Hello everyone and welcome to the third session of the circle of revenge with Reza Nagarstani. Here is your instructor. Thanks Leo. Okay, let's hear if you have any questions, anything that I can, you know, vague, or, you know, things that you didn't grasp fully, just feel free to ask me questions. questions, and then I start to read parts of introduction, make some commentaries, and then I will go to transcendental aesthetics, the first part of it, the space. I think we probably can't go to time, but nevertheless, I try to somehow set the tone
for how this project is going to develop, I mean the critical period reason. Could we just briefly finish up the historical background from last time? I think we left off kind of midway through Hume and needed to talk about Leibniz and both. Yes. I'm going to talk about them when we get to the space part, the transcendental aesthetics. But I will try to... So basically... Actually, you see that in the introduction, Kant puts quite a heavy emphasis on the idea of a robust metaphysics, a healthy non-dogmatic metaphysics.
And this is really coming from the Leibnizian tradition, not essentially directly from Leibniz, but German rationalist metaphysicians of the time who were influenced heavily by Leibniz, Crucius and Wolf. And the main point of, not all of the influence, but the main point of influence of these two thinkers and Kant is essentially time and space. The metaphysics of time and space as organizing principles for the possibility of experience. And then And we will talk about this, how essentially Kant
adopt some of the Leibnizian core of these two thinkers, but also gives a critique of the relational theory of the space, which is basically a Leibnizian. Questions? Heckling? You So you have been quite silent today yeah, no, sorry I Was busy this morning, but I do have Some sections that I was gonna ask about but I'm not wait the
yeah I was especially interested in this part in the introduction be be 23 says he ends the first part this paragraph he says how is metaphysics of possible as science their critique of reason thus leads necessarily to science. The dogmatic use of it without critique, on the contrary, leads to groundless assertions, which one can oppose equally plausible ones, thus to skepticism. Yes. And then he goes on and says, further, this science cannot be terribly
extensive, for it does not deal with objects of reason, whose multiplicity is infinite, but merely with itself and with problems that spring entirely from its own womb and that are not set before it by nature of things that are distinct from it but through its own nature so that once it has become completely familiar with its own capacity in regard to objects that may come before it in experience then it must become easy to determine completely and securely the domain and the bounds of its attempted use beyond all bounds of experience. Yes. Okay. Well, a good example of this, really, I mean, you know, when I wrote the book,
and this particularity is these, you know, sections and moving forward for the next few pages, I thought they are actually quite relevant in this stuff. I mean, I'm trying to somehow make a close, a logical example to make this a little bit clear before I delve into it. I think they are quite relevant for this whole idea about post-human intelligence, you know? Because ultimately, Kant is trying to analyze, give it a thoroughgoing survey and a study in terms of the bounds or constraints, the condition of the possibility, and also future development or amplification of cognitive faculties. That's essentially really the core of transcendental psychology,
which is the project of artificial general intelligence. So you see, when you are basically the posthumanist talk about artificial general intelligence, a good example of this, which I think is quite sophisticated, is David Rodin. They don't want to talk about human cognition and its constraints. They in fact want to talk about how cognitive faculties can be disconnected from its present constraints, and hence speculate about what intelligence, post-human intelligence, might look like. We can't call this a dogmatic metaphysics, precisely because when you are talking about
what it is that you are talking about, the idea is not to directly approach it, but obliquely by going to the primary rudimentary constraints, understand that what is it that in fact you are trying to address. For example, the question of cognition or intelligence. What are the necessary constraints for the realization of intelligence or cognition? Because in so far as everything that you are going to talk about, about the model of mind, some alien intelligence, so on and so forth, is going to be implicitly constrained by your instantiated, already realize cognitive faculties. In essence, it will be modeled on the human mind, particularly
the set of theoretical and practical reasonings. Hence, we can't really talk about future intelligence, that would be dogmatic metaphysics, unless we start to go down to see is that if our model of mind, our practical and theoretical cognitions, or in fact the model of any form of description that we give about intelligence, then what are the conditions that simultaneously enable and constrain our theoretical and practical cognitions or cognitive faculties? Because trying to get outside of these bounds essentially lead to dogmaticism.
Now, the question of a skepticism arises here, and that's really, Hegel builds on this quite significantly. The question of a skepticism here, which of course I mentioned about Hossel as well, Well, when we try to analyze or give a critique of our own constraints of cognition, or in Kant's sense, when we are trying to identify the very constraints of our representational systems. But if our representational systems have thus and so already realized capacities and constraints,
then how can we step outside of this system in order to identify such constraints? You see, the problem of skepticism here arises. So critique, in fact, Kant, even though he, when he's talking here about skepticism, he means the kind of human kind of skepticism, the kind of empirical skepticism. But in fact, the very project of critique on which Hegel builds is already incorporating skepticism in its own body, the very idea that how to identify these constraints, precisely because we are using capacities and faculties, which means that how can we step outside and
look at them, identify them. What's interesting is in the Rosenberg text, I read the first chapter and he identifies like the origin of the skepticism in a Platonism the type of Platonism he calls a theological and it's like the idea of forms having to like to resolve the problem of how do we know like the the forms and the particulars is to assume that there's some portion or some aspect of form within the particulars from which we can then discern God's conception of it but
that is that in itself like the assumption is what presents the question of how do we know yes yes well skepticism you see a skepticism comes in varieties of forms I think you know the strongest forms of the skepticisms ever put forward are by the Pyronic skeptics. The idea that all non-evident propositions, all non-evident propositions, can be equally justified with the same weight, and they will be equally valid. Now this is essentially, and Hegel builds on this, this is the very idea of the
dialectics, which is the engine of the phenology of the spirit and ultimately logic of science, that you have being and nothing can be justified on their own grounds. Yes, and it's called isolatheria, I think, in Pyronic philosophy. So we have being and nothing, they can be equally justified. Now, Hegel does something extra to this skeptical project. He tries to, rather than aesthetically say that they are both justified, try to create a dynamic between them so they can be sublated, they can be brought to an elevated level where
there is a unity between them, but this unity is fragile. And what is this unity, for example, for in the case of being and nothing? They become determinate being and determinate being and other kinds of stuff that shows the movement of the concept. And the reason is that Hegel says quite explicitly that a spirit or mind is a self-consummating skepticism. The phenomenal knowledge of the mind requires a skepticism, otherwise it becomes dogmatic, precisely because how do you know? Not how do you know about the world, but how do you know that these capacities or faculties
through which you use in order to describe an objective world are constrained by such and such factors or parameters? How can you identify such constraints? Because that's the project of the critique. That's the project of critique, identification of these constraints. Constraints not in a negative sense, both in an enabling sense and in a restricting sense. Ones that enables the engine of transcendental philosophy, the application of the a priori principles, but also one that restricts these, or constitutes the bounds of reason or logic. Because obviously a reason that is too unbound in its form leads to arbitrariness in transcendental
projects. If whatever we say about the world could make, could be relevant about the world, then there would be no need to do philosophy really. That would be just sophistry. That's essentially Plato's attack on the sophists. If what was said had a deep correspondence with what it is, then there is no need for philosophy, or science for that matter. But in so far as between what is said and what is, that which is, there is no correspondence, then we need to determine how is that what we say is somehow retrospectively constrained by
an objective world, by an objective reality. Hence the project of critique does two things at the same time. One, identification of enabling constraints that allow us to arrive at the knowledge of objects and ultimately synthetic uproar, the entire spectrum of cognitive faculties and non-cognitive capacities. Second, identification of how some of our faculties, not all, or some of our capacities
are in fact constrained by an objective reality. Hence, ultimately within the project of the critique, the picture of science that is given is essentially what Hegel might have called self-consciousness of science, learning in its own boundaries so as to develop non-movematically. This might be a bit of a naive question, but I mean, you mentioned the phrase self-consummating
skepticism. I was wondering if that was like a phrase derived by you, or if it comes from any sort of specific reference. Yeah, it comes from phenomenology of a spirit. I've forgotten which section, but I mean, you can easily, I think it's early sections, 50-something, 48, 52, something like that. Yes, it's from Hegel. It says that the phenomenal knowledge of the mind is a self-consuming skepticism. Thank you. Absolutely.
Any more questions? Artem, Alice? Anyone? Okay. So. I just have a quick... Are we going to make it to time? I don't think that we can get it to time today. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think so. Not enough time. I'm too optimistic. So, first, let me just quickly go through the introduction. I mean, feel free, these are just the ones that I have bookmarked, highlighted.
