/lit/ - Literature

>Critique stands in the same relation to the common metaphysics of the schools, as chemistry does to alchemy, or as astronomy to the astrology of the fortune-teller.

>>23775652
>There is some reason to think that this reduces to Empiricism, but Kant clearly didn't see it that way.
It does because Kant restricts empiricism strictly to the physical senses, as distinct from pure form of spatio-temporal intuition.

>>23683134
>'the a priori/a posteriori dichotomy doesn't make sense to begin with'
you have to think of it in terms of knowledge gained through non-sensuous means (a priori) and knowledge gained through the senses (a posteriori). If you deny the distinction it is probably because you deny the actually of the first type of knowledge and suppose like an empiricist that all knowledge is ultimately derived from the senses, but Kant easily shows this need not be the case with his famous line:

> though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience.

>>23602022
>If you mean by "it is already present in the transcendental realm" as it is potentialy present in some aristotelian sense, I would call that an abuse of Aristotelian metaphysics. Otherwise I don't understand what you mean by transcendental realm.
This potential activity prior to its combination with sense data is actual in the transcendental realm. It is the realm of pure a priori activity independent of it's application to matter or sense data.

>>23466792
>it implies events we dont have an idea of the cause of can't be ordered in time
read Kant again. he doesn't say that; he says that every event in time has a cause, regardless of whether we know its cause or not, and is only concerned with the universal principle of causality in human experience; efficient causes remain to be determined through empirical inquiry. It's ironic you call me the midwit while being filtered by Kant.

What Kant was trying to do was tell philosophers
>why the fuck are you trying to run "does God exist.exe", "Total Annihilation" and "Do we have a soul.exe", at the same time on a 1998 IBM you fucking retard. It doesn't have the specs to handle it.
But some other retard had to say
>works fine on my machine
So Kant had to lay, in detail, the specs of the computer, what could be added, what came with the manufacturer, what could be inputted/ outputted, as well as all the general principles of a 1998 shitbox, so he could try to definitely say what programs could be run and what couldn't.

This analogy is useful in explaining the limitation of the human intellect, but fortunately the human brain as material correlate to the human intellect is organic and capable of growth and change in a way an inorganic electronic computer is not. To run DoesGodExist.exe on an inorganic electronic computer you would need a computer that already had those specs, if not, you'd have to get a new computer, or upgrade with after market parts; on an organic computer, you can start with one that may not be able to run it yet, but can, in time, develop and grow itself to be able to run it. And the same goes with the human body. In fact, this is what I believe the Greys to be. Imagine the intellectual capacities of beings with significantly more vast and complex neural matter correlate, even a more complex physiological matter correlate as a whole. Kant actually addresses this in the first critique as well:

>It is, moreover, not necessary that we should limit the mode of intuition in space and time to the sensuous faculty of man. It may well be that all finite thinking beings must necessarily in this respect agree with man (though as to this we cannot decide)...

>It may be true that there are intelligible existences to which our faculty of sensuous intuition has no relation

>...the categories do in some measure really extend further than sensuous intuition, inasmuch as they think objects in general, without regard to the mode (of sensibility) in which these objects are given. But they do not for this reason apply to and determine a wider sphere of objects, because we cannot assume that such can be given, without presupposing the possibility of another than the sensuous mode of intuition...

>we cannot form the most distant conception of the possibility of an understanding which should cognize an object, not discursively by means of categories, but intuitively in a non-sensuous intuition...

and so on.

>>23285884
>By observing and accounting for the same observed conjunctions.
which never yields the necessity or universality required for the concept of causality PER HUME NOT KANT. Kant is simply solving the problem that HUME put forth. You got stuck at Hume, and like him, returned to the common sense understanding of causality out of the mental discomfort it causes you.

>it is much simpler, much more direct, to give its universal recognition by its effects everywhere being repeated and functioning in experience
this is called being delusional. the whole issue in question is whether IT IS IN FACT everywhere being repeated-- and you cannot, for the n to n-th power time, answer this empirically. You are in effect condoning blind faith that causality is an actual attribute of the empirical observable world rather than rational proof. You are admittedly taking the easy way out when instead you could have taken the difficult road of rational demonstration, i. e., philosophy, which Kant provides.

Kant is the key to unifying modern physics. Quantum theory and General Relativity is the Antinomy of modern times. Transcendental idealism is the solution.

>>22832766
>Do you ever reach a point where you can just blow through kant, without having to re-read shit over and over?
yes, but it takes a kind of dedication few people have especially in the present era of ever decreasing attention spans. I have read Kant everyday for 4 years now and am barely receiving a return on my investment. Is it worth it? Depends on what you value. I value laser-precise conceptualization, "seeing" abstract objects with my "mind's eye", if you will, and this is why i read Kant-- he could fix and manipulate many abstractions all at once with ease, and when you get on his level can follow along, well, I find this more enjoyable than anything else in life. I've reached the point where I'd rather read Kant than jack off to porn, than pursue women, than watch movies, than have friends, than do anything "normal" people do really. People find this really disturbing, and I get it-- I was one of them once, but they only react this way because they don't understand, and unfortunately they will never understand-- unless they travel along the same path themselves.

