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GeistFaust
09-08-2011, 12:27 AM
Now I only wish to ask the most basic questions concerning how our material minds are capable of applying certain concepts to objects. This is to say why and how is it possible that our concepts must necessarily conform themselves to the objects which they represent. Perhaps this is a question that is out of our grasp but it is something I desire to investigate nonetheless. The immediacy of a particular concept or object is based simply on the perception I have in relation to a given concept or object in particular. This predicate resides on the fact that all the matter I intuit predetermines the matter I cognize through my senses and intellectual analysis.



I would go so far as to divide this process with the order of necessity ranking from intuition to the intellectual analysis of the whole of reality. Reality itself can only take a given relation to us as the human person when it is limited by our intuition to the senses which grasp the original concepts of our reason. This is to say reality itself is only real in so far as it is relatable to us both through our senses and through intellectual analysis this is necessitated on the grounds of the intuition. An object although essential and fundamental to our analysis of reality and ourselves is nothing without the precept of a given thought in relation to it.




This is to say more generally that the object itself necessitates the process of thinking and conceiving certain things concerning the nature of the object perceived. Our intuition though mistakens us in causing certain delusions to reflect onto that process of thinking and conceiving of the relation things share in reality between each other. To illustrate this point let us say the fire is hot. This is something which is basically known to us through the senses which are only capable of feeling things in so far as they are relatable to our intellectual analysis of reality. That is to say in so far as they are dictated by that our sense are processed through a physical organism namely the human body.



The human body(more specifically the brain) is the source of our cognitions and conceptions of reality. Our concept of fire being hot is something which is naturally predetermined by the intuition but it is not verifiable to us until we have sensed the heat. It is our intellectual capacity which allows us to apply and directly relate the immeadiacy of the heat with the fire. This is to say that although the fire and the heat of the fire co-exist to certain degrees and in various quantities it is our intellectual capacity which allows us to define and distinguish such realities. Naturally though our senses play a part in influencing our intellectual capacity because they are connected inherently on common grounds.



Our senses "allow" us to produce the sensation of the heat of the fire thus giving our cognition and intellect something to analyze. Our cognition and intellectual grasping of the coinciding of the heat with the fire is preceded by our sensing it but yet unknown to us remains in constant relation with it. In order to realize the concept which represents a thing there must be a difference or succession in time itself which allows the senses to determine unconsciously the immediate opposition between one moment to the next. There is a constant opposition in time which is determined moment by moment and it only due to this that we can properly conceive of the properties of an object such as fire.



It would not be possible to develop such a cognition of the fire being hot if there was not already a predisposed opposition to that property contained within the fire. This is to say the non-existence of a property is just as necessary to infer the property of something although this does not appear to us as we perceive the world around us. The common reality we all share is limited and defined by the intuition of space and time which likewise are applied and determined by the senses. The intellectual capacity of our minds draw their source and borrow their mode of consciousness from the intuitive boundaries which are drawn all around us.




This is to say we are limited in so far as to our thinking and conception of things based on what is presented to us in experience. This is actually why it the intellect is not worthy of understanding everything that is presented to it because the very existence of the intellect is predicated by the existence of an object. That object is the human person which fundamentally speaking has been pre-determined to think and conceive of reality which in and of itself is inconceivable. To know the properties of a matter is something that is determined by our senses as was said before because the properties of a substance are just as fundmental to the substance as the substance is to it.




The analogy can be made that the heat is to thinking as the fire is to the senses. The fire produces the heat but it does not so only spontaenously so that without one the other would lose its fundamental quality. This differentation is something that occurs quite beyond the capacity of our conceptions and thoughts to adequately understand but it is something which we accept as a matter-of-fact determined by the primacy of our senses over all other things. Now concerning the mistake or fallacies which arise from our senses there are many which the intellectual capacity is suited out to correct and make straight.



It can be said that the essential and fundamental nature of humanity has formed and shaped itself in such a way in which it gifted us all to different degrees and to capacity to correct and make straight the mistakes and delusions that the instinct predicates to reality. It quite baffles me how my instinct can be mistaken despite the fact it is the source of my cognition which is employed to arrange and correct the internal nature of reality which presents itself through particular objects which contain the conceptions which our senses self reflect on and which our mode of cognition defines and distinguished properly.