I mean, if you have any question about other parts, please do ask. One of the reasons that I want to quickly go over it, because obviously it's an introduction, everything that is here will be unpacked much further once we get into the actual text. So in page, what is that, page 142, the paragraph to the last one, he says,
It is thus experience on which the possibility of the synthesis, of the predicate, of weight in the concept of body is grounded, since both concepts, though the one is not contained in the other, nevertheless belong together, though only contingently, as parts of the whole, namely experience, which is itself a synthetic combination of intuitions. So we talked about this analytic-synthetic distinction. Analytic ones are the ones that the predicates already contained in the subject, where you can simply analyze the concept,
break it down, and the meaning is being clarified, or that extra meaning that predicate is going to be clarified or explicated. Now another one is the synthetic ones are the ones that the predicate is not contained in the subject. So you can't simply analyze the concept in order to arrive that extra piece of knowledge. So these are also called ampliative or amplificatory judgments in so far as they add something to the concept that you already have. So yes. Could you please just provide the B or A version numbers? I'm using a different translation,
so the page numbers don't help me very much. Oh, it's a second introduction. It's the last paragraph of A8. Got it, thank you very much. Absolutely. So, but there is here a problem later, I'm going forward back in time. So looking at Kant's distinction of analytic synthetic a little bit in a more complex way. So Kant says that. So the idea is that, for example, body is extended is obviously analytic, because the definition of the concept
of body, once you analyze it, once you break it down, extension is a necessary part of it. is a necessary part of the concept. What does Kant mean by necessary? It means universally true as a matter of a rule that admits no exception, admits no exception. Okay? But it is also a universal rule applied under every condition whatsoever. So now the body is heavy, body has weight, that is a synthetic form. Because no matter how much you, as I
read this paragraph, no matter how much you analyze the concept of body, you can arrive at weight. But nevertheless, you can see that whenever the concept of body is posited, is also a concept of weight. So there is a kind of integration between them. What is integration? Kant is quite careful. It says that it's only contingent, it's not necessary. So here you have a connection. Necessary is essentially here in terms of the subject predicate, relation. When Kant says necessary, it means analytic. When he means contingent, it means
the relation of subject predicate, it means synthetic. Now, this, Kant's idea of, I mean, the distinction between synthetic and analytic judgment appears to be quite rudimentary, at least in this Kantian picture. But it is actually one of the most controversial subjects in analytic philosophy, at least since time of John Stuart Mill and then later on by logicians like Bolzano and later on by people like Carnap, Quine, this distinction has been refined or fundamentally challenged.
But one of the most interesting takes on analytic synthetic distinction that tries to refine Kant's idea is coming from theoretical computer science by Per Martin Lowe, who is the father of constructive type theory. So I don't want to get into the details, but so going back to the earlier logic, Bolzano makes this distinction that there is synthetic analytic judgment,
And there is, in addition to synthetic analytic judgment, there is also something called basically conceptual intuitive distinction. So Bolzano's definition of analytic synthetic propositions vastly differs from Kant's. of analytic proposition for Bolzano now means a logically valid proposition, that is, one which is true under all possible interpretations, and synthetic is the one that is not.
So you see, essentially, even though Bolzano's distinction between analytic synthetic propositions or judgments differs from Kant is essentially an extension of Kant. You see, I mentioned necessary contingent. Necessary is always analytic in terms of subject predicates. Contingent is synthetic. Bolzano calls an analytic proposition, a proposition which is logically a valid proposition that is one which is true under all possible interpretations, ideal necessity and universality of application.
Now another distinction that Bolzano makes which is quite similar to this classical Kantian picture of the distinction is the differentiation between conceptual and intuitive propositions, or conceptual and intuitive judgments. So what does it that Bolzano means by this? It's essentially an analytic, a conceptual proposition is a proposition that can be broken
down and through the course of this analysis, this being broken down, new parts of the concepts, content of the concepts are being explicated, are being clarified, are made explicit, are brought to light. Exactly like the concept of the body is extended, body is extended. Once you analyze the concept of body, extension comes to light, is being made explicit as as an intrinsic necessary part of the concept of body. Now this leads to an interesting kind of, again, looking back from later logicians into classical
Kantian distinction, this gives a very interesting interpretation of Kant. So we know that for Kant, an analytic proposition or an analytic judgment is the one that you do not need to step outside of the concept, step outside of the subject. Predicate is already contained in the subject. You don't need to step outside. All you need to do is to break it down. So analytic judgment is the one that you do not need to step outside of it. Step outside to what exactly?
Experience. Experience. And synthetic judgment is a judgment that you need to step outside of your concept or your subject or your proposition. To do what exactly? To make evident the predicate, to make evident that extra piece of knowledge. So that's very, very useful when Kant says that another way to call synthetic analytic judgment is to understand them in terms of the distinction between a clarificatory or
explicative and ampliatory judgments. This allows you... So essentially the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgment is how you can make evident that extra piece of knowledge. Now, what is the consequence of this? An example. The temperature is 25 centigrade. Is this an analytic judgment or a synthetic judgment? Synthetic. Yes, because you need to obviously step outside of your judgment
and look at a thermometer where there is degree 25. So there is an step outside into experience. But this is when you see the judgment as a whole, when you see both subject and predicate within the same judgment. Now, let's do something else. Essentially,
your utterance, it's 25, and put it side by side by the thermometer, by the picture of the thermometer, by the visual of the thermometer. So what you have done essentially here is that we know that it is 25 degrees centigrade, like our body is heavy, the body is a concept, a subject and the predicate is heavy. But if you decompose your judgments into proposition, into subject and predicate, so as you can see them in terms of different propositions that need to be combined, then you can also put them together. When you see a pencil,
example 10 cm, you put a ruler next to it and you say that it's 10 cm. It's essentially synthetic once taken as a whole. When you put the ruler, which gives you the indication of the length of your pencil, and this is a pencil, then it is essentially your original judgment. Now you can treat it in fact as an analytic judgment rather than a synthetic judgment. Because as I mentioned, analytic judgment is essentially a stepping outside the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgment is all about how we can make that extra piece of evidence explicit.
In the first case, we took it as a synthetic judgment. It is, for example, this pencil it's 10 centimeters long. We just treated the entire utterance as a piece of judgment without any compositionality in it. Now, in order to make it evident, I need to step outside, I need to bring a ruler, an experiential move, put it next to my pencil and say it's 10 centimeters. Now let's take the ruler, namely the observational data and your pencil as part of the same judgment. They are now combined.
And now it becomes simply an analytic judgment again. Because you don't need to step outside of this composition anymore. Now what is the significance of this? Well, you see in the introduction, Kant wants to... What is his pieces of evidence that there is such a thing as synthetic upriory knowledge? He uses pure math and physics as evidence. Yes. So mathematical cognition is essentially synthetic a priori, but it can also be seen as purely analytic.
Depends on how you approach your mathematical judgments. Essentially Kant says that cognition is the construction of concepts. How can you construct concepts? Constructing concepts require you a process of composition rather than process of breaking down. But within these compositions, again, new analytic, you can view them essentially as pieces of analytic judgments. together, compose a ruler and a pencil. Two concepts.
This ruler and this pencil, I mean, they seem like sort of empirical experiential phenomena. So would these analytic judgments be like analytic a priori or would they be analytic a posteriori? No, you see, we know that the ruler is not really empirical, it's not purely empirical. It has a concept, the concept of centimeter, the concept of degrees. Hence, it already hosts a type in computer theoretical sense or in Kantian sense, a pure
concept of understanding, a category. And the whole idea of analytic synthetic distinction is to how to combine categories, really. Ultimately, boils down to how to combine categories, or how to distinguish them from one another. Okay. Let me read you this, there is another example that Martin Law... So okay, I will read, it's a whole page.
He says, to explain the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments can make a very clarifying move by introducing the two terms explicative judgment, which in your edition is called clarificatory judgment, and ampliative judgment. The idea is that the analytical or explicative judgments are those that become evident merely merely by conceptual analysis. That is, there are those whose evidence rests on conceptual analysis alone. That explanation, or almost verbatim, that explanation was given by Kant, and I certainly
cannot improve the now current formulation that an analytic judgment is one which is evident in virtue of the meanings of the terms that occur in it. The meaning of the terms that occur in it. Sorry, it's so small I can't even see anything. That is the canonical formulation that we all seem to use. The canonical formula, like the canonical concept of body. canonical concept of one. Our present understanding of them is fortunately in essential agreement with Kant's own understanding
of them. What we seem to have difficulties with is understanding properly Kant's notion of synthetic or ampliative judgment. The Kantian idea is that there are certain judgments which are such that they are not evidence solely in virtue of the meanings of the terms involved, but on the contrary, you have to go beyond what is contained entirely within the judgment in order to make it evident to yourself. It is an empirical judgment in Kant's terminology, an a posteriori judgment. Then what you go to beyond the judgment itself is to experience. You have to look out, so to speak, whereas in the case of purely mathematical judgment,
what needs to be joined to the judgment itself in order to make it evident is a construction, a mathematical construction. Kant had this wonderful formulation, which was quoted by Professor Korner, mathematical cognition through the construction of concepts, and which is key to understanding the Kantian notion of a synthetic and a priori judgment. So a synthetic judgment is one which is such that you have to go beyond the judgment itself in order to convince yourself of it, and in the purely mathematical case that going beyond means that you have to make more or less ingenuous construction in order for the judgment
to become evident to you. So an example of this, if I say it is raining, then of course, supposing now that it is raining, which it is not, no amount of mere conceptual analysis of what it is containing in this judgment can tell you that it is raining. If you want to convince yourself of the fact that it is raining, there is no other way other than to expose yourself directly to the falling of the rain, or else to provide some kind of indirect evidence. So it is the falling rain, or the piece of indirect evidence, that makes the judgment that it is raining evident, which means that this judgment is synthetic.
