Kant’s Circle of Revenge (Session 6)

hello and welcome to the sixth session of Pansa's circle of revenge with Reza Negrestani I'm with him today so I won't pass it off to him okay thanks everyone so I said we are today we are talking about time there was that excerpt from you know I've written I will read it about you know the inner sense and we finish the transcendental aesthetic then we go to transcendental logic and we talk about transcendental logic and you know if you have questions ask about any of these two topics if you don't I will

just start any questions any comments now that you have read this extra part on transcendental logic or time Finally, no questions. Okay, so. Maybe a similar issue to what I had previously mentioned. With respect to... Actually, no, let's wait until we get to the transcendental logic because I've got another question in that regard. It's closer to that.

Cool. So, the thing is that one of the most important, as I mentioned, that's one of the most important capacities in Kant that allows him to move, to diverge from empiricism, but also diverge from Cartesian rationalism is by introducing the capacity that he calls inner sense or inner perception, a capacity for representation, representing to the mind.

So mind becomes aware, we are not talking about any form of higher order consciousness, We can think about it simply as formal conditions. They are, of course, physically instantiated. Mind is capable of being aware of its awarenesses of items in the world. Okay? Namely, that's essentially representation. Awareness of awareness or meta-awareness. Now how is this possible? I mean, how, and also I mentioned that essentially the introduction of inner sense in Kant plays an important role, not just representation, but it also creates down the line, not at

the level of inner sense, at the higher levels, what you might call to be a perceptive subjectivity. A perceptive subjectivity in the sense that the self that experiences takes its experience as its own experience and not others. Okay? This is a fundamental core of the idea of a perception. A self whose experience is its own. Again, coming back to the idea of I think X, I think Y, I think Z,

doesn't immediately translate to I think X plus Y plus Z. The only way that you can do that is by you creating a unity, a unity of a subject who has an experiential history. and this experiential history is its own. The missing component, or the most important component for this to happen, for a subject to have an experiential history, is really time, where the capacity of inner sense enables. It doesn't mean that you get full time consciousness at the level of inner sense, no, but it enables

time consciousness on upper levels of the faculties. Obviously you need to have imagination, you need to have understanding in order to have something called representation of time and correspondingly a time conscious subject. One that has an experiential history and a unified experiential history. Its experience is its own, unified. Now Kant doesn't talk about that much about the machinery of inner sense, but you can, you know, identify by reading between the

lines how this might work. And Sellars has done a great job, and also Rosenberg, to shed a little bit of light on the machinery of inner sense. So in order for you to have inner sense, you need to have something also like memory from today's perspective. You can say that memory is not exactly like today's neuroscientific account of constructive memory. Memory is not something that simply retrieves stored data or stores data. No, memory is something that is completely situational. The reason that there is memory is because perception and action need to be coordinated.

My actions in the environment should have anticipatory model, namely it corresponds to my reproductions of my original impressions in the environment. example that I made about a predator so you need so the function of memory is the coordination between impressions reproductions of those impressions and anticipations and that's how is why it's necessary for mediating sensations environmental inputs and behavioral outputs. Okay?

So according to this memory schema, we can think of, again, a kind of a rudimentary first-grade a perceptive subjectivity who only sees one of its environment, seeing one of the environment. For example, an impression of an object in the environment in terms of Aristotelian to the T, this suchness, like a mass of fuzzy gray. The presence of a mass of fuzzy gray

for this low-grade aperceptive subject is an impression. Now, a reproduced version of the retained impression of this mass of fuzzy gray that has been reconstructed in the absence of the actual item in the environment, is called a reproduction. So reproduction does not require the presence of an actual object. Okay? Impression does. Because impression is the one that requires the presence of objects. You know, my sense is being affected by the presence of this such and such object.

