Fooloso4 wrote: ↑July 20th, 2018, 10:11 am
Spectrum:
How can you conclude of the above without being a human?
What I conclude and the content of the conclusion are not the same. If I solve a murder mystery that does not mean I played a part in the murder.
You are conflating transcendental idealism with empirical realism in this case.
In empirical realism, the perceiver is never the perceived or as Kant stated that cannot be nothing that appear in appearance.
But in Transcendental Idealism, the "perceived" fall back to the perceiver but in another different [higher or more refine] perspective.
Therefore what you conclude [individually] is the same [in a different perspective] as the content-of-what-you-have-concluded, the latter is linked to you on a collective basis.
For example, in one perspective a piece of carbon is obviously different from a piece of diamond. But in the molecular perspective, they are of exactly the same molecules i.e. pure carbon but in different construct.
You could have solved a murder mystery as an individual detective and is very obvious in the legal or normal sense, you are not the murderer.
However in
another perspective [nb], i.e. collectively you cannot absolved yourself totally as related to the murder that had happened.
The point is, in another perspective, you as a individual human is part and parcel of the reality you are in, thus cannot absolve yourself from the realities of that reality you are in.
Note the Butterfly Effect, i.e. a flap of a butterfly wing in China can cause a hurricane in the Caribbean.
Therefore you cannot conclude whatever without being a human being.
Therefore whatever conclusion you arrive on the above has to be [imperative] grounded on the human conditions.
This is a fact we cannot avoid when we dig further into more refine philosophy.
It is not more refined philosophy it is sloppy thinking.
Note my explanation above, re the need to shift into and toggle between various perspectives which you are unable or do not want to.
But the ultimate Kantian view is whatever has existed or is existing is grounded on the human condition.
That is not the ultimate Kantian view, it is nothing more than your incorrect interpretation of Kant. Nowhere does he say that whatever has existed or is existing is grounded on the human condition. You can talk in circles but you cannot point to where he asserts this.
As I had stated I am not in tip-top [peak] condition with the CPR at present where I can pick and combine passages to deliver my point. For that I will have to refresh for at least a month in re-reading the whole of the CPR.
Nevertheless I am very well versed with the general theme and overall principles of the CPR.
The clue to Kant grounding of the human condition is his Copernican Revolution. From there Kant based his theory on everything human, i.e. sensibility, experience, understanding [empirical reasoning] and pure reason. There is nothing else apart from these human-based faculties.
As Kant had argued there is no way we can let go of the human conditions in determining anything of reality.
In the introduction, Kant critiqued Plato's independent free floating universals as a basis/premise of determining reality and this point is carried out throughout his whole argument in the CPR.
Kant’s criticism of Plato’s Forms, as quoted, is that:
... Plato left the World of the Senses
That is the point.
For Kant what is real is grounded on sensibility, experience, understanding [empirical reasoning].
In context Plato left the World of the Senses and thus experience, understanding and jumped straight into Pure Reason, the Home of Illusion.
Note Kant delineated where the illusion, the ideas, i.e. thing-in-itself comes in after the senses and pure understanding;
WE have now not merely explored the territory of Pure Understanding, and carefully surveyed every part of it, but have also measured its extent, and assigned to everything in it its rightful place.
This domain is an island, enclosed by Nature itself within unalterable Limits. A236 B295
It is the land of Truth -- enchanting name! -- surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of Illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive Appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion.
A236 B295
The above complements A339 B397 where even the wise will be deceived by those illusions.
How can you arrive at the conclusion "quarks are fundamental particles that make up everything including humans" without the inevitable involvement of human beings acting in consensus.
Again you conflate human activity with what that activity reveals.
Note my above explanation re different perspectives.
That is the point why Kant assert there is no-thing-itself.
It is you who asserts this. Where does Kant make this assertion? What he says is that there is no knowledge of things in themselves. It is an epistemological rather than ontological claim.
The thing-in-itself is from ontology of the traditionalists.
Kant condemned ontology [his definition] as not possible, so there is no question/consideration of any ontological claim at all.
There is an epistemological element, but the whole of the CPR expounds what is reality [without ontology and metaphysics at all]. What we have is a Spontaneous Emergent Reality. [SER].
E.g. The principles of cause and effect is so obvious in normal experience and perception but Hume argued correctly the underlying principle to the obvious is human psychology of customs, habits and constant conjunctions.
But Kant does not agree. Kant denies that it is customs, habits and constant conjunctions, it is a matter of the a priori transcendental conditions, that is, the structure of the mind. We are not psychologically compelled to believe in quarks.
I don't believe Kant rejected Hume's concept outright [..I have to verify and confirm].
The 'structure of the mind' will inevitably lead to psychology [i.e. mind, what else].
During Kant's time the knowledge base of neuroscience was negligible, so he just take it for granted the Pure Concept of Understanding [Categories] and other relevant mental elements are somewhere in mind.
Note Plato insist there are universals floating out there independently of the subject.
Yes, we are not psychologically compelled to believe in quarks like a Schizo's belief of their own created visions, but nevertheless from another perspective the belief and objective reality of quarks has a psychological basis. As we dug deep into Physics, the elements of the human condition are inevitable, e.g. Observer's Effect, Wave Collapse Function.
I understand Kant's refutation of Berkeley's and Descartes idealism.
Then why do you make the same mistakes?
Where did I make the same mistake?
I mentioned I am with Kant's Transcendental Idealism, not the idealism of Berkeley nor Descartes.
I am aware this is the contentious issues between Guyer [you are reading] and Allison [expounded Transcendental Idealism in its true essence].