On the other hand, if you look at the whole complex as a judgment consisting of a non-linguistic part, the falling rain, and a properly linguistic part, the utterance itself, then that judgment is an analytic one. You see, everything is contained in that judgment that you need in order to convince yourself of it. If someone does not agree to the statement that it is raining in the presence of the falling rain, then there is simply something wrong with his conceptual understanding. He lacks some of the concepts involved, or he has misunderstood them, or something like
that. It must at once be admitted, however, that this way of treating the linguistic and non-linguistic on a par is something which would have been alien to Kant. So I have definitely said something that goes beyond Kant now. Sorry Reza, which text was that? This is a text by Per Martin Loff, part of his series of papers he wrote, I think it is called analytic and synthetic judgments in type constructed type theory. Great, thank you. It is truly an astonishing, I mean, I mentioned that, you know, theoretical computer scientists
are, you know, it's one of those fields that computer scientists are actually proud of being influenced by philosophy rather than other scientists, oh, philosophy is, you know, keep it away and and Marteloff is essentially a very very brilliant reader of Kent and he was you know in conversation with people like Domit with you know with with the kind of British in French realism is is quite great I've got some other other stuff in this regard that I can I can put the classroom and this has been a particularly interesting thing that I've been I've been trying to investigate I can't really say too much about it now because I just got
home but I can post some stuff to the Google Drive yes okay fantastic excellent So, all of this to say that synthetic judgments are what you might call to be, every synthetic judgment is ultimately grounded in an analytic judgment, counterintuitively. understanding, analytic in this new sense, in the construction of concepts, allow us to make something evident to ourselves. And then what is exactly synthetic judgment?
Synthetic judgment is an analytic judgment, part of which you have suppressed. This is quite counterintuitive to your Kantian ears, because we always think that synthetic judgment means essentially some analytic concepts on one side and some experience stuff on the other side. But no, these are both parts of a single judgment that you can bring, you can construct them back together. And in fact you can show that synthetic judgment is essentially a special case of a more comprehensive
form of analytic judgment, construction of concepts, combining them. One thing that's been particularly interesting in these waters for me is the issue of questions and answers, and I guess an issue of possibility and actuality. It seems like what the synthetic judgments do is be able to, through the introduction
of some other composite of analytic judgments to another body of analytic judgments, that are able to wager some sort of claim. But that claim remains to be analytically evaluated. and like to wager synthetic claim like it requires some sort of faith that that wagering will somehow result into some sort of analytic validity. Yes, yeah no yes this is this is quite interesting yes Yes, the whole idea is that possibility, actuality, and so forth are just pure concepts of understanding,
they are categories. So categories in theories about computer science, quite literally, is the notion of constructive type, not Rossellian type, if you are so familiar with Russell's type, no, these are not Rossellian types, these are constructive types, types that can be combined. Now essentially, you see, Christian, for example, you see when we are saying, bringing back to our ruler and pencil example, so you have, it is a pencil, this pencil is 10 cm long, and a ruler, side by side. Now you have here one that is non-linguistic, a non-linguistic piece of data, right?
What does this non-linguistic piece of data refer to ultimately? It's an existential claim. It's an existential qualifier, a particular object, right? A ruler. So all forms of synthetic judgments ultimately require existential quantification. A particular object. The particular object is your evidence. Right? Now hold on on this. says later on in Critique of Pure Reason that if you want to say that such a type exists,
such a category exists, all you need to do is to construct a particular object for it, to find a piece of evidence that fall under this category. Here exactly Martin Locke is trying to use this fundamental idea and apply it to logic and mathematics. Essentially existential judgments, existentially quantified judgments, they are not special, they are not something like that there is some stuff there.
All you need to do to prove that they exist, and hence to make that comprehensive analytic judgment, is to find an object or construct an object, a particular existentially quantified object that falls under that concept. That would be the proof of the existence of such an object. And that's exactly how type theory functions. So then what qualifies as an object in that? For example, an object, let's say for example a ring, a manifold, you know, or a Riemannian
surface. A Riemannian surface. You have basically all you need to do is to construct surface having such and such characteristics. So this is kind of interesting. I mean, I don't want to go on too much of like a explicit mathematical tangent, but I I mean, this is kind of continuous with what I've been reading regarding, like, Herbrand's theorem. because the whole issue is that in order to be able to verify some sort of synthetic judgment,
it requires some sort of quasi-idempotency. And what I mean by, I don't know if idempotency is exactly the right word, But, I mean, essentially what I mean is that, like, each of the different existential quantifiers, the proposition, which they assert some sort of existential quantifier upon, like, needs to be unified. essentially that means that each existential quantifier must be in order for the synthetic judgment to be analytically validated on being um projections of the same type yes which which
exactly the whole idea that in order for you to see them in order to actually prove that such an object exists, you need to go back to the analytic judgment again, to the analytic types, to the types. And the thing, yes, you see, as I mentioned, an existential proposition or an existential judgment is the source of synthetic judgments. Because you can't make synthetic judgments unless you have a particular object. In a particular object, you can only judge it by existential quantification.
Now which in mathematics, it can be shown quite easily at such existential quantification, essential propositions, which are the source of synthetic judgments, can only be obtained once you suppress part of your type, your analytic types, your synthetic judgments. So let's not get too involved with this, but I just wanted to make sure that you think about this more coherently. Another thing is that while Kant talks about pure mathematics
and mathematical sciences as examples of synthetic upriary, he never really says that what is exactly in mathematics that is synthetic upriory and how is it possible? Kant's examples are quite actually rudimentary, the idea of geometry. And the idea of geometry that he puts forward is quite Euclidean, you know, it's essentially one that your objects can be somehow thought intuitively. But as we have seen development of mathematics, we no longer can intuit about some of these objects in our experience, if
at all. So it requires kind of somehow a remodification of this analytic synthetic distinction to preserve the distinction, but also show that how synthetic judgments are in fact possible within a domain which is purely analytic. You have concepts that can be broken down, you have judgments, you have construction of these concepts, so on and so forth. So, let's have a tiny break and then we will come back and then I will read some other parts
of the introduction and we assert the transcendental aesthetics. Can I ask a question before we take it? Sure, sure, sure. I'm just sort of confused in what way now we seem to like perhaps be changing the definition of what analytic was in the sense that Kant meant. Like, how is the term necessary now changed? and I mean the whole idea of synthetic a priori is it's quite a confusing concept because on the one hand it's it's a knowledge drive through experience but that knowledge has to be qualified as universal and necessary well it is not derived from experience
That's the whole idea. The syntega priori is absolutely not derived from experience. The idea is that, you know, we utilize, because if you say that they are derived, then it's not syntega priori, that would be a humane position. It is not derived from experience, particularly with the emphasis on the word derived. The point is that you can say that they have connection with experience precisely because you have to step outside of your field of analysis or the analytics of the concepts but they are not derived from experience Analytic, Artem can you, sorry my eyesight is quite bad, can you read it for me?
Oh sorry, so I was just stating in terms of like necessary arguments, seems like analytic judgments aren't necessarily applied or derived from the world, they're rather methods of analysis of information. They don't kind of have existential claims or even like necessity claims in as much as the reality of those statements. It seems like he goes into necessity with more a priori judgments rather than saying that necessity lies in analytic judgments. He goes into saying, I think the quotes from for example chapter 5 in the introduction where he goes into saying that it must first be remarked that properly mathematical propositions are
always a priori judgments and are never empirical because they carry necessity with them so it seems like necessity is even kind of grounded over and above the world if that can be said yes you see well you know first of all as you say The most important thing is that analytic judgments are not necessarily, or as you say, they don't essentially or necessarily have existential claims. If someone, if a judgment has an existential claim, then it requires to be synthetic. Now there is a difference here between transcendental as being applied to these existential objects,
so called transcendental method, and there is something else called transcendental condition, which of course is not concern of Kant. And transcendental condition, what you might call to be, does include in fact the analytic judgments or analytic concepts. Precisely talk about universality or talk about necessity. How can we talk about these concepts? What is it supposed to be that makes it necessary, rather than simply applying it to existential claims. And that's Hegel's point, that you can't do this unless you see categories in themselves.
Categories in themselves. And categories in themselves, of course, even for Hegel, doesn't mean that they are essentially analytic or implies analyticity. But later on, as we move to our logic, we see, like Pierre Martin Love, that it is, it does imply analyticity but a different kind of analyticity that can't have in mind and now it's involved with the construction of concepts can ask another quick question while we're still on this topic which is so there's this other contrast from the third critique between reflective and determinative judgments
and I like how how does that fit in here like sort of the difference between I guess like a reflective judgment is one where you're sort of constructing a concept but it can't be proven and determinative is sort of finding a finding a concept they already have that an object can fall under or something like that what like where I'm kind of trying to think that pair of well I think that in connection to this yeah I there is a connection but you should we shouldn't overextend it for now let's get to this the discussion properly but yes when when we are talking about this process of proving a type a pure or a
category or pure concept understand all you need to do is to create an evidence for it. Create an object that falls under this. Now this you can understand in terms of difference between reflective judgment and determinate as you said. But I think that determinate and reflective judgments have much more broader scope in Kant. We should I think hold on this. When precisely comes to idea of what exactly reflection means for and what is determination for Kant. If we try to make, you know, that there is a connection, but if we try to somehow make such a straightforward connection,
I think it would confuse you when we get into the idea of what is reflective judgment. So let's hold on to this. If you can bring this question, like probably in the next two sessions, then we can go and see what is exactly how these things are connected, connected, synthetic analytic, with reflective determinative judgment, but also how we can overextend the connections between them. OK, sure. Yeah, I'll bring it up again. Thanks. This isn't a further question, but more a comment on what Hunter said that might be useful. I've been reading some essays by a Kantian philosopher.