But reproduction doesn't require the presence of the object. So, both forms, impression and reproduction, mark the presence of non-conceptual content of these to-de-ti or dis-such-as impression. In one form, this presence implies synchronicity with the presence of an actual item, impression, while on the other form it implies the presence of the content of the impression in the absence of the actual item. So one is about synchronicity with object, the other one is diachronicity with the object

in time, which of course the object might have disappeared. So in Kant, impressions are on the side of synchronic time order, whereas reproduction on the side of diachronic time order. Analogically, approximating this kind of non-conceptual tenseless awareness one of our low-grade a perceptive subject, the impression of the object, we mark it as I subscript O, impression of an object. The impression of the object in its retained and reproduced forms can accordingly be represented

in the following manner. I-O-B-1 is impression, which denotes the retained impression in which the presence of the non-conceptual content is derived synchronically from the presence of actual item. And I-O-B-2 is a reproduction which denotes the presence of the non-conceptual content reproduced in the absence of the actual item, that is to say derived and reconstructed diachronically from the retained impression of I-O-B-1. So this is a kind of way of us to syntactically trace how Kant uses inner sense against Hume,

but also uses it as a positive thing in order to enable time consciousness. So I-O-B-1 is impression and I-O-B-2 is reproduction. Now what is common to both forms is the presence of the content of this such, this stuffiness outside seeing one, like this massophobic ray, represented by tenseless verb be. Now it's tempting to interpret the subscripts of be one and be two as indexes of time, and tends to conclude that B2 is the past tense of B1.

For example, the subject saw this mass of phosy gray. In doing so, attributing to our subject, to our rudimentary subject, a temporal awareness or even some tense thought. But at this time, at the level of inner sense, all these numerically distinct impressions, one and two, represents are two distinct types of presence of the contents of an impression. One in the presence of the actual item, the other in the absence of it. Now, these two general types signify respectively the impression, B1, and the reproduction of that impression bearing the mark of both being retained and being

reconstructed . More succinctly, B1 and B2 present I-O, impression of object, respectively as the content of an impression and as the content of reproduction. An item can be registered, an item in the environment, can be registered in the awareness of our subject in two ways, as the content of an impression, this such one, and the content of a reproduction, this such two. Now, from our perspective, analogically speaking, these rudimentary subjects, this such one and this such two corresponding to impression and reproduction, clearly signify present

and past tenses, analogically only from our perspective. But we should avoid ventriloquizing the subject who only has access to the capacity of inner sense. It itself doesn't have the kind of complex categorical devices, conceptual thinking or imagination to synthesize such a, to infer such a connection. These are in fact have a stand in a time order. All it has is simply a sequence. Now, at this stage, our rudimentary subject is aware one, corresponding to seeing one,

of this such one and this such two, but it is not aware to, conceptual awareness, of them as present and past. You see, we said that the difference between awareness one and awareness two is ultimately being aware of them or and being aware of them as something. That as something is really important. As something is a matter of judgment. In so far as our subject, our rudimentary subject, doesn't have concepts or categories,

It cannot see them, it cannot be aware of them as past and present, even though it has de facto time order in its memory. It's a de facto, not du jour. Awareness as, seeing as, is our du jour, by right, by objective rights, whereas awareness one seeing one are de facto causal. Now in order for for the subject to have a pure situational temporal awareness corresponding to that pure perspectival spatial awareness, like outer sense, in the shape of causal ordering of

its registers and therefore as a sequence of alterations in the internal states of the subject's wiring or neural structure. Now hypothetically speaking, as I mentioned, Jay Rosenberg makes this thought experiment in his book Thinking Cell, where he says if we could attach a monitor to the head of this subject or to this automaton, whatever it is, it's a kind of a rudimentary low-grade perceptivity. And treated as a computer with a visual display unit, we might see its visual

registers, i.e. registers associated with an item present in the environment, being displayed in a certain hue with a high degree of saturation. For the purpose of this example we can think of the actual item in the environment as a key being pressed on the keyboard, you know a kind of causal intervention and that affects the display of the monitor. As a key being pressed on the keyboard attached to this computer and the saturated hue, sorry, for the purpose of this example we can think of the actual item in the environment as a key being pressed on the keyboard attached

to this computer and the saturated hue as its corresponding register. Moreover, these registers do not disappear from the screen as they are stored somewhere in the memory storage. Now as more keystrokes are made, something happens on the monitor. As saturated registers appear on the monitor, the saturation of the stored registers decreases. Anyone who has played with huge saturation options on a photo editing application can easily visualize this change instantiated by a change in the external device, a push of a button on the keyboard or a click of the mouse.

