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Neri » Fri Jan 30, 2015 5:40 pm wrote:James,
I previously supplied the following quote:
"(...) Truth, it is said, consists in the agreement of cognition with its object. In consequence of this mere nominal definition, my cognition, to count as true, is supposed to agree with its object. Now I can compare the object with my cognition, however, only by cognizing it. Hence my cognition is supposed to confirm itself, which is far short of being sufficient for truth. For since the object is outside me, the cognition in me, all I can ever pass judgement on is whether my cognition of the object agrees with my cognition of the object. [Kant, Immanuel (1801), The Jäsche Logic, in Lectures on Logic. Translated and edited by J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 557-558.]
Please read it. If you have already read it, please be good enough to read it again more carefully.
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Neri » January 30th, 2015, 11:16 pm wrote:unless one takes that the fantastical position that the mathematical code which comprises any noumenon is a supernatural one that does not depend upon the axioms of mathematics.
It comes from the Critique of Pure Reason, section A494(?) in the first edition, and B522 in the second edition.Neri wrote:I am interested in reading the full context of the statement of Kant that you quote. Please provide a citation.
Kant wrote:The faculty of sensible intuition is properly a receptivity – a capacity of being affected in a certain manner by representations, the relation of which to each other is a pure intuition of space and time – the pure forms of sensibility. These representations, in so far as they are connected and determinable in this relation (in space and time) according to laws of the unity of experience, are called objects. The non-sensible cause of these representations is completely unknown to us, and hence cannot be intuited as an object. For such an object could not be represented either in space or in time (as mere conditions of sensible representation); and without these conditions intuition is impossible. We may, at the same time, term the non-sensible (intelligible) cause of appearances the transcendental object – but merely as a mental correlate to sensibility, considered as a receptivity. To this transcendental object we may attribute the whole connection and extent of our possible perceptions, and say that it is given and exists in itself prior to all experience. But the appearances, corresponding to it, are not given as things in themselves, but in experience alone. For they are mere representations, receiving from perceptions alone significance and relation to a real object, under the condition that this or that perception – indicating an object – is in complete connection with all others in accordance with the rules of the unity of experience. Thus we can say: the things that really existed in past time, are given in the transcendental object of experience. But these are to me real objects, only in so far as I can represent to myself, that[?] a regressive series of possible perceptions – following the indications of history, or the footsteps of cause and effect – in accordance with empirical laws – that, in one word, the course of the world conducts us to an elapsed series of time as the condition of the present time. This series in past time is represented as real, not in itself, but only in connection with a possible experience. Thus, when I say that certain events occurred in past time, I merely assert the possibility of prolonging the chain of experience, from the present perception, upwards to the conditions that determine it according to time.
If I represent to myself all objects existing in all space and time, I do not thereby place these in space and time prior to all experience; on the contrary, such a representation is nothing more than the notion of a possible experience, in its absolute completeness. In experience alone are those objects, which are nothing but representations, given. But, when I say, they existed prior to my experience: this means only that I must begin with the perception present to me, and follow the track indicated, until I discover them in some part or region of experience. The cause of the empirical condition of this progression – and consequently at what member therein I must stop, and at which point in the regress I am to find this member – is transcendental, and hence necessarily incapable of being known. But this is not our concern; our concern is only with the law of progression in experience, in which objects, that is, appearances, are given.
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Positor » Fri Jan 30, 2015 8:31 pm wrote: Since Kant is clear that we do not, it seems his position entails that the "code" (or whatever it is) is in some sense supernatural (or "transcendental" as he would say).
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owleye » January 31st, 2015, 3:10 am wrote:Transcendent is the term he uses when speaking of the 'supernatural'.
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Neri » Sat Jan 31, 2015 8:30 am wrote:In Kant’s lexicon, “transcendental” basically means “epistemic” in the sense that it refers to knowledge derived ultimately from the senses. “Transcendent,” on the other hand, refers to truths that cannot be known by sensory experience or by whatever may be derived from such experience. God, souls, all things supernatural, and noumena (as Kant uses the term) fall in this latter category. This really tells where Kant is coming from.