Every specific thing has a fundamental and broader nature likewise every fundamental and broader nature only has its existence in so far as it exists through its specifity. This specifity will be different depending on the fundamental nature of a thing which is known to differ on a much broader scale between species.


That is to say the fundamental nature of life manifests it strictly biologically speaking and its differences like in biology but that all life regardless of how it differs one from the other is gathered under a single general rule namely the intuition which assigns to each fundamentally different reality its own specific traits.


Even in a fundamentally similar species there exists a great variety of difference and diversity and even an inherent structure and order which predetermines the nature of those properties, capacities, and characteristics which will represent the fundamental diversity contained by nature.



Likewise the same could be said of the concepts we have of reality they differ greatly based on our interpretation and relation to the object taken in a more broadly defined way. My issue simply was to deal with how do we arrive at the cognition of certain concepts of things and if these concepts are only things which are re-validated by our cognition of them which has its source in our senses.


All our basic concepts seem to take root in our senses only in so far as they coincide directly with biological and chemical causes. The very concept of the sky being blue is taken as a matter of fact but this matter of fact is immediately to our senses the direct result of biological and chemical reactions. The senses can understand this basic nature but it can not comprehend or distinguish the vast complex nature as to why an object coincides with a particular concept or has it contained with its nature.



This is something at least empircally speaking which is left to our cognition and intellect to cognize and distinguish. Yet these cognitions and distinguishments are limited by the way in which our senses "present" objects to us and also given how an object "presents itself to us something which is objectively determined.

Saturni
09-19-2011, 12:40 PM
Or, to put it more succinctly, all "reality" is simply the subjective experience of an isolate consciousness struggling to make sense of the sensory input it is being bombarded with.

GeistFaust
09-22-2011, 07:27 PM
Or, to put it more succinctly, all "reality" is simply the subjective experience of an isolate consciousness struggling to make sense of the sensory input it is being bombarded with.

I can agree with this but then this "reality" is merely disclosed to the subject in the form of the human. Also you must realize that our capacity to gather and absorb sensory input exponentially increased as we develop psychologically from an infant to an adult. This psychological development will necessitate in the development of our intellectual perception and our intellect in essence is the constitutive grounds for our senses in a "sense". The way our intellect interprets and understands what our senses absorb "becomes" the way in which the internal mode of consciousness "perceives" the world or perceives itself as a subjet. This self consciousness is implied everytime we attempt to posit a unnecessary fact or truth through our intellect in correlation to the matter of our senses and the given objects of our reality.

Saturni
09-22-2011, 07:52 PM
I can agree with this but then this "reality" is merely disclosed to the subject in the form of the human. Also you must realize that our capacity to gather and absorb sensory input exponentially increased as we develop psychologically from an infant to an adult. This psychological development will necessitate in the development of our intellectual perception and our intellect in essence is the constitutive grounds for our senses in a "sense". The way our intellect interprets and understands what our senses absorb "becomes" the way in which the internal mode of consciousness "perceives" the world or perceives itself as a subjet. This self consciousness is implied everytime we attempt to posit a unnecessary fact or truth through our intellect in correlation to the matter of our senses and the given objects of our reality.

Actually, we lose a portion of our senses of sight and taste as we grow older.

We would do well to remember that what we "experience" is only an approximation of those experiences, not the reality of them.

As for Objectivity, this is an illusion, Nothing has an objective existence.

GeistFaust
09-22-2011, 08:06 PM
Actually, we lose a portion of our senses of sight and taste as we grow older.

We would do well to remember that what we "experience" is only an approximation of those experiences, not the reality of them.

As for Objectivity, this is an illusion, Nothing has an objective existence.