Here, the high saturated range of the hue corresponds with impressions synchronous with the presence of an item in the environment. Impressions, i.e. registers that appear on the monitor as the key strokes are being made, the low saturated range corresponds with reproductions, i.e. registers of the keystrokes that have previously been made and which are now retained in the memory. What is important to note in this example is that the difference in saturation is a difference made by causal correspondences or mappings between displayed registers on the monitor and keystrokes who are independently existing items in the environment, and that these causal

correspondences stand in de facto temporal relationships to one another. But our subject is not aware of this temporal ordering of causal correspondences, keystrokes made before and keystrokes made after, registered as stored and registered as being displayed. Okay? Nor can it infer from the TV in its head, the monitor displaying registers in various degrees of saturation, any temporal relationship. It is we, and not the subject, who infer a temporal order from the changes in the saturation in correspondence with the sequence of key strokes.

But could we say that if we sufficiently train, for example, an automaton via the application of something like, I don't know, a statistical inference, then the automaton will eventually learn to recognize the ordering of or sequence of impressions and thus legitimize our attribution of temporal awareness to it. Or can things not at all. Temporal awareness precisely cannot be reduced to such a trained responses. For the representation of a sequence we're ordering is not the same as a sequence of representations. The representation of a sequence, which is essentially here the idea of representation of time as an a priori representation, is different from a sequence of de facto representations

registered at the level of impressions and reproductions. So you see that how basically he wants, Kent wants to argue that on a Humean account you can say that as long as I have a sequence of impressions, I also have the representation of them as a sequence. If I have IOP1, IOP2, and IOP3, the very fact that there is a sequentiality, I can infer

that sequentiality translates to the representation of the sequentiality as being sequential. Kant says that these two are fundamentally different. So Hume essentially wants to show that at the level we don't need a priori law, a priori representation of time, is that simply time conscious subject can arise from the empirical impressions. and can't wants to say that no representation of sequence is different different from sequence of representation or impression of a sequence is different from sequence of impressions now as I said for the representation of

a sequence or ordering is not the same as sequence of representation the ability to differentiate a sequence of representations does not amount to the ability to represent a sequence. In the same way, a sequence of awarenesses of items in the world does not bring about an awareness of a sequence quatemporal ordering, or as sequence. Now devising a trick to achieve the former does not generate the latter capacity. Instead, this, indeed, this is part of Kant's attack on Hume's skeptical reductionist system, specifically his separability principle. The idea that everything that is different is distinguishable, and everything that is

distinguishable may be separated. According to Hume's separability principle, awareness of a complex as a complex is possible if and only if its components are distinguishable. The immediate implication of this principle is an integration principle. The idea, namely the idea, that the impression of a complex is the same as the complex of impressions, or that representation of a series is a series of representations. The awareness of a sequence of is a sequence of awarenesses of, and so on.

But as Kant shows, not only does this schema lead to conundrums and confusions, it also undermines any serious attempt to distinguish the impression as an act from its object and content. Awareness of something from awareness of something as, and ultimately empirical awareness from discursive conceptual consciousness. So accordingly, at this stage of low-grade first-degree aperceptivity, our subject neither has a temporal awareness nor it can acquire an impression of a succession by being trained

to learn a succession of impressions. All we are allowed to attribute to our subject is a collection of awarenesses furnished with an orderly structure, a linear gradation or continuum, that can in analogy, with R in analogy, that's more important, only in analogy, with R conceptual resources, legitimately be expressed as times. Within this orderly structure, the impressions of the automaton merely correspond to, but are not instantiated as the order of before and after, like ranges of saturation correspondence

with key strokes, the order of impressions and the order of reproductions. Our subject, our rudimentary subject, is so to speak only in the possession of causally ordered analogues of before and after. Again, it is tempting to interpret this before and after expressed by, for example, time t marked, t and t prime with a quote mark as tensed verbs by saying that if i o be one T and I O B 2 T marked.

