UndercoverElephant wrote:James, Kant sees the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA) as the thing which holds the whole show together. If not for it, then we would not have any consistent "I". The TUA is why whatever we think it could be accompanied by an "I think..." We don't experience in the self/"I". What we experience is a unified experience, and from this we can deduce the existence of a unified self.

This is really tricky stuff and I am not sufficiently clued-up about Kant to discuss it with any real authority. All I was doing was pointing out that Kant did indeed include "the I" in his thinking. He just gave it a long, complicated name and supported it with a mind-bendingly complicated argument, just like he did with everything else.

jamest wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:James, Kant sees the transcendental unity of apperception (TUA) as the thing which holds the whole show together. If not for it, then we would not have any consistent "I". The TUA is why whatever we think it could be accompanied by an "I think..." We don't experience in the self/"I". What we experience is a unified experience, and from this we can deduce the existence of a unified self.

This is really tricky stuff and I am not sufficiently clued-up about Kant to discuss it with any real authority. All I was doing was pointing out that Kant did indeed include "the I" in his thinking. He just gave it a long, complicated name and supported it with a mind-bendingly complicated argument, just like he did with everything else.

You seem to have a high opinion of Kant. Elsewhere, I've seen you dismiss metaphysics because of Kant's philosophy.

But the point is that this 'I' is ontologically significant (metaphysically significant)... and I don't see how Kant can reach his negative conclusion about metaphysics whilst simultaneously talking about something which both embraces and unifies experience as a whole.

I don't know enough about Kant to know where or how (if at all) he incorporates his idea of the TUA into his critique of reason. But if he doesn't incorporate the TUA into this particular discourse, then my initial post [to you] on this matter is still relevant. Likewise, if he does [incorporate...], then how did he fail to recognise that the TUA was metaphysically/ontologically significant (which would counter his own conclusion about metaphysics)?

I guess we both need to know more about what Kant said. Which means, perhaps, that you should withdraw your strong trust in his ultimate conclusion?

Conclusion. On the determination of the bounds of pure reason

§ 57. We can't know things in themselves, that is, things as they are apart from being experienced. However, things in themselves may exist and there may be other ways of knowing them, apart from our experience. We must guard against assuming that the limits of our reason are the limits of the possibility of things in themselves. To do this, we must determine the boundary of the use of our reason. We want to know about the soul. We want to know about the size and origin of the world, and whether we have free will. We want to know about a Supreme Being. Our reason must stay within the boundary of appearances but it assumes that there can be knowledge of the things–in–themselves that exist beyond that boundary. Mathematics and natural science stay within the boundary of appearances and have no need to go beyond. The nature of reason is that it wants to go beyond appearances and wants to know the basis of appearances. Reason never stops asking "why?." Reason won't rest until it knows the complete condition for the whole series of conditions. Complete conditions are thought of as being the transcendental Ideas of the immaterial Soul, the whole world, and the Supreme Being. In order to think about these beings of mere thought, we symbolically attribute sensuous properties to them. In this way, the Ideas mark the bounds of human reason. They exist at the boundary because we speak and think about them as if they possess the properties of both appearances and things–in–themselves.

Anyway, this discussion doesn't have to be about what Kant thinks, per se. Your own thoughts on the matter are welcome.

UndercoverElephant wrote:That's not true. What I do is dismiss pre-Kantian metaphysics. If I want to provide an argument for dismissing metaphysics altogether I would turn to people like Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Rorty - people who mark the end of the "golden age" of metaphysics which Kant started.

I have a high opinion of Kant because I think his "copernican revolution in philosophy" deserved the title he gave it. The most fundamental point he made was that we cannot start our enquiry either with pure empiricism or with pure rationalism but must instead start with ourselves and conditions under which we can experience anything at all. That and the distinction between noumena and phenomena (instead of between mind and matter) I think dictated the course of philosophy ever since.

It doesn't counter his own conclusion about metaphysics. He came to the same conclusion. The TUA is where phenomena meets noumena - where objective and subjective become one. For Kant, nothing is more metaphysically significant than the "I".

Again..I'm getting the impression that you think Kant's "ultimate conclusion" about metaphysics was the same as Wittgenstein's and Rorty's. This is not the case. He didn't say "we can't do metaphysics at all, we must remain silent." He just said that we couldn't go on doing metaphysics like the empiricists and rationalists of his day.

When nobody understood the first edition of the CPR, Kant produced and abridged, simplified version. This he called "A Prolegomena to any future metaphysics which can call itself a science."

Are objectivists really the advocated of reason? If "objectivist" means "Ayn Rand" then all I can say is that I've never brought myself to read anything written by Rand. I can't see any point in doing so, because I think her approach is fundamentally wrong-headed -it's as pointless as Dennett's from where I'm standing.

jamest wrote:
Okay, well thanks for putting me right about Kant. Guess I need to read the actual details of his discourse. Do you know of a good commentary of the CPR?

UndercoverElephant wrote:

jamest wrote:
Okay, well thanks for putting me right about Kant. Guess I need to read the actual details of his discourse. Do you know of a good commentary of the CPR?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Critique-Reason ... skept01-21

UndercoverElephant wrote:Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason by Sebastian Gardner (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks)

ColonelZen wrote:Though they claim not to be libertarians, from what I gather you can't tell the difference between libertarianism and Objectivism without a magnifying glass.

dirtnapper wrote:
Effort level required to be ignorant and amoral = very little
Effort level required to be knowlegeable and moral = a lot

dirtnapper wrote:
Do you have a specific point, or just passing on reading material?

Effort level required to be ignorant and amoral = very little
Effort level required to be knowlegeable and moral = a lot

The work is also famous for its dictum, Subjectivity is Truth.