That is true I was speaking in the context of psychological development from the period of infancy to adulthood I know there is an exponential decline after a certain age. I do agree that we can merely approximate that which we experience and the substance which we experience in the context of our experience. I do believe there are a few analytical apriori facts which we can observe and understand through synthetical unity such as Kant's examples regarding 2 + 2 =4 and the necessity of two sides of a triangle equaling more than the other side. These are basic, logical, and objective existences which we can agree on regardless of whether we intellectually agree or disagree with its content. The ironic thing is these analytical connections depend on the conscious subject to constitute it through the content gathered by the intellect in experience in correlation to the matter of our senses. I do agree though most of that which we call objective is based simple on the way which given objects or other people's illusion constructs of reality impress themselves on our minds. And we also construct our own unique version of reality itself through illusion claims that "become" necessary truths for us even if the basis for these truths is merely limited to the subjective claims of the individual. You do have to agree that the individual can never be properly attain to the things in and of themselves even though they are trapped in phenomenal beings and "manifests" itself through them.

Saturni
09-22-2011, 09:07 PM
Kant's mistake, imo, was his idea of an a priori state of existence.

Nothings exists until it is thought of in the human mind. The idea that anything has an objective existence is, itself, merely the thought of an subjective consciousness.

Barreldriver
09-22-2011, 09:23 PM
Bah, as interesting as philosophy is I hate overwordiness. Hail the six word story "For sale, baby shoes, never worn".

Those things that are seemingly independent of myself do they not only serve the purpose of describing what I am or am not? Mere adjectives to my own mind.

GeistFaust
09-22-2011, 09:30 PM
Kant's mistake, imo, was his idea of an a priori state of existence.

Nothings exists until it is thought of in the human mind. The idea that anything has an objective existence is, itself, merely the thought of an subjective consciousness.

Then when do we define the tranmission of an unknown state of being to an known state of being as something which has been directly conceived by the mind. I suppose the senses and the succession of time which is independent of our intellect, but spontaneously united with it in a disconjunctive way, would have to "define" the possibility for knowing something whatsoever and the actual knowledge which the intellect comes to understand of the objects of its reality. Then again is this "defined" state which holds the transcendental grounds of the possibility for knowing something and which defines the boundaries between the moment from which we can come to know something from the previous moment something which is a predetermined "projection" disclosed in the subject. It all gets rather tricky and confusing and at some point its not worth speculating about the metaphysical connection with the intellect and the senses.

Barreldriver
09-22-2011, 09:33 PM
I have a problem with Kant's proof of 2+2 = 4.

Kant's proof:


4 = 3 + 1 (Definition)
3 = 2 + 1 (Definition)
2 = 1 + 1 (Definition)
4 = 4 (Principle of Identity)
4 = 3 + 1 (1, 4, Substitution of Identicals for Identicals)
4 = (2 + 1) + 1 (2, 5, Substitution of Identicals for Identicals)
4 = 2 + (1 + 1) (6, Associativity of Addition)
4 = 2 + 2 (3, 7, Substitution of Identicals for Identicals)

The issue lies with 4 = 4 (Principle of Identity). Principle of identity demands that an object be the same as itself. Is four an object? Is it not an adjective, a descriptor, a tag along to describe how many? Adjectives are not nouns, nouns are objects, therefore if 4 is an adjective 4 is not a noun and thus not an object.

If four is indeed an object, what is a four and where can I get one? :wink

Saturni
09-22-2011, 10:23 PM
In the absence of consciousness there is nothing. Like the old question, "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Same thing with Kant and his a priori/things in themselves arguments. The idea that something can exist independent of consciousness makes no sense. Without the mind to acknowledge an event or thing, it has no substantive existence.

Ultimately, man is, indeed, the measure of all things, as it is only through his conscious mind can and do things come in and out of existence.

7M-cmNdiFuI

Barreldriver
09-22-2011, 11:31 PM
In the absence of consciousness there is nothing. Like the old question, "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Same thing with Kant and his a priori/things in themselves arguments. The idea that something can exist independent of consciousness makes no sense. Without the mind to acknowledge an event or thing, it has no substantive existence.

Ultimately, man is, indeed, the measure of all things, as it is only through his conscious mind can and do things come in and out of existence.