I can't quite remember what his name is. He makes this distinction between knowledge and experience. The article was on knowledge and experience. I've been reading a couple of other essays. He directly makes this distinction. I don't know if he talks about determinative judgment much. But he does distinguish and connects to the different types of judgments. Empirical reflection, which is connected to the synthetic a posteriori. Transcendental reflection, which is connected to the synthetic a priori. Logical reflection, which is connected to the analytic a priori. And then practical reflection, which
is bound up with the questions of faith that I mentioned earlier with the analytic posteriori. Yeah, well, that sounds much, much, yeah, differently, that sounds much clearer. Yeah, well, I think it's still there is something here missing. I will think about this in particular when we get to that chapter. But yes, that makes it much, much clearer. But nevertheless, come back into Teo's idea. not really that synthetic uprior derived from experiences that's not really Kent's project Kent wants to say that there is no such a thing as experience without the operator without categories so it's not a idea of deriving from
experience it's essentially a very so what is exactly the model or a schema for transcendental philosophy. It's a top-down analysis. A top-down analysis, you start always starts with the top, the a priori. But as you reach from top to the middle level, then these, the interplay between the a priori and experiential becomes extremely complex. you can't say whether it is bottom-up or top-down, but it is mid-level. It's mid-level kind of interpoint. And this is a useful way of how to visually
schematize the idea of synthetic a priori. Synthetic a priori doesn't mean it's derived bottom-up from experience. No, because that would have been a priori. It's top-down, but nevertheless has something in it that requires some existential claims about objects in the world, about pieces of evidence that require stepping outside from the realm of pure concepts into the realm of experience, with the understanding that experience itself is formatted is formatted by non sensory materials
constructed out of sensory materials but being constructed out of an ingredient doesn't mean that it's identical with the ingredient. Yeah, I really couldn't use the word derived from experience. That is the project then trying to figure out which analytic judgments are applicable to existential objects? Yes. Yes, determined. Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yes. And the thing is that, so as I mentioned, Kant's understanding of mathematics and logic is quite rudimentary.
But this idea that always Kant wants somehow to find, very sneakily of course, to find somehow source of synthetic a priori in intuition. Now Kant, who I hear is subtle, very very sophisticated. When we are talking about, and we will get to this, when Kant talks about intuition, he means two things. He means the intuited, the object of our intuition, or the intuiting, the act of our intuition. If you confuse these two, you essentially back to that loop of, then you would say that
well synthetic a priori are somehow derived from sensible materials, namely the intuitive. The intuitive is not a mental act for Kant. It's the intuiting, an act that works on some raw materials that have been organized rudimentarily by a space and time. And that allows us to make, constitute that geganishtan, that particular object. Stanley and Artem have questions on the sidebar. Stanley says,
can analytic posterior judgments even exist for Kant? He quotes, judgments of experience as such are all synthetic. B11, page 143. Well, it depends. I think Artem made, Artem, can you talk about your response? oh well what at least what I got out of it that judgments of experience that Kant here talks about are more about connection of different concepts belonging to the world while when we're talking about analytic a posteriori
judge I wouldn't and and here I am in kind of conundrum because I'm not sure whether I would turn them judgments or not but how I always kind of got it is for example I look at a particular object and I would say well it's a chair then that would be analytic in so much as I kind of make it equal to itself as a concept belonging to a specific set of objects yes while being a posteriori because I get this object from experience I am well it's intuitive yes no absolutely that is true i mean essentially the thing is that here we will get to this here as art and says the idea is this distinction is becoming more
convoluted than what they already are is precisely as artem says the idea is that whether your concept is derived from a particular encounter with an existential object in the world, like a dog, or whether it is derived from certain judgments, certain judgments combining concepts which precede and are not irreducible to a particular item in the world. In fact, there are items in the world that you cannot talk about them without such judgments.
So dog, yes, the concept of a chair, you can say, although again Kant is quite, you know, vague about this, but there are sentences and I will try to highlight them for next session where this ultimately comes down that whether your concept is derived from a particular item in the world or not. A concept of a chair or a brown chair, like I said, brown chair, brown chairish, a new concept is derived from this particular chair. Now that's an analytic posterior. Brown chair-ish
can be analyzed or broken down to its denotations or its senses, what it already contains. And for example, for something being brown cherished, it implies that by way of non-contradiction that if for example it has four of such and such legs you know has such and such you know folding format so on and so forth now the thing is that here is that we can also talk about this in terms of concepts they are essentially restrained by our perceptual takings what is perceptual takings
this is Sellar's word for idea perceptual judgment and essentially the units of experience are perceptual takings. Perceptual taking means that I take it, I grasp it, I conceive it, being thus and so object in the world. A concept that particularly designated to this perceptual taking can be said to be analytic posteriori. Okay, before confusing you further, let's have a break and then we'll come back.
Are we starting at 12 now every week? Yeah, we'll be starting at 12. Every week going forward? We're starting at 12? Yeah. Yeah, okay. All right. Just wanted to make sure. All right. I don't know what's happening with this time zone craziness. Did we start at 12 today? We started at 12 today, but there was also the time change for everyone living in the States. Oh, so America changed too. Right, right. Oh, okay, so that's, okay. Okay, I understand that now. You're a frauder now, right?
This transcontinental time zoning is much more complicated mathematics than I'm used to. Yeah, today is sort of an odd day because it's for people who are in other time zones. Or rather, if you're abroad right now, then you won't notice the class time change. Well, luckily we changed last week. I just forgot about it and then I didn't register the fact that you guys would have also changed. And I didn't know that the class wasn't starting at 1. Yeah, we both got bumped back an hour. Anyway, I'm going to resent everybody here who's taking advantage of this break and smoking because I just quit.
Alright, well, I'm going to grab some water at least. I'll be right back. Reza, are we still not smoking? Sorry? Are we still not smoking? Ah, don't remind me of that. Hey, hey, hey, I just quit. Good. I love the smoking but it's just I have asthma and it's just really like can't take it anymore. Yeah, it's been like nine or ten days. They say after ten days like that's so bullshit.
It's not going to go ever. It's not ten days. It probably takes years. years to actually quit. Do not tell me this type of awful torture is possible in this reality. This is a divinely inflicted punishment for my bad behavior. I was quit for like three years. And then about two months ago, I had like one cigarette. and then it's just kind of spiraled and now I'm like up to a pack a day. Yeah, it's one of those things that people say that nicotine is not addictive or it's
not like actual drugs. It's not actual drugs. Complete bullshit. It's just, it requires just one. I know, it's crazy. I mean, I had like two solid years where I wasn't even craving them at all and then I just did this like stupid thing where I was like, yeah, I'll just have a drag of a cigarette. no big deal there is a reason that you see those veteran people who have quit cigarettes no matter how much you try to seduce them to have one they never they never accepted yeah that should have been me it's so even worse when you start drinking like I had a couple of beers earlier and as I was walking home like I was in class I saw this woman smoking and I asked her for a cigarette, according to her she only had one cigarette left.
But I just couldn't help myself, I smelled it in my entire central nervous system and started spiraling into this desperate attempt to gain one more cigarette. No, it's, there is this fantastic novel, you know, quite avant-garde, I think early 20th century by this Italian writer, Italo Isvello, Zeno's Conscious, I can't remember the exact title. It's a fantastic novel if you want to read about the tortures of quitting. It's someone, you know, it was like kind of getting old and he... Wait, wait, wait, you're saying we might want to read this?
Yes, no, you should read it. Yeah, absolutely, you have to read it, yes. It's someone who's getting old and going through midlife crisis, and he thinks that he's no longer happy with his wife or children, you know, he's wealthy, and he also has this real high cigarette addiction. And then he goes to the psychotherapist and the psychologist tells him to write his daily diaries instead of paper on the cigarette roll. So basically instead of smoking them, write his confessions and diaries. And he does it, but at the end the twist is that he never quits.