From this kind of writing we say that where T marked is later than T or simply using it by a greater sign. So T marked is less than T or IOB2 before IOB1. Then the before and after relationship between T marked and T non-marked means that T marked precedes the non-marked T, and therefore the automaton or our subject is aware of I-O-B-T as what

preceded I-O-B-1-T non-marked, as if tensed verbs were inherent to the function of memory. But that's, as we talked about, that's gerrymandering. gerrymandering the rudimentary consciousness or inner sense of our rudimentary subject. A gerrymandering in the sense that we have already distinguished that these are all of these things that something comes before and something comes after, these are judgments. These are judgments. And we are in the business of judgment precisely because we are conceptual subjects, our experimental rudimentary subject doesn't have that. So we can't

gerrymandering it by smuggling some of our own implicit judgments into the way that it sees the environment and it sees its own impressions. So therefore, and therefore to conclude that by virtue of having analogs of tensed verbs are Our rudimentary subject must have a temporal perception of its impressions and reproductions. But the whole point is that, as I argued, this causally originated structure of awarenesses before after ordering of awarenesses is not by itself sufficient for the realization of

a temporal awareness, a tensed awareness of such an ordering. Only tense can account as a genuine temporal aspect of awareness. This causally originated ordering is not sufficient. Now, what our subject, our rudimentary subject needs in order to move from this causally originated order of before and after, B1 and B2, to tense, to tenses like is and was, is a way of locating itself in time, by having a mobile frame of reference with regard to time. You see, the whole idea that we said that even though our rudimentary subject didn't

have a spatial concept but it had a way of locating itself in time like I we talked about sentience like predators they don't have concepts of time I mean concepts of space or complex spatial relations but nevertheless when a predator chases a cat chases a mouse it follows it as the mouse receives from its visual field the cat doesn't mistake it as an object that is shrinking to nothing no it chases it and once a mouse goes behind a rock cats doesn't mistake it as an object that has ceased

to exist precisely because even this rudimentary sentient or rudimentary subject has a way of locating itself in a space. By way of locating itself in a space, It is capable of creating or perceiving or obtaining some rudimentary spatial relations between items, sensible items in the world. The same thing if we are going to do with time, we should allow a way of this rudimentary

subject locate itself in time, so we can see temporal relations between impressions and reproductions. In short, our subject needs to have a perspective on time corresponding to its order, an ordering point of view in a space. through this perspective in time, is it possible for this rudimentary subject to represent the world history by representing itself as existing in ever-changing temporal relations

with the events of that world history? World history in the sense of what we are talking about, you know, series of synchronicity and diachronicity, impressions and reproductions. And only, you know, of course, an only intelligence that has this fundamental capacity to represent the world history by representing itself as existing in an ever-changing temporal relations with the events of that world history is capable of later on at higher levels of faculties be capable of genuine time consciousness, having experiential unification.

All of my experiences are mine and they are all unified. Now, of course, this rudimentary temporal awareness upon which time consciousness experience of the subject is built is transcendentally ideal for Kant and logically phenomenological. It does not supply us with any factual answer with regard to the question of what time is, Whether by is, here we mean a metaphysically reified time as a thing or a non-reified formlessness,

which is the condition of any form. Now, so coming back to Kant's solution to how move from a sequence of impressions to the impression of the sequence, the seed of time consciousness. Recall that I said that having a point of view on a space became possible once our subject began to see one, the items in the environment through a kind of endocentric frame of reference that allowed it to obtain or access the changing spatial relationships between objects or items

in the environment. Similarly, in order for our subject to have a perspective on time, it also needs a temporal frame of reference, one that is transcendentally ideal, that permits a distinction between the events of a world history and its own history, sequence of its own impressions. So this is the core of it. It needs a temporal frame of reference that permits a distinction, a distinction between the events of a world history and its own history, experience occasioning encounters

with items existing independently of experience, and a temporal succession of representings of these items in impressions and reproductions. So essentially the only way that this is going to, our subjects can locate itself in time is by somehow differentiating the world history, sorry, differentiating its own history from world history, from those objects that occasion, experience, independence of mind or even encounter,

and as I said, the temporal succession of representations or awarenesses of these items in impressions and reproductions. Now in other words, our rudimentary subject must be able to differentiate the behaviors of items across time from its own encounters with these items within one and the same time, thereby occupying that position in time wherein it can become aware of awarenesses which are only de facto its own, like that monitor.