Because James seems to revere the Kant scholars of Stanford University, I offer the following quote from that source:
“In the Critique Kant thus rejects the insight into an intelligible world that he defended in the Inaugural Dissertation, and he now claims that rejecting knowledge about things in themselves is necessary for reconciling science with traditional morality and religion. This is because he claims that belief in God, freedom, and immortality have a strictly moral basis, and yet adopting these beliefs on moral grounds would be unjustified if we could know that they were false. “Thus,” Kant says, “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” (Bxxx). Restricting knowledge to appearances and relegating God and the soul to an unknowable realm of things in themselves guarantees that it is impossible to disprove claims about God and the freedom or immortality of the soul, which moral arguments may therefore justify us in believing.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/#KanProThePurRea
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Neri » Mon Feb 02, 2015 8:55 am wrote:Mtbturtle,
The basic question presented in my OP is this: Do cognitions determine objects or do objects determine cognitions? The former is Kant’s so-called Copernican Revolution. The latter is the realists’ position. My critique of Kant’s position takes the following form:
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neuro » February 2nd, 2015, 7:28 pm wrote:so, Neri, are we going to start again from the beginning?
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(Alright.. without taking up too much of my own time here) You seem to have become shipwrecked somewhere around Kant's refutation of Berkeley's idealism. Kant actually called Berkeley's philosophy, "dogmatic Idealism". He wrote some lengthy proofs against it. So if you point your boat in that direction, you will sail to more fruitful waters soon enough.Neri » January 31st, 2015, 4:04 am wrote:Hyksos,
In your view, did Kant derive the existence of noumena by pure reason (metaphysically) or by reason rooted in experience (empirically)—where experience is taken to mean cognitions that have no counterpart in the real world? [Kant’s meaning; see quote I last provided to James].
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Neri » February 2nd, 2015, 6:34 pm wrote:Neuro,
The alternate analysis I propose in my last post frees us from the shackles of our minds and gives us a window to reality. This is no small thing. Of course, you may disagree. That is your right. However, if you do, I think you are obliged to give your reasons.
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On those forums on which I have moderated in the past it is a requirement, implicit or explicit, to answer direct questions. I do not know if that is the case on this forum. Either way, common politeness would make it appropriate for you to answer. Of course it would be perfectly acceptable for you to impolitely decline to answer, as that would be informative.hyksos » Mon Feb 02, 2015 1:00 pm wrote:[quote="[url=http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=275222#p275222] Neri asked me a direct question (higher up), but I'm really contemplating on whether I should spend the time answering it.
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Neri » 02 Feb 2015 19:34 wrote:Motion and change are real conditions of the world outside of us. Time and space are concepts derived from motion and change and are therefore discursive and not intuitive. They are general expressions of relations between real things and us and of relations among real things independent of us. Neither space in general nor “particular spaces” are substantively real but are only ideas derived from motion and change. However, time and space are well founded in reality.
Our cognitive representations of objects provide us with the means to differentiate real things from each other so that their respective motions relative to us and each other and their immanent changes may be properly understood. Our experience of these motions and changes is virtually equivalent to the motions and changes as they really are. Only a representation of real things is possible for any sentient being. There is no such thing as “an object as it really is,” for any object can only be appreciated as a collection of properties. By merely perceiving a real object, one cannot know all that may be predicated of it. The purpose of the senses is recognition not infallible identification. There is only one world, the world that includes all of us—a world of continual motion and change.
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Eclogite » February 3rd, 2015, 5:11 pm wrote:On those forums on which I have moderated in the past it is a requirement, implicit or explicit, to answer direct questions. I do not know if that is the case on this forum. Either way, common politeness would make it appropriate for you to answer. Of course it would be perfectly acceptable for you to impolitely decline to answer, as that would be informative.hyksos » Mon Feb 02, 2015 1:00 pm wrote:[quote="[url=http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=275222#p275222] Neri asked me a direct question (higher up), but I'm really contemplating on whether I should spend the time answering it.
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hyksos » Sun Feb 08, 2015 5:25 am wrote:(I was having some additional thoughts to tag on here.)
No matter what anyone says in this thread or on this forum, I cannot be made to discuss Kant and his writing as if Critique of Pure Reason was somehow published last month; as if COPR just 'hit the shelves' at Barnes&Noble. Kant wrote in the century in which he wrote. He addressed the issues and philosophers of his day, and I don't deride him for that. My reasons for posting this is the level of acrimony in this thread seems to be a symptom of an underlying problem: the problem being that some people here are pretending Kant is alive today and actively maintaining a blog and actively writing books.
Having admitted that, it must be said that links we try to establish between Kant's writing and extremely new, hot-off-the press neuroscience will be thin threads. Any correlations we draw will be loosey-goosy. We can speak only of these connections with loose historical analogies. I think being grown adults and admitting this to ourselves may help quell the emotional flames that are just now kindling in the thread.
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Neri » February 9th, 2015, 2:24 pm wrote:did Kant derive the existence of noumena by pure reason (metaphysically) or by reason rooted in experience (empirically)—where experience is taken to mean cognitions that have no counterpart in the real world?”
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