. — Ludwig V

For what it’s worth, the big ideas are upfront in the first few chapters. The rest of the book tracks the implications and gives some examples. And there will definitely be plenty of more opportunities to discuss. Metaphysics pops up at least a couple of times a month.

"Definitions first" is a recipe for stalling. "Definitions last" would be a lot more realistic. — Ludwig V

@Jamal and I have disagreed about this in the past. This thread provides good evidence that you need to put your money down on specific definitions or you’ll never be able to discuss beyond just the surface of metaphysics. If we come back in a month and have the same discussion, the same arguments will just get recycled over and over without ever having a resolution. If you want to go deeper, you have to commit.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." — 180 Proof

More bigoted baloney.

I can't grasp what you are trying to say about the context. To differentiate between this object, as a brussels sprout and that object, as an eggplant, is to make a judgement. This is regardless of whether you are saying that you prefer one to the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Seems to me by your standard just about any statement would be a judgment.

That is clearly an act of judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, not in the context we’re using here. It says nothing about brussels sprouts or eggplant. It only says something about me. I am not judging eggplant. If I said “eggplant is bad,” that would be a judgment about eggplant.

But isn't judging inherent within or nature? It's just what we do, we judge all sorts of things. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think valuing, choosing, and liking are inevitable, but those are not the same as judging. If I choose brussels sprouts over eggplant, that doesn’t say anything about eggplant except that I prefer brussels sprouts. It doesn’t mean that eggplant is bad, although it is, as a matter of fact, very very bad.

Ethics are necessary and functional, but not to civilize the evil out; rather, because mind/history has alienated us from our nature — ENOAH

This is from Gia-Fu Feng’s translation of Verse 57 of the Tao Te Ching.

The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men's weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.

So, ethics, etc., albeit functional, yranscend our nature, creating a "fictional" domain in which only humans operate and experience. — ENOAH

This makes sense, although I don’t see it as a negative thing as much as you do.

So completely that the latter has virtually displaced the former, alienating the human animal from our nature — ENOAH

When you get into larger groups of people, I think that's inevitable. When that happens, you need rules to keep the wheels of social discourse lubricated.

That bonding is the real source of our so called ethics. But our so called ethics are made up. — ENOAH

I think there is truth in this but I think it might hide the fact that, although what you call bonding may be the source of ethics, they are completely different things. Bonding, empathy, is something personal while ethics is social. Bonding deals with emotions while ethics deals with rules. Bonding is done without premeditation or expectation but ethics is done with the expectation of reward or punishment.

I was thinking about saying even a society without bonding would need social rules, ethics. But then I realized such a society might not even be possible.

How do we achieve or pursue metaphysical clarity? — Moliere

Geez, now you're going to make me put my money where my mouth is. I'll take a first swing at it. Here are some characteristics of metaphysically clear writing:

• Important terms are identified and defined.
• Underlying assumptions are explicitly identified.
• The scope of the discussion is laid out explicitly--what issues and questions, or at least what kinds of issues and questions, are being addressed.
• Describe the uses and consequences of the particular metaphysical positions being discussed.

As I noted, this is a first take. I don't like it much. Definitely needs work. Beyond what's on the list, just general good writing rules also apply.

I've been listening to William James recently. He writes wonderfully clearly about metaphysics. I'll think more about what I like about his work to tighten up my thoughts.

Long ago I remember reading a piece by Isaiah Berlin about philosophy (reference forgotten) that claimed that philosophy is about all the questions that nobody knows how to answer. That caught my attention and eventually sucked me into philosophy. It would explain the phenomena. — Ludwig V

After 3,000 years I would, and do, suspect there are no answers to the questions.

So it may be that truth or falsity isn't the issue. I've got time for the idea that metaphysics is about how to interpret - think about - the world and life and Grand Questions. Truth is beside the point or perhaps not the whole point. — Ludwig V

I think this is exactly right. It's at the heart of what metaphysics means to me. This is what I posted back on the first page of this thread:

Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking. — R.G. Collingwood - An Essay on Metaphysics

Here's what he says about absolute presuppositions:

Absolute presuppositions are not verifiable. This does not mean that we should like to verify them but are not able to; it means that the idea of verification is an idea which does not apply to them.... — R.G. Collingwood - An Essay on Metaphysics

Natural bonding has been displaced by narratives of good and evil, and those narratives trigger actions which, transcending our natures, are played out in the fictional theatre we construct and call history. — ENOAH

Can’t we say something similar about what happens in all human thought, not just that related to morality?