So we know that these impressions, this hue and saturation on the monitor are de facto part of this automaton. But now how can it mention these de facto relationships as relationships that are in fact its own? This is the job of representation, re-presenting. Now, how can it... So, Celar has a specific way of explaining this. Before moving to Celar's take on how this is possible, at this point it would be a mistake

to think that we can make the subject, our rudimentary subject, become actually aware of its awarenesses of items as its own awarenesses or experiences. All our rudimentary subject can have at this point is pure or de facto perspectival temporal point of view. But to have even a capacity for perspectival temporal experience, our rudimentary subject must be capable of representing the difference between an item that is being encountered now and one that is not being encountered now but was encountered and is now being reproduced.

This effectively means that the rudimentary subject, in addition to the capacity for representing items in the world, awarenesses of this suchness, of this mass of fuzzy gray, must be also equipped with the capacity to represent its awareness of awarenesses of this such as, as awarenesses of this such as. Okay, this gets a little bit tortuous here. So you remember that we said that at the level of outer sense you get essentially impressions or presentations, kind of de facto awarenesses, de facto awarenesses.

These are what you might call to be awarenesses of items, awareness one of the items, impressions or impressions of items. Now in order for you to create, you know, distinguishing your own history from world history, you need to have to distinguish these representations, these impressions as your own. So moving from awareness, awareness one of items in the world, to the awareness of awarenesses

of items in the world, as awarenesses of items. Meaning that those impressions that are going, impressions are presented again to the mind, represented. this representation ultimately is equivalent to that original impression of the object of an item in the world. Awareness is, so moving from awareness of items in the world, which is just some de facto causal impression of thing,

to awareness of awarenesses of items in the world as awareness of items. Because the first one by itself doesn't tell us anything that this is really an awareness of items, this is just an impression. It's the representation that moves it to a different level of awareness, what you might call to be 1B rather than 2. This is not essentially, this is not awareness 2, this is awareness 1b, a little bit more advanced, wherein at this level your representation of these impressions correspond, you take them in the mind, and that's the part of the mind, you take them as in fact awareness

of items in the world. Even if they were back then simply de facto awareness of items, to which you did not have any form of consciousness, now they become part of the consciousness, precisely because they are represented as really awareness of items in the world. Any questions before I move forward? Yeah, I have one question. It just seems like, it sounds like when we're recognizing something as our own, it's almost as if we're presupposing the self that recognizes that. Is it that the recognition of that process, is that what creates the self that recognizes it as its own? You see, as I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, or a few lines earlier, I mentioned

that at this point we are only analogically speaking. All that happens at this point is that, let's get rid of the whole idea of as my own. my own because my own of the real apperception, a perceptive subject is my own conceptually. Okay? At this level you might say to be my own as non-conceptual representations. And you need to be very careful again, of course when we talk about my own needs to

be taken with a grain of salt here. Simply the gesture here is that mind represents these impressions as its own representations, as its own awareness. We are still in the business of what you might call to be causal ordering. But you see that there is a formal condition that is happening here. This idea that instead of awarenesses of items in the world, which are simply sense impressions,

impressions and reproductions, I now have awareness of awarenesses of items in the world as awarenesses of items in the world. This is what you might call to be still causal, but a causal ordering that creates a formal condition, a formal condition for later on experiential unification. in which I can actually talk about my own experience. It's still causal, but it's a formal condition now. It's what Kant would call a necessary condition of possibility for mindedness. Yeah, I've also got a question, if that's okay.

Absolutely. Yeah, so I was going to ask early on about this question of non-conceptual content, because I'm aware that there's, well, vaguely aware that there's a debate about this within Kant scholarship, specifically around like John McDowell's reading of Kant as a kind of conceptualist. so I was partly wondering if you could comment on that maybe because obviously it seems that you do think there is a kind of a space for not something called non-conceptual content in cancer framework but my other question was about like the status of this rudimentary subject but I think they're actually more like they're quite related in that like you said we were only positing

this um we were just analogically speaking when we're talking about this rudimentary subject yes so in that sense is speaking when we're talking about non-conceptual content because i don't think we have can have access to that but it's perhaps something necessary to posit to, yeah, okay, I don't know. Could you respond? Yes, this actually becomes really a kind of a battlefront between Szilardians and right-wing Szilardians and left-wing Szilardians, particularly random things that in fact we can't talk about non-conceptual content because that would be just stupid. That's just metaphysics.