He says, So here, forget about the stuff that I talked about in terms of analytic synthetic, we can get Kant's own account of synthetic analytic distinction. So we know that the knowledge of the world, if we are going to talk about it, we can talk
it at least in a Kantian sense, in terms of analytic judgment, precisely because analytic judgments the truth of their consequence is already entailed or contained in the truth of its own premises the predicate is already a part of the subject now obviously we know something more than our concepts allow us our analytic concepts allow us nevertheless he wants to he he points out to this fact that this analyticity of the concept is quite actually important because you can't
really take on the question of the critique of the synthetic upriary unless Unless your concepts are already having a firm ground, you can distinguish them from one another, you can apply them correctly. So this is one of the parts that Kant gives somehow a pragmatic reading of analytic concepts. The task, the reason that they are important is precisely because they're secure ground of their application, the distinction between such and such concepts, so on and so forth,
without overextending this Kantian conclusion, but it is somehow similar to the thesis of pragmatism. Of course pragmatism doesn't believe in this kinds of classical distinction between analytic synthetic concepts. Now another point that is very interesting, going back to that rudimentary comments that
I made trying to make an analogy between the stuff that are, you know, central to the discussion about artificial general intelligence and Kant's transcendental psychology. In section B22, he says, and it's page 147, for human reason, without being moved by the mere vanity of knowing it all, inexorably pushes on, driven by its own need to such questions that cannot be answered by any experiential use of reason and of principles borrowed from such a use. And thus, a certain sort of metaphysics has actually been present in all human beings
as soon as reason has extended itself to a speculation in them. And it will also always remain there. And now about this, to this, the question is, how is metaphysics as a natural predisposition possible? I.e., how the question that pure reason raises, and which it is driven by its own need to answer, as well as it can arise from the nature of universal human reason. Back to this idea that as soon as John Finley in value and intention, if I remember correctly, or it's in ascent to the absolute,
I think he highlights this passage. and he interprets it in this way that he doesn't talk about reason actually John Finley. As soon as consciousness arises, conceptual consciousness arises, it takes on a form of drift, it drifts onward. Always consciousness tries to speculate not only about itself, which seemingly it is aware as immediate, but also the world in its infinity.
Kant's essentially negating in its a priori limitative terms. This is of course the movement of metaphysics for Kant as you see here is coincides with the movement of reason or conceptual consciousness. They are one and the same thing. And hence, he quite curiously identifies Metothikist as a natural predisposition, as a natural
predisposition. That he thinks that there is in fact a teleological impetus within the constitution of the consciousness. That as soon as consciousness or intelligence or reason, depending on how you interpret these terms, are realized, they take on metaphysical questions. And of course, the projects of critique, in order for us to be capable of healthily, non-dogmatically, posits such questions and hence affirmatively satisfy the needs of pure reason or self-consciousness,
intelligence, so on and so forth, one must first look into the conditions or the possibility or the realization of reason and cognitive faculties as such. And that's essentially, as I mentioned, the movement of the critique, going back downward. If you were thinking about this Kantian scheme as a diagram, you can think about it as a kind of orthogonal diagram. So one is going, one arrow is going horizontally, one is going vertically. The horizontal arrow, what you might call to be, again, borrowing computer science, functionalist
vocabulary, you can call it a realizability. What are realizabilities for Kant? Essentially, faculties, and for Kant, reason is faculty, whereas for Hegel, reason is a mode of thinking. This is very, you know, just not every concept of reason in German idealism means the same. For Kant, reason is faculty, so as understanding. So realizabilities are, deal with the consequences of applying or exercising already realized
mental capacities or faculties. So these are realizabilities. Essentially, whatever that we think about the universe is rooted in our realizabilities, in the exercise of mental powers already realized. So the consequences of it, deep consequences of this exercise of such faculties, is the project of Kantian speculation. Also coincides with metaphysics of pure reason. Now the vertical downward arrow, orthogonal to the first one, is what you
might call real realizers. Kant also calls them conditions of possibility. So you have realizabilities and realized cognitive faculties, cognition, pure reason, so on and so forth, and conditions of possibility for their realization. Now, how can you in fact model realizers in a coherent way to see exactly what are the constraints of our realizabilities, of our mental faculties? That's a project of critique. So this is a project of critique. Now how can we do that?
How can we coherently model realizers, identify these enabling constraints? Any answer, solution, comment, suggestion? A particularly difficult question to answer. Well, at least schematically, Kant sets out the method in his introduction.
And really I think that this introduction really captures the method of this project, of this navigating this orthogonal diagram. So basically, first, the analysis is always top-down from realizabilities to realizers. No matter how much you try to talk about realizers, without not modeling them on your already cognitive practical faculties, theoretical and practical reasons, that leads to dogmatism, dogmatic metaphysics. So everything needs to be modeled on these, on theoretical practical cognitions. One. Two, everything needs to be analogically positive, carefully.
Obviously, for example, again, let's think about this is stuff that comes these days in you know post humanism which are essentially you know just really impoverished readings of cans for example we say that oh well this piece of rock thinks how can you say something like that that's not analogically positive yes it is for example we can say that for example a sentience for example, a warman, has such intelligent behaviors, but intelligent behaviors only in so far as they are modeled carefully on our own representational faculties.
Obviously, when it comes to this modeling, we can't overextend some higher faculty like thought or reasoning to this intelligent behavior and say that the worm thinks. No, the worm doesn't think. That would be just bad modeling, that would be overextension that leads to dogmatic, again, traps of dogmatic metopysics. Now, Kant devises a solution for this, that you will see it being repeated in varieties
of forms throughout the critique of pure reason. He always says, isolate this from this, abstract this from that, then abstract this from that And then so on and so forth. So this is really that movement of controlling your circle of analogy. Because analogy is virtuous if controlled carefully. You can say that the worm has an imagining, for example, or a bird has an imagining faculty, But you can't say that the bird thinks in the sense that you identify thinking from a higher hierarchy. Now that requires a process of abstraction. You need to get rid of some characteristics of these faculties that cannot be smuggled
to your lower levels from upper levels. So this requires a process of abstraction. One of the, I mean, basically where exactly is the process of abstraction, which is required for creating a virtuous circle of analogy, bottoms out? Well this is the beginning of the critique of pure reason. So the beginning of the critique of pure reason is that you have analogically, positive, from the perspective of higher levels, realizabilities, the most basic conditions for the realization
of thinking or theoretical and practical conditions, pure reason, space and time. So space and time are exactly where subjects, capacity for abstraction, bottoms out. There is nothing to be abstracted from space and time. Now, you are starting from the lower, you can now bootstrap yourself in creating copy reason from the lower levels space and time to you know creation or realization of cognitive faculties sorry someone asked question I had a question also
can you comment at all on the idea that um kind of materialist idea that a a realizer like the bottom level might be something like like a thirst for annihilation you know or sort of a like a that there's a material excess or a death drive that is actually a sine qua non for the categories to pull back on it I mean Kent was alive you know he wouldn't he would he would he would he would basically deal with all of these as all of these material is a strain not materialism as such because actually Sebastian Rögle has identified some
materialist strain in Canton philosophy but in line with his you know philosophy which I will talk about later on future chat sessions but yes if Kant was alive he would have considered all of these material strain material is a strange in philosophy as essentially exercises in dogmatic metaphysics. How can you identify it? How can you identify it? By what right can you identify it? You see, this is where things go for Kant outside of the systematicity of philosophy. You can posit everything as a material substratum if you do not have, if you can't, if you don't,
If you haven't constrained yourself by the question of the quid juris and also quid facti, origin of knowledge as facts and the epistemological legitimacy and norms, epistemological norms, which is a question of quid juris, by what's right, by what's right. So obviously when you posit something like a death drive, like Freudian, you are essentially, and you see this comes in famous Brandoom's hermeneutic of the genealogical critique and the hermeneutic of magnanimity, where once you do this death drive or capitalism, real
subsumption, eternal recurrence, something, different varieties. When you do that, you essentially abolish the factor of epistemic legitimacy, precisely because everything that has been realized out of this material substrate is essentially an expression of this material substrate, hence the transvaluation of all values. There won't be an epistemic question of quid juris or epistemic right. And once you don't hold yourself to norms of epistemic legitimization, then obviously the first things that befalls you, as Plato would say, is the question of unintelligibility,
of unintelligibility that materialism, very question of matter or material substrate becomes unintelligible so sorry and Page after this, Kant says, it's 148, B24, sorry.