7M-cmNdiFuI

Saw an interesting spiel on the history channel where one of the guests for the presentation had suggested that things that we do not acknowledge with our senses basically do not exist in our universe until we make a given choice and whatever choice we consciously make causes our universe to bend and meet with whatever universe the outcome of our choice exists in allowing both universes to merge and exist within each other and that black holes may be the "portal" through which these universes are able to bend into each other or something like that. (My memory is a bit fuzzy on this). Perhaps earlier philosophers were on to something with the whole "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it did it make a sound" spiel.

Saturni
09-23-2011, 12:26 AM
If you think it, it's real.

GeistFaust
09-23-2011, 03:05 AM
I have a problem with Kant's proof of 2+2 = 4.

Kant's proof:



The issue lies with 4 = 4 (Principle of Identity). Principle of identity demands that an object be the same as itself. Is four an object? Is it not an adjective, a descriptor, a tag along to describe how many? Adjectives are not nouns, nouns are objects, therefore if 4 is an adjective 4 is not a noun and thus not an object.

If four is indeed an object, what is a four and where can I get one? :wink



Good question and one that can not be immediatately resolved through a philosophical reply. The formal definition is the only way in which the object of 4 as an abstract concept of our intuition can express itself in a way for us to conceive it as such. I think Kant made a correlate to the point to which abstract objects of our intuition need to manifest themselves through phenomenal realities that appear to the general form of our intellectual perception. It would make no sense to understand the intuitive form of the object if it was not constituted in something tanigible or our sense data could not process any real or "logically" ordered information.




This is to say the principle of identity necessitates that the object 4 can only be conceived on the foundation of that identity is constituted in the general form of the substitution of identicals. This is to say that the process of the substitution of identicals implies the object of 4 on the basis that it is actually represented in the process of subsitution. The general possibility which is theoretical in and of itself is defined in the context of the substitution or association of identicals per se.




The object 4 is implied only if it takes part in the substitution process other than that it holds no value per se if you don't use or abstract it either to reach an analytical conclusion or when it is an analytical conclusion. Once you isolate it from the context of the process of substitution it loses its reality and it only gains again it when it is posited in the context. That said it remains a theoretical reality but only because we know it on the basis of past experiences aquainting with it. You can eliminate the object during the process of substitution and association it is inferred as a necessity in order for any given operation to have a "sense" of direction.




In a sense you are merely just arranging the objects of your intuition by correlating these simple and logical necessities and theoretical possibilities through symbolic expressions such as plus signs, subtraction signs, multiplication signs, ect that you illusion to have actual meaning. In a sense the illusion which the sign produces "becomes" a necessary and general rule or principle upon which the objects of our intuition can be given a "sense" of thematic direction. A thematic direction which by nature constitutes the possibility for the objects to express themselves and for us to use the objects of identity to reach a conclusion positing an object of necessity which follows upon specific rules and principles are supposed to substitute for what the objects of identity left unaltered by signs and symbols can not furnish.

GeistFaust
09-23-2011, 03:09 AM
If you think it, it's real.


I don't think this is necessarily true we can only think of a thing as is inherently possible based on that specific matters of objects that surround me from one day to the next. I may want to think that the Eiffel Tower is is New York but than again this assumption would be fallacious because the facts constitute themselves and sometimes do not need us to answer them.



Than again its true that what we can think is limited by how we think or what we think about life. Its a bit unclear though if our thoughts determine reality itself they might influence the subconscious structure of our reality slightly and without them then in a sense you could say in so far as the facts correlate to us they would be void of meaningful content. There are some things which we can think of into reality and there are others which we can not but for instance we can add thoughts to the facts themselves.



I think the Eiffel tower is a pleasant component of the overall format of the city of Paris but this reality is limited to its very possibility being constituted by the fact regardless of whether that fact is merely a thematic construction or one in which we understand it to be more or less absolute. The thought which I explained earlier is one of personal acknowledgment I do not need to experience Paris for myself as determined by my senses in order to make it.



The direct value which I attach to my intellectual conception of Paris is a judgment which is enough to make it a necessary and valid truth for myself at least. Judgments of a fact are the essential constitutive component in which absolute facts whether they be temporarily imprinted in space-time or permanently are capable of being understood or grasped as they are. Without them facts and logical necessities would lack meaning and be void of any constructive content.

Saturni
09-23-2011, 10:59 AM
Thought is reality.