This is a smokescreen. I am not reading Guyer. I have referenced his translation of Kant. You have not identified a single problem with that translation. Name dropping is not a substitute for philosophy. Whether Allison expounded the "true essence" of Transcendental Idealism and whether you have correctly understood Allison only compounds the problem of interpreting Kant. But if Allison provides support for any of your claims that I have questioned then by all means cite what he says.
I think that is the problem if you are not reading the CPR directly from Guyer or other translation but relied on secondary sources.
I only mentioned Allison on the side re Transcendental Idealism, my understanding of Kant is based on direct reading the CPR [albeit English translations, not German] in combination with Eastern philosophies and other fields of knowledge.
You may not realize, but Kant had argued, in your case of not totally giving up the idea of the thing-in-itself, you are actually believing in the same manner of the problematic and dogmatic idealism of Descartes and Berkeley respectively.
Where does he say this? Where have I said anything that can be construed as Descartes problematic or Berkeley’s dogmatic idealism?[/quote]
Note A369;
Kant in CPR wrote:It is, in fact, this Transcendental Realist who afterwards plays the part of Empirical Idealist.
After wrongly supposing that Objects of the Senses, if they are to be External, must have an Existence-by-themselves, and independently of the Senses, he [the Empirical Idealist] finds that, judged from this point of view, all our sensuous Representations are inadequate to establish their Reality.
I understand you are not an outright Philosophical Realist, but that remnant view you have resemble that of the Transcendental Realist, i.e. you believe there is some 'thing' underlying external objects or something cannot come from nothing.
As Kant stated above, the transcendental realist then is also a Empirical Idealist which is of the same set as the idealism of Descartes and Berkeley albeit in different form.
Yes, no mask in the above case means no 'spontaneous emergence' but note it happen only with faces, not other common things.
Actually, it does. It is called Pareidolia. It includes but is not limited to facial patterns.
Yes, the point is that has something to do with the human conditions a priori.
It is some sort of representation but the 3D Einstein Face is an illusion because the real thing is a concave mask.
But according to you that too is an illusion. If all is illusion the term has no meaning since it does not distinguish between illusion and what is not an illusion.
Yes that concave mask is also an illusion in another perspective as there is no such thing as a concave_mask in-itself. So what we think is reality is actually illusion upon illusion upon illusion.. ad infinitum without any grounded thing-that-appear.
What is most real is seeeming "I AM" but that is also an illusion, soul-in-itself.
Note Russell's dilemma;
[Russell was a hardcore realist but he shifted perspective in this case].
Bertrand Russell wrote:Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may not be true.
Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has become a problem full of surprising possibilities.
The one thing we know about it is that it is not what it seems.
Beyond this modest result, so far, we have the most complete liberty of conjecture.
Leibniz tells us it is a community of souls: Berkeley tells us it is an idea in the mind of God; sober science, scarcely less wonderful, tells us it is a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion.
Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.
My point is, what you perceive as reality in the 'normal' sense, is not the real thing but an illusion [special type].
What does the “real thing” mean?
What is 'real' is basically conditional to the Framework and System used.
Realness as dependent on a Framework and System thus comes in degrees.
At present what is most real is Scientific Knowledge of things.
I have an over view of Kant refutation of the Descartes and Berkeley's idealism but he did not refute his own idealism, i.e. his Transcendental Idealism.
Of course not. What he does, however, is refute your own form of idealism that rejects Kant’s theorem:
It is not my own form of idealism. I agreed with and accepted Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me. (B275)
This point representing Kant's Empirical Realism is merely a subset of Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
Note I highlighted;
Main set: Transcendental Idealism
(subset: Empirical Realism
)
Note this point re external objects are Nothing;
Kant in CPR wrote:External Objects (bodies), however, are mere Appearances, and are therefore nothing but a Species of my Representations, the Objects of which are something only through these Representations.
Apart from them they are nothing. A370
Kant explain he is a transcendental Idealist;
(note Kant stated '
nothing' not at-the-least-something)
Kant in CPR wrote:From the start, we have declared ourselves in favour of this Transcendental Idealism; and our Doctrine thus removes all difficulty in the way of accepting the Existence of Matter on the unaided testimony of our mere Self-Consciousness, or of declaring it to be thereby proved in the same manner as the Existence of myself as a Thinking Being is proved.
There can be no question that I am conscious of my Representations; these Representations and I myself, who have the Representations, therefore exist.
External Objects (bodies), however, are mere Appearances, and are therefore nothing but a Species of my Representations, the Objects of which are something only through these Representations.
Apart from them they are nothing. A370
Kant's belief of a Transcendental Idealist who can also be an empirical realist [not philosophical realist],
Kant in CPR wrote:The Transcendental Idealist, ...., may be an Empirical Realist or, as he is called, a dualist; that is, he may admit the Existence of Matter without going outside his mere Self-Consciousness, or assuming anything more than the certainty of his Representations, that is, the cogito, ergo sum.
For he considers this Matter and even its Inner Possibility to be Appearance merely; and Appearance, if separated from our Sensibility, is nothing.
Matter is with him, therefore, only a Species of Representations (Intuition), which are called External, not as standing in Relation to Objects-in-themselves, External, but because they relate Perceptions to the Space in which all Things are External to one another, while yet the Space itself is in us.
You on the other hand is not with Kant as a Transcendental Idealist because to you appearance is separated from sensibility and is representing that-which-appears.
You believe that-which-appears is something, but Kant declared as above is 'nothing', i.e. as explained in detail within the realm of Pure Reason is an illusion.
Not-a-theist. Religion is a critical necessity for humanity now, but not the FUTURE.