But anything that neuroscience has showed us, we might not be able to talk about non-conceptual content, but we can talk about non-conceptual representations. You see, that's majority of right-wing Szilardians, like for example Rosenberg and Saeed, they believe, but what they mean by non-conceptual content is a non-conceptual representing. It's what you might call to be a proto-semantic representational framework. And of course, cognitive science can, has shown that there are such things, you know, among animals who don't have language, don't have the conceptual framework. There is non-conceptual representation.

So ultimately, this becomes really, I think, how far and how subtly, without overextending, you need to perform this analogical operation. that's when you are talking about this analogical operation, I always mention that you know, this is a scale problem. We can't overstretch some of implicit assumptions that we, to which we are entitled at upper levels, bring them down to the depth lower levels. That's, that's That's a bad analogy. We need to be very careful of that. But I think if by non-conceptual content we mean non-conceptual representations or proto-semantic

representation, yes, I think we have it. If we don't have it, then what is sentience really? There is no such thing as sentience. It would be just fucking all human down the whole universe. It's really the whole idea that Rosenberg talks about in Thinking Self, that when it comes to certain perceptually oriented concepts, which are the armature of our ordinary everyday language, it's wrong to say that no other creature can do something that we do with

these concepts. For example, again, a good example of this, you know, again back to the predator-prey dynamic, A mouse that hides behind a rock, the predator doesn't need the concept of being or disappearing or non-being. It doesn't mistake the hiding cat, the hiding mouse as an object that has ceased to exist. It doesn't have the concept of reality versus appearances. But nevertheless, it has adequate neurobiological mechanisms that allow it to create this kind

of non-conceptual representing to make a successful chase. So there is the level of rudimentary representational mechanisms, which our higher order conceptual faculties disambiguate and mobilize. Obviously, our concepts coming from somewhere are perceptual concepts. They are not, you know, God-given or, you know, some sort of heavenly stored ideas. They are obviously part of our perceptual evolution and, you know, the evolution of our faculties and ultimately the introduction of language that allow us to, us using concepts, obtain

inferential relations between what we are doing at the level of sentience, at the level of proto-semantic representational systems. Okay, thanks. That was really helpful. I might, if I could possibly, I might maybe just do this in the classroom, ask for just some literature on like non-conceptual representation in animals. That would be really useful. Yes, sure. It's really clarificatory. Thank you. And should we have a cigarette break? Sure. Artem has one quick question.

Sure. Do you want to just say it? Yeah sure I was just thinking about it so if we do we then go into this non conceptual content theory as trying to kind of remove the faculty of understanding from the faculty of sensibility that is kind of going taking it away from knowing and putting it into more of an intuitive side or should we do something less radical with it because I'm just trying to put it into the entire taxonomy and it seems to be escaping me for some reason. I think the answer to this question is that I think, at least for Kant, Kant always tries

to say that understanding is autonomous from sensibility. nevertheless you see that every time that he talks about understanding it somehow has to bring and implicitly shows that it is not really autonomous from sensibility it is sensation is the root of this no I think so he know can't Kent is neither is not an extremist here he yes he can do a lot of extreme things with categories of understanding as Hegel does the pure autonomy of the concepts and the dialectical and speculative logic. The concepts

themselves, categories themselves have a greater systematicity of logic that without being bogged down by sensibility they can you know they can refine themselves or so that's one extreme if you do the extreme and if you want to do another extreme would be something like right-wing Szilardians in like particularly Milliken that there is such a thing as still normativity a priori so on so forth but there are simply extensions of our rudimentary representational capacities which are non-conceptual. I think Kant wants to stay somewhere at the