Kant says, thus one can and must regard as undone all attempts made until now to bring about a metaphysics dogmatically. And it is the question of this material substratum, you see, from this perspective is bringing metaphysics stigmatically. For what is analytic in one or the other of them, namely the mere analysis of the concept that habit or reason a priori, is not the end at all, but only a preparation for metaphysics proper. namely, extending its a priori cognition synthetically, and it is useless for this end because it merely shows what is contained in these concepts,
but not how we attain such concepts a priori in order thereafter to be able to determine their valid use in regard to objects of all cognition in general. page 149 it's the idea section a11 and beat me between a funny it's I ask a question about that passage you sure sure sure absolutely it has like the sort of implication of the Minos paradox go on elaborate yeah I guess I'm just
trying to figure in how how we talk about this synthetic analytic distinction or the criticism of synthetic analytic distinction within this the way that just talked about that I kind of had a question to raise that related to this yes really thing go on you know you want all right um well I was just gonna say I mean it just sounds like you know what you're saying I was kind of reflecting on sellers focusing on that line that we must give full credence to this paradoxical but
correct position proposition that there is nothing in space save what is represented in it so it seems like that's really crucial that point that he makes that if space is this foundation then everything that's in space must all must also be just a representation yes well i mean okay Anyway, these are all really very difficult questions. I think Kant ultimately doesn't answer any of these questions. And I can't really defend Kant on this whole thing. I think you might say it, and there is a reason that Kant calls these sections the Doctrine
of elements and doctrine of methods he sees them as the best most optimal method because other methods result into dogmatic metaphysics but up the most optimal method does it mean that it is a correct method or the best way of to do it speculatively I don't think that is true I don't think that can't really you know, answer these questions, or can answer these questions adequately. Well, for one, the question of a space is fundamental for Kant, but also Wittgenstein and respectively
Sellers. What is that that makes it, you know, there is this, I will read it for you, it's It's a passage in, I think, dissertation, not a critic of pure reason, it's an essay, where he makes this fundamental thesis that there is in fact a relation, not a correspondence, a relation. You can think of this relation as what you might call to be a transformation map or a map between how things are contained in a space as the objects of outer sense and how they are being represented in intuition and imagination. Wittgenstein
Rime talks about this in Tractatus, a famous example of a gramophone. The music is out there, sound in space, waves in space, and are being inscribed as these grooves on the gramophone, two completely different objects, natural objects. But they are different, but nevertheless there is an isomorphic between them. Isomorphism is not in the sense that they are identical, but there is an equivalent class of relations between the two, a second order isomorphism. This becomes part of what Wittgenstein calls a picture theory of language.
That once you go down to the atomic sentences in our language, you can see that they in fact pick some relations matter of factish not matter of factual matter of factish relations that dot and so objects have basically in a space among themselves. So there is, so here there is a, you know, there is a form of, again, not correspondence, there's a form of isomorphic, that how things are in a space can actually be picked by some
basic utterances, atomic sentences, atomic statements or judgments. These are basically, Wittgenstein calls them pictures, exactly like a gramophone in music and sound. The grooves are the pictures, are the empirical sentences. Now, why is that, this is again coming back to the dilemma that Kant has, why is that Wittgenstein poses such a theory? Precisely because he now sees clearly that there is something essentially fishy about Kant's thesis here. It's that the idea is that, okay, we are talking about concepts and analytic concepts and synthetic
concepts and so forth, but how are these concepts are being constrained? What is their field of synthesis that's going and seeing additional evidence? Which means that our concepts should have somehow being also empirically constrained by the world itself. And the relation of this constrainment, first and foremost, is established by the principle of a space, the space of the representation. as a form of appearances. As a form of appearances that actually has a second order isomorphy with a space as a conceptless exteriority in which objects or things in themselves are
contained. So this is a problem that he tries to, so if you don't have the idea of this kind of second order isomorphy here, constrained by a space, then again your concepts become fully analytic. Because then how do you know? How do you know that these concepts are actually there is, they add something that is beyond their reach, namely they are synthetic. How How do you know that they are in fact connected to this field of evidences that is outside of their analytical reach?
The problem of analyticity again here emerges. You need to somehow in a very kind of artificial way, but if not artificial, in a kind of not too convincing way, connect them back to the field of observational data or some sort of natural connection, second order isomorphic, because otherwise the concepts don't add anything again, you just fall back on the analyticity of concepts. So Wittgenstein does that, and Sellars builds on Wittgenstein's thesis, and that's his theory of picture, which is a fundamental refinement of Wittgenstein.
don't have time to go sell our stereo picture but I can give you references but yeah so there are these problems and these problems you know after cans were detected but I don't think that they never they have not been adequately answered which brings back us to this idea that I mentioned the method is optimal. Every other method that we know is inferior to this method. They all lead to dogmatism. But this method also, just because it's optimal, it's better than other methods, this doesn't mean that it is necessarily, in a Kantian sense,
it's true. I mean, I guess I'm just struggling to sort of understand the way that the, it sounds like the way that we're talking about synthetic a priori is as if, you know, it's the analytic judgments which are themselves expanding onto existential objects. Yes. But then the whole project of trying to correlate those analytic judgments with the existential
objects seems to... You see, again, existential objects, when we are talking about here, Kant, and that's why I think Kant is right. This belongs to the order of appearances, the order of experience, the order of experience. The order of experience is different from the order of things in themselves, of actual
objects in the world. We are not talking about actual objects in the world. we are talking about objects for experience. So it's fully justified from this perspective. But then becomes the idea of, again, the idea of the nominal revenge on the phenomenal knowledge, which then brings us to this idea that Without jumping too far, leaping such a distance, I think this brings us to the idea that the very distinction between nominal and the phenomenal was in fact fundamentally disguised.
It creates much more confusion that it allows us to coherently think about how through experience we can heuristically mitigate our ignorance about the conditions of our experience rather than gaining truth about what conditions our experience, namely things in themselves. So, I mean, you think about this and we will definitely, I'm sure, this discussion will
come because it's going to just get aggravated with some of these problems. So I said that page 149, I think, would be great if you read it, you know, because I think there are some really important definitions here. The idea of a doctrine, critique transcendental philosophy, a system, critique of pure reason, because this is this paragraph B 25 really envelopes the entire scope of the project and then it goes to a 13 b 27
Now, as I mentioned, I mentioned that in the very way that Kant sets out the problem of critique of pure reason in order to avert the encroachment of dogmatic metaphysics on the project of pure reason is by way of doing this kind of top-down analysis. Top-down analysis, you always abstract some characteristics or properties of higher faculties as you move forward in order to control your analogy rather
than overextending or overstretching your analogies and then relapsing back in dogmatic metaphysics. So as I mentioned, the doctrine of elements is really quite literally the most fundamental elements for the condition of the possibility of experience, the condition of the possibility of mind, and the condition of the possibility of synthetic uproar.
transcendental philosophy. We know that Hume takes sense impressions as already telling us something about the as if they already have the categorical structure. A red dot moving already tells me something. That sensation, that sensation of a red dot already tells me something. That is red, that it is moving. Now Kant fundamentally rejects this idea. It doesn't tell me it is red, nor does it tell me it's moving.
The sense impression of this thing neither tells me it's red, nor it's moving, nor it's a dot. These are all judgments. These are perceptual takings. I perceptually take this stuff to be moving, to be red, to be a dot. I see it as a red dot. Sense impressions does not allow us, does not have, does not allow us to make such judgments by itself. So, here a story begins to emerge.
You remember that level of realizability, that horizontal arrow, that we start always from there. At the level of realizability, which are our own theoretical, practical cognitions, we have something called perceptual judgments. Sellers call them perceptual takings, like taking something as, conceiving something as, grasping something as, understanding something as. This as is very important, as, always make it italic. I see this as a brown chair. This is a perceptual judgment, being thus and so object.
This is only at the level of our fully instantiated cognitive faculties. Well, if we are moving downward to the level of various realizers or conditions of possibility, particularly at the level of sense impressions, we can no longer see objects as. There is no such a thing as object. There is no such a thing as a red. There is no such a thing as a dot, so on and so forth. These are all judgments and for judgments you need to category, you need to have categories. If you say that there is something that is stuff, because it is only a
stuff, it's not even an object, that stuff is a but, which is a sense impression, is read, it means that you already think in what Wilfred Sellars called the myth of the given, that as if the world was a seal imprinting its own structure on a block of wax or molten wax. That the world already has all these secrets about itself, and all it requires for us to gain these secrets, these structures about how things stand in relation with one
another in the broadest possible sense, is already there in the world and all we need to acquire it is through causal interaction with the world, namely sense impressions, sensations, being affected causally by the world. This is a myth, a myth in the sense that it's an ideological fixation that tries to say that knowledge has non-conceptual foundations. So, the question of a space arises precisely because Kant tries to show that sense impressions
don't tell us anything about even the most minimum of their structure. For example, this dot is moving, or this chair is next to that book. These require something more than sense impressions. We can't talk about these kinds of relations no matter how rudimentary they are, like something next to something else, something being near to that, something moving, so on and so forth, without the space as a form of appearance or form of intuition.
Any questions before I move forward? Just a very quick one and a very dumb one at that. It seems that it would be pretty obvious but I've been having a tough time with it. So when Khan goes into talking about space as pure form of intuition of sensibility, there is one thing that I feel like he hasn't cleared and that is the Berkelyan question of color. Sorry? And the Berkelyan question of color. It's, I, for some reason I cannot find in the critique of pure reason and neither in the prolegomena, any passage that directly talks about the question that Berkeley has
kind of given, and that is, I cannot imagine a space being, I mean, lacking color. I can imagine it being black, but that it lacks light, not color. And I feel like, I don't know, I've been having... Well, you see, a space is conceptless exteriority. I mean, it's just a container. that gives us a very confused, basically, account of things that it contains. The question of color has nothing to do with the space for Kant, it actually has something to do with time, as the form of inner sense. Outer sense is the one that is connected with the space.