>>22731270
>>22731282
Anons I have already given reasons for why a noob should read meiklejohn, which these anons have in no way refuted-- if you want to be a scholar of Kant learn German, otherwise you don't need an unreadable word for word dictionary english to german transcription like Guyer/Wood-- you need something readable in IDIOMATIC ENGLISH. Otherwise you won't understand a damn thing anyways and you've wasted your valuable time. At least with Meikllejohn you can read through THE WHOLE THING-- which again as Kant stated in the second preface-- is what matters. Then you can nitpick about particular issues of translation because you now have the idea of the whole within which those particular issues have their context. I can tell you first hand I have read both Guyer/Wood and Meiklejohn and will take Meiklejohn over Guyer/Wood any day of the week. If I need more clarification I refer back to the German text. But I doubt anyone here is that into Kant to actually do that and just wants to get through the Critique at least once in their life-- which again makes the Meiklejohn translation preferable for the reason it is ACTUALLY READABLE ENGLISH-- not to mention free.

>Our Critique would be an investigation utterly superfluous, if there existed a possibility of proving a priori, that all thinking beings are in themselves simple substances, as such, therefore, possess the inseparable attribute of personality, and are conscious of their existence apart from and unconnected with matter. For we should thus have taken a step beyond the world of sense, and have penetrated into the sphere of noumena

>The permanence of the soul, therefore, as an object of the internal sense, remains undemonstrated, nay, even indemonstrable. Its permanence in life is evident, per se, inasmuch as the thinking being (as man) is to itself, at the same time, an object of the external senses. But this does not authorize the rational psychologist to affirm, from mere conceptions, its permanence beyond life.

I think the answer is obvious (which again shows Kant's subtle suggestion presented to the reader subliminally and between the lines): INTELLEKTUELLE ANSCHAUUNG

In other words, all thinking being is related to corporeal being always and therefore must possess a sensibility, but this corporeal being does not necessarily have to be the gross matter of waking life-- mind stuff of intellektuelle anschauung remains possible.

the precision and subtlety always brings me back. no one else (i've read so far) is comparable.

>>22657480
>Kant also has the habit of using the same word interchangably, like object in the cfirst half of COPR meaning the object immediate as sense content, and in the second half of COPR being the object that is indepedantly real.
ngmi

>By confining the view to particular passages, taking these out of their connection and comparing them with one another, it is easy to pick out apparent contradictions, especially in a work written with any freedom of style. These contradictions place the work in an unfavourable light in the eyes of those who rely on the judgement of others, but are easily reconciled by those who have mastered the idea of the whole.

>>22526243
>If I make complete abstraction of the content of cognition, objectively considered, all cognition is, from a subjective point of view, either historical or rational. Historical cognition is cognitio ex datis, rational, cognitio ex principiis. Whatever may be the original source of a cognition, it is, in relation to the person who possesses it, merely historical, if he knows only what has been given him from another quarter, whether that knowledge was communicated by direct experience or by instruction. Thus the Person who has learned a system of philosophy—say the Wolfian—although he has a perfect knowledge of all the principles, definitions, and arguments in that philosophy, as well as of the divisions that have been made of the system, possesses really no more than an historical knowledge of the Wolfian system; he knows only what has been told him, his judgements are only those which he has received from his teachers. Dispute the validity of a definition, and he is completely at a loss to find another. He has formed his mind on another's; but the imitative faculty is not the productive. His knowledge has not been drawn from reason; and although, objectively considered, it is rational knowledge, subjectively, it is merely historical. He has learned this or that philosophy and is merely a plaster cast of a living man. Rational cognitions which are objective, that is, which have their source in reason, can be so termed from a subjective point of view, only when they have been drawn by the individual himself from the sources of reason, that is, from principles; and it is in this way alone that criticism, or even the rejection of what has been already learned, can spring up in the mind.

>>22526044
>neither space nor time have priority over each other.
time has priority over space in the sense that Time contains ALL PHENOMENA in it whereas space only contains external phenomena.

>Time is the formal condition a priori of all phenomena whatsoever. Space, as the pure form of external intuition, is limited as a condition a priori to external phenomena alone. On the other hand, because all representations, whether they have or have not external things for their objects, still in themselves, as determinations of the mind, belong to our internal state; and because this internal state is subject to the formal condition of the internal intuition, that is, to time,—time is a condition a priori of all phenomena whatsoever—the immediate condition of all internal, and thereby the mediate condition of all external phenomena.

>>22524082
alternatively, don't read and just reflect on yourself, concentrate your awareness on the activities of your own mind. Then as you observe these activities realize that those same activities are occurring even against your will-- as you will realize as soon as you try to will an end to the torrent of thoughts. From this realization it is only a short step to the realization that you are not your thoughts (although you may, more or less, control them, or not, depending on the power of your will).

pic unrelated

>>22522584
>Fuck off.

Kant:
>not every one is bound to study Metaphysics, that many minds will succeed very well, in the exact and even in deep sciences, more closely allied to intuition [what can be sensed], while they cannot succeed in investigations dealing exclusively with abstract concepts. In such cases men should apply their talents to other subjects.