middle. I think it actually would be useful to go toward both extremes at the same time and see how much, once you arrive at the extreme, can you integrate them back. I think that's something that Kant never does that. And precisely because he thinks that going to these extremes results in a speculative metopasics or a dogmatic rationalism. But in fact, anything, the history of contemporary logic shows that you can go into that extreme and come out alive. And cognitive science shows that you can go into the other extreme and somehow, not always,

out alive, intact, with some coherent thoughts. But I think Kant is essentially very, very cautious to stay somewhere at the middle. And you see that for Kant, intuition is very, very important, precisely because intuition is the mediated, mediatory plateau between concepts of understanding and pure sensibility. It's where the dynamic interplay comes to the foreground. And you can sort of see that in the question that he asks, how are synthetic a priori judgments possible, is the question of how far can I extend the leash appropriately.

Yes, yeah. But I genuinely think that really the more radical version that is far more interesting is to go to the extremes of each trajectory and see how far they can be integrated at the end once you have taken them. I think something like, you know, the reasons that I think, you know, the idea for example something like artificial general intelligence as an idea rather than some super intelligence is interesting precisely because it is essentially a thought experiment in really going to the

extremes. the extremes of either pure logical dimension or pure neural materialism of some sort, conceptually constrained neural materialism. And then how you can integrate them back into something that is essentially what you might called to be has the same necessary conditions of the possibility of mindfulness that we have but its faculties are fundamentally different than ours. Okay, let's have a...

Sure, cigarette break. I thought you quit Reza. Yes, yes, I have heard that before. Shame on you, I'm disappointed. I've successfully quit. Well, yes, I have also heard that before. Hunter was saying that. Yeah, we'll see in a few years. I think maybe just seven minutes is okay. Hey, can you guys hear me?

Yup. Oh, you can. Okay. I was trying to talk before, but I think my mic wasn't on or something. Yeah, I was trying to talk and I realized that I had the incorrect microphone input. Yeah, that was my problem. Well, I fixed that, but then I think I had to also log off and log back off. All right, now we're good. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Stanley. No, we haven't started yet. Rez is just coming back in a minute. Oh, cool. Sorry. I just, I thought, ah, don't worry. All right. So Hunter has a question. Hunter, do you just want to ask your question aloud? Yeah, sure. I was trying to ask this before. Yeah, I was curious about intersubjectivity in this context. So would a proto-subject in order to have awareness of items as its own,

to be able to attribute awarenesses to other subjects? Or is that still not possible at a preconceptual level? At the preconceptual, well, you see, these are, I think, these are really things that cognitive science can only answer us. in the sense that you see what really Kant is interested is to show that the very fact that I have experiential unification at the level of fully conceptual and perceptive subjectivity, in the sense that I attribute that experience to mind and my experience unified has an experiential unification is because mind reports

impressions to itself as its own impressions now its own impressions we are dealing at this level at the level of pure unconscious causal mechanisms now but mind once mind does that then it becomes at higher levels what you might call to be okay no a perceptivity now there is of course Hegel thinks really that's even at this level of rudimentary awareness low-grade some subjectivity weak, there is such a thing that, as intersubjectivity, but he doesn't really

articulate whether this intersubjectivity is related to a person, to, you know, experiential unification, attributing to experience to myself or not. Hegel, however, fundamentally thinks that experiential unification or a perception in the full conceptual sense of it, in the full conceptual sense of it, is fundamentally an intersubjective thing. Okay? But at the level of these kinds of awarenesses, rudimentary awarenesses or what you might called to be impressional awarenesses, I don't think that any philosopher has made explicit

the relation between them and, you know, representing as minds representing an intersubjectivity. I don't think that it essentially requires intersubjectivity at this point, because intersubjectivity is something that is on higher order. You need to have at least higher order capacities, what you might call to be creating certain transformation rules between two people who then, across these transformation rules. I say that, for example, this is the mass of Fozzie Gray touched this heap of blue, this item as such,

or this such is, and another person says something else. Then we can create the intersubjectivity, creates objectivity out of these variations of how we perspectively see our encounters with this book. And that's actually, yes, it can be tied back to the idea Without objectivity, in fact, there is no aperceptive unity. You can say that experience is my own. It's only because I distinguish my experience by way of some formal dimension or some language or even at some level of communication, rudimentary communication, it is that I can see it as my own experience versus someone else.