Inner sense, you see, this whole question of brightness, The question of gradient, the question of continuity of tones, both for sound and color, can only be posed once you have the question of temporality, the question of transcendental ideality of experience temporality, which only starts with the question of inner sense, which we will get into. So, in contrast to Hume, Kant explicitly, as we mentioned, distinguishes sensory contents
from cognitive judgments, and in this case particularly perceptual judgments, perceptual takings. Seeing something as is a piece of judgment, it is not a sense impression. Hearing something as is a perceptual taking. The units of our experience are perceptual judgments, not sense impressions. So as we will see later, you know, the Kantian, and we will talk about this, the Kantian units of experience, as I mentioned, not a sense impression in first approximation, an ostensible perceptual encounter with an object that includes a cognitive epistemic episode of taking something
as something, or taking something to be the case, taking something to be the case, the content of which is not just an idea, but rather sort of thing that can be expressed in a perceptual judgment, seeing this book as red, thick, hardcover, so on and so forth. Now, if Kant agrees that a priori concepts and synthetic a priori judgments cannot be derived from experience, then it is not because, as Hume would say, the content of experience
are limited to a basic core of a set of proper and common sensible qualities and relations. As Kant would say it, the real problem is not with experience but with the question of derived. The legitimacy of employing certain concepts, a priori concepts, making certain judgments, synthetic a priori judgments, can't consist in their derivability from experience. That is, in the possibility of abstracting them from or justifying them by appeal to
the contents of experience, because it is already presupposed by the fact of experience. It is a condition of the possibility of our having any experience properly so-called at all. Now, in the beginning of the Doctrine of Elements, in Transcendental Esthetic Space, Kant says isolate sensibility by separating off everything that the understanding thinks through its concept, so that nothing but empirical intuition remains. And again, very, very important at the beginning of this section, all of the main jargons,
Kantian jargons, what is sensation? What is intuition? What is empirical intuition? What is sensibility? He carefully defines them. So it's very, very, in order to stay away from further confusions to make proper attention to these definitions. So he says, isolate sensibility by separating up everything that the understanding thinks through its concepts so that nothing but empirical intuitions remain, then detach from the latter everything that belongs to sensation so that nothing remains except pure intuition, and the mere form of appearance, which is the only thing that the sensibility can make available
a priori that's you see here is a quite actually massive claim here sensibility can provide us with something a priori a space and time as forms of intuition or as forms of appearances If you think about this paragraph, I mean you can visualize it from top
realizabilities to realizers. So you can think of at a top level full-blooded representations, okay? If these representations are also coupled with perception, with consciousness, then they are called perceptions. Now, so you have perceptions. Now, you can think of this perception as relating to the subject as the modification of its
internal state, sensation? Because you see, when we talk about in philosophy about perception, things can become extremely vague. You need to always put the caveat, what do you mean by perception? Do you mean perception as relating only to subject as a modification of its internal state which is a sensation or are we talking about objective perception which is a mental act a cognition so perceptions are also cognitions if they are objective rather than simply denoting
an internal state in your nervous system sensation so on the side of cognitive perceptions perception as objective mental facts, you have cognition again, branching out to two different kinds of things. One is singular, relating directly to a particular item in the world or particular object. This is called intuition. So this, how cognition is related to a particular item in the world is called intuition. Now, intuition itself comes in two different things, just like representation and just
like cognition. All of these Kantian jargons about these terms, we need to always stop thinking about them in terms of the difference between intuiteds and intuitives represented and representing cogitation cogitations and cogitatum act and the object ed means that it is an object of intuition ing it means the act of intuiting now so intuition again which is when cognition
relates directly to the object intuition again you can be branched out to intuited and intuitive. Now strangely enough intuiting is a mental act, intuited is not a mental act, it's not a cognitive act. We will get into all of these complexities. So I mentioned when cognition has a singular relation between a particular object is intuition. But when cognition has a general relation to the object
that can exhibit characteristics of several objects and not just that particular object, called concept so this is a kind of a broad map of some of these terms that will arise how we move forward any question before I move forward we have like 20 minutes I'm gonna listen to this again earlier in the day it's a little bit too late and too late into the weekend as well representation couple it
with consciousness you get perception perception that suggests internal estates of the subject and the change of that internal state is called sensation. Simply sensations, you can think of sensations as not essentially cognitive. They are what you might call to be in today's word, they're part of your nervous system. They are cerebral. They are neural. So perception, sensation, and then another branch of perception is when perception becomes
objective. Perceptual taking. That's a cognition. That's a cognitive act. Now cognition, what is singular and relates to a particular object, an intuition. Intuition again comes as an object and as an act. When it is an object, an intuitive object, it is not a cognitive fact. When it is an act, it is a cognitive or mental act. When cognition has a general relation mediated by a characteristics that is common to several or many objects is called
a concept, like a concept of a chair. Sensation means to be causally affected. Sensation is receptivity, causal affectivity by something that is outside of you. And something that is outside of you is in a space. The space is never within you, is never within the transcendental subject. is within the transcendental subject, not the space. So obviously when you are starting with sensation,
starts with sensation, this causal being thus and so affected by things that is outside of me, obviously this brings the idea of space as a priori component of sensations. now let's look into this a priori component and any any questions any questions if things are getting torturous convoluted just let me know yeah I just have a very quick question sure the right time we can no no please please do in discussing a hierarchical and talking about cognition and sensation can we
think of cognition and sensation in a hierarchy and if so how does that hierarchy exist okay you have cognition at the level of realizabilities top hierarchy and are these realizes the ortho downward arrow. At the bottom of this you have outer sense and inner sense, essentially two components of sensibility, namely the capacity to receive or being affected thus and so by items in the environment. Now outer sense relates with a spatial organization of sense materials, sensory materials.
Inner sense is about the temporal organization of them, their succession. Now once you have both of them then you can have something called a manifold of intuition, namely impression of particular items being synchronically and diachronically organized in a space and time and after that once you have the manifold of intuition then you have something called imagination a particular representation of a particular item in a space and time what can calls it the image as imagination the image is a particular
representation of a particular item. Then after imagination, with you know I'm taking up so much details here, then you have understandings. Concepts and categories. After understanding concept and categories you have pure reason. You always start from the top. How you see things at the bottom is because how you see things from the top through the realm of concepts and categories. If sensations this passive faculty, the only passive faculty of the cognitizing subject, right? It's... Outer sense is a passive faculty. Outer sense is a passive faculty, not inner sense.
And I'll kind of add on to the other question too, maybe you can answer this. Does sensation exist for Ken at all? Is there a sensation? Yes. It's yes. Sensation exists as transcendentally ideal. This doesn't mean that it is real. See, it exists as a necessary component. of transcendental constitution of the thinking subject. It's not real. But now, does it mean that it is, then we are just talking at the middle,
like we are basically suspended in the air and we don't know where we are attached to? No, it's just exactly, I mentioned that there is a, that Kant thinks, that sensations Translate some matter-of-factage relations between how objects stand in a space. It's like what you might call to be exactly like that gramophone and music. The grooves on the gramophones are what you might call to be sensations, causal change in your inner state of your nervous system. Obviously, they are not the replicas of the music.
But nevertheless, there is a second-order isomorpy between the two, from which you can rescue the information, you can organize data, and think about what was it exactly that affected me in such and such ways. And essentially... So the sound and the record are like equally not really what they are, we just organize the data in that way. Yes. The sound... Yes, yes. The thing is that obviously, I mean the best accounts of this idea of what is exactly the relation between sensation and perception,
with a completely contemporary take on the status of sensation is celars. The sensations are, can only be taught in terms of the nervous system as causal interactions. Causal interactions are not causal because they are causal, but only you can see them as having these kind of causal components. It's structural, or what ultimately cellars think about them in terms of processes, or absolute processes, rather than cause and effect kind of vocabulary as absolute processes. But again, another thing about when you said it's passive,
even outer sense cannot be thought as completely passive. Because you see, of course, this is completely outside of Kant's scope. From today's perspective of neuroscience, in order for you to have such and such sensations, It doesn't mean that you just have sensors. You need to have also behavioral effectors, namely the loop between perception and action, the fundamental mechanisms in the brain that couple sensorial perceptions to basically
as a requirement for creating models of actions, making some effects in the environment. Now, the very fact that we come, or any sentient, indexes certain sensorial, a spectral range of sensations is precisely because these sensors are there to support its proactive activities in the environment.
So it's not that we are just being kind of like a piece of wood that you just hit it and it's just dumb. No, the whole idea that we sense we can have one range of sensorial variations in our nervous system is precisely because they are supported, they are made to fulfill the requirements for effectively and optimally acting, usually for teleological activities, survival, predatory activities, food, so on and so forth.
I mean, this is essentially, one of the best actually books on this idea of outer sense, the question of space, and the question of proactivity of organism is Alan Berthaud, which I have mentioned during the math class, Alan Berthaud's brain's sense of movement. So. I don't want to digress too much, but I mean this kind of provoked the question of like the fact that the causal material substrate of our brains and the type of sense impressions that we have are to varying extents
like contingently and particularly constituted so Yes, absolutely. ...gets into issues of revising of categories, but perhaps also the revising of the actual material faculties which burnish us with sense materials in the first place. like you know perhaps possibly you could elaborate on this point in that direction yes I mean you see that that particularly the question of time and then I think also the question of the space because because the space is you
know you can you can go along with it in the Kantian sense but the question of time is part nearly becomes as another form of intuition or form of appearance becomes highly challengeable. Why? Because the very fact that we have thus and so forms of intuitions that can only thus and so organize our sensory materials has something to do with our, as Christian said, to do with our local and contingent constitution, evolutionary history, experience in the broad social, cultural, individual sense, with our language,
you know, with the constitution of natural languages, with our constitution of memory, so on and so forth obviously this brings down the question that if a space and time are fundamentally responsible for creating this kind of rudimentary organization of sensory materials from which you know on top of which higher faculties can be built, then does this mean that a different kind of subject with a fundamentally
different constitution might have different faculties? I don't think they can have fundamentally different faculties because these are constraints but the form of its faculties or cognitive faculties can be quite diverging from ours the form of their faculties can be yes can can be diverging from ours and that brings again back to question of artificial general intelligence and or neuroscience that's yes you just all you
need to do is to create different constraints and you see that there is a fundamental divergence it starts to emerge and but we don't even need to talk about the artificial general intelligence we can even talk about our own selves. People with different linguistic structures, fundamentally different linguistic structures as it has been studied among you know the natives of Australian continent can have fundamentally different representations of time. So there are these questions, which I will get back to.
What is extremely important for you to pay attention to is that these are constraints. Kant never says that they might not appear in a different kind of form, but that there should be at least a form of them, a form of them to be in place for you to in fact have something called thinking or perceptions. So these are constraints. Kant never talks about that the form of these constraints is necessary, universal, and immutable, but that they are necessary constraints.
That's all. No more, no less. So earlier in the section, Kant had said that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation, it's matter, whereas its form is that which allows the manifold appearance to be ordered in certain relations. It's A20, B34. So in describing this kind of double form of abstraction that cognition to intuition
and to concepts or perception to sensation or cognition, this kind of double branching abstraction. In describing this kind of branching abstraction by which Kant takes on the project of isolating sensibility, Kant plainly suggests that once everything conceptual has been split off, has been abstracted, what remains is still an intuition, but an empirical intuition. The matter of empirical intuition is what Kant called sensation. The form of this material of empirical intuition, Kua sensation, is what Kant called sensibility.
Sensibility is a form which also needs to be fundamentally distinguished from understanding. But here, this is on Kant's own rudimentary account, and Kant, I think there is one sentence where he says that it's kind of a, you know, it's basically more complicating stuff yet to come. And what he means by this is that this account is not actually correct.
Because understanding is implicated in every moment of experience. In cognitive experience rather than sensory experience. Singular as well as general. So Kant makes a few rectifications about this. The only thing where you don't have understanding implicated in this explicit way is basically
sensation. sensation. But perception, I mean cognition, whether singular, whether intuition, or whether of concept, general, understanding is always implicated in it. Now we know what empirical intuition is. Now the generic notion of an object of empirical intuition is what Kant calls appearance. So appearance is, I have seen that Sellars calls it one time undetermined.
I think appearances are not undetermined, they are underdetermined. It's precisely because they are vague, they are, you know, but nevertheless it's not that they are not determined at all. A good way to understand the concept of appearance, the notion of appearance in Kantian parlance is that they are the kind of things that we, under the first impression, encounter in experience. Now, author appearances, accordingly, based on this account, is roughly equal to our everyday
expression of physical object, roughly speaking, outer appearance. While appearances in general also admit the self itself, the experiencing self, i.e., our own inner states in so far as they are experientially accessible to us through introspection. So appearance from this perspective, in Kanton perspective, both has the outer sense and the inner sense. Outer sense is the one that is like, you know, being affected by the objects, receptivity,
by external influences. And the inner sense is, for now you can think about it as a capacity. for mind to report its own states to itself. So with this rather introductory digression, We can now think about how to arrive at space, representation of space, as what can called
a priori rather than as a material sensation. A good example of this is Salar's famous example, the pink ice cube. So perform this kind of double abstraction on pink ice cube. So at the first level, you see this pink ice cube, you see this thing, this stuff, as a pink ice cube, as a cube that is pink through and through.
See here there is something, this is an appearance, that it appears to you to be pink through and through, and cube throughout. But of course science tells us that that's just not true. So science does not belong to the order of appearances. How we see objects within the domain of appearances is that we see them as being solid throughout. We see them as being colored through and through. We don't see atomic grains, we don't see any kind of fine-grained definition or a picture
of this cube. All we see is this kind of fuzzy appearance where the characteristics of the object seem into whole if you're not right like even you put a microscope on this pink ice skin you think it's going to pink grains so on and so forth so first you do this you at the level at the level of realizability to the level of judgment, you see it as such and such object. Now, by way of the double abstraction, then detach from our empirical intuition of it,
first, that which the understanding thinks about it, such as substance, force, divisibility, etc. Then, as Kant says, that which belongs to sensation, such as impenetrability, hardness, color, etc. The concept of ice is the concept of a particular sort of substance having specific causal properties. So then we have to abstract that as well in order to get to the level of pure sensory impressions.
So the first thing that we need to get rid of in this process of double abstraction is concept of substance is the cause is those are those causal properties that the concept of ice implicitly expresses we what we want to get at the end of this process of double abstraction is a stuff and not at the end just one to the one to the last stuff where we can even no longer talk about a pink ice cube I do not see this as a pink ice cube I see
of it as black as pinkly cubely stuff where pinkly cubely stuff just means a stuff, no longer colors or concepts, these are just stuff that have such and such, basically, that affect my senses in such and such orders. This is stuff. So at the level of realizable, top of the hierarchy, we see things as something, something as something, something to be the case. At the level of a stuff we no longer see as,
we see of. And what we see of first is only the facing side of the cube and the color side of it, nothing else, we don't see the back of it, we don't see the edges, colored edges, we don't see pink color through and through. Which means that that idea of cube whose edges were colored, which was also colored through
and through, is not the product of sensation. Was the product of imagination or the constitution of an image model, which we will get back to it. So every time that we create this double abstraction, we arrive more at the stuff. And as we reach the level of stuff, the mass of pinkly, the mass of... Okay, the coolish mass of... So Salars is very particular about this. you want to come up with a different language, so not to confuse talking at the level of
sense impressions or the manifold of intuition with the talk at the level of concept, then you should also create a new language for it. And it's like you can talk it about a pink ice cube or even like a kind of, for example, squarish pink or a container because these all have categorical properties which we have already detached in the process of our abstraction. All we can talk about is using nouns and adjectives that do not any longer imply or suggest categorical or causal properties because the categorical and causal properties belong to the realm
of higher cognitive faculties. All we can talk about is about like this coolish mass of pink, coolish mass of pink, where the whole thing is taken as a compound it's just simply means a stuff from which I have such and such confused sensations so I think before we get to the how we are going to see the ice cube in a space and time next session fully and go you
know a little bit to the Leibnizian origins of Kantian thinking. I think we can stop it here. You can think about this in terms of, I think it would be great if you can come up with you know your own examples, try to apply this process of double abstraction. Moving from the level of realisabilities on top in a very controlled, analogical step by step come to the level of sensation. Try to talk about objects as you see them at the level of outer and inner sense where you don't have categories, where you don't have causal properties because those are conceptual things. The first thing that pops to mind
is the hollow mask for me. The hollow mask illusion. That's something that I just keep thinking of and like how they say well the schizophrenic sees it as it really is that it is actually concave and then it's like well and then you can look at it as being convex even though you're looking at it as con as being convex even though it is concave and then you can touch it and feel that it's concave then you might see it as convex well another example is duck rabbits the duck rabbits the duck rabbit is essentially where when the duck rabbit is not at the level of sensation, at the level of you don't have imagination. You don't have concepts. Actually, you have imagination. You have the image. You have the singular representation, but you don't have a concept.
The only way that you can see it either as a rabbit sometimes and sometimes as a duck is based on how you unconsciously apply either the concept of duck or the concept of rabbit to this image. Image by itself is not conceptual. It does not have categorical, conceptual generalities. So when you use, based on your predisposed linguistic biases, you prefer to come up with the concept of duck first, I mean, your nervous system, then you see it as actually duck, before seeing it as a rabbit. Linguistics, I mean, like puns, too. Yes, yes, absolutely, yes. Would that like applying be synthetic?
Applying which one to which? I'd say with the duck, like you know you've already got like sort of like the image. Not essentially, no. It's actually more into that what Artem was talking about and a little bit posterior. The rabbit duck. The only way, no, you see, the duck and the rabbit, each of them can be thought as actually as kind of analytic concepts. And also derived from experience, from a particular duck that then you have spread over various kinds of ducks. But here, it's not really a matter of synthetic analytic distinction, it's a matter of the
constraints, namely inbuilt inductive biases within your natural language, which are prioritized over others. Hence why is that for me unconsciously apply the concept of the duck to this image rather than the concept of rabbit and seeing it as a duck versus a rabbit. These are inbuilt inductive biases within the structure of natural language, that people are predisposed or biased to pick one concept over another.
There is a whole study of these inductive biases by Andy Clark. okay everyone I think I need to go let's let's continue the discussion and you know I'm sure that you know probably next session will bring down the level of tangents questioning a little bit lower so I can go through the space and time all of it so please read do read the entire transcendental aesthetics now and then you know after the talk we will discuss the stuff and you know address any kind of issue that might arise