Because it can be corrected. my perception might be corrected because it might be completely an illusion. And only by being pitted against other people's report, perspectival reports of the world, that I can see it as my own experience. But at the level of these awarenesses, we are not in the business of such mediums of intersubjectivity. I mean sure cognitive science might you know have fundamentally on you know uncover some really a strange you know mechanisms of communication at that level in multi-agent systems for example like or even in animals but then

again when we are talking about animals animal group calls and animal communications which are you know you can think of them as some sort of proto-subjectivity but then we would be just again an logical overextension to call an animal having an aperceptive subjectivity that is that it consciously conceptually consciously takes its experience to be itself so I think there are massive amount of you know subtleties that needs to be taken into account but yes conceptual I mean a perceptive unity in its full-blooded sense is absolutely intersubjective but these kinds of

awarenesses I really don't know and I don't think that philosophy can answer these questions coherently or even if the even if or if or whether the question itself is well posed or not because because the whole idea of inter subjectivity again is a big word it's a big concept we can't invent it at this level at this event we level information to the level there's communication going on yes even like between the cat and the map you know like yes yes what

do you see the thing is that obvious obvious yes absolutely but when we are talking about intersubjectivity, it's a loaded concept. It has some implicit assumptions, implicit implications. Yes, if we are talking about information theoretic, communication, and all sorts of things, yes. But then perhaps it's better to find a new concept for it, for example, multi-agent systems, research multi-agent systems, or collaborative automata. They don't call it intersubjectivity in that full-blooded sense, precisely because it's full-blooded conceptual. Can you talk a little bit about the principle that

organizes the sequence in the inner sense? Yes, I'm going to. Yeah, I'm going to turn it. So I said, this effectively means that our rudimentary subject, In addition to the capacity for representing items in the world, awarenesses of dis-suches, like massive phosy gray,

must be equipped with the capacity to represent its awareness of awarenesses of dis-suches, as awarenesses of dis-suches. The idea of re-presenting. a read presenting that is equivalent to those original impressions. So this is exactly that mobile, perspectival, temporal frame of reference that parallels our rudimentary subject's perspectival, a spatial frame of reference, and which our rudimentary subject, de facto occupies without being able to be conceptually aware of it,

or aperceptively experiencing it as its own. So we must not confuse this capacity, however, with a full-fledged aperceptive awareness, namely taking experiences as someone's experiences. Since the automaton, or our rudimentary subject, is not yet able to conceptually cohere and represent its awarenesses of awarenesses as being its own. What it needs in order to be able to construct and cohere its own experiences, its own awareness from its awareness of awarenesses is the faculty of the concept, the faculty of judgment, the faculty of rules. So this is not what we are in the business of. We will

come to this later on in critique of you even. Now, so all we are at this point allowed to ascribe to our rudimentary subject is the awareness of the existence of those awarenesses that are as a matter of fact, de facto, its awarenesses from our perspective, its awarenesses. but the rudimentary subject is not yet capable of recognizing this fact as and within a subjective order. In short, although from our analogical point of view our subject is beginning to display some rudiments of quasi-self-hood precisely through the elaboration of the point of view, it is not yet able to

recognize or mobilize its subjectivity. The key to having a perspectival temporal awareness is precisely the possession, as a differentiating temporal frame of reference, of a collection of awarenesses capable of meta-representing awarenesses of awarenesses of this such as awarenesses of this such as. In other words our subjects needs to be equipped with a capacity for representations that are de facto meta-awarenesses, not of items but of awarenesses of items or

or impressions of items. In a nutshell, our subject means some sort of coating device, a citation device, citation marks, what sellers call them dot quotation devices, or a meta-representing apparatus for citing or pointing to its awarenesses, or simply mentioning them to itself. This is what this whole idea of mentioning is coming back to the faculty of the capacity of inner sense.

Mind capacity to mention presentations to itself. So we can come up with this new syntactic way of writing our temporal terms, putting them inside quotation marks, which I will talk about how this goes. So this means that in addition to awarenesses of items, I-OB1 and I-OB2, our subject must be equipped with a meta-representing tool for referring to or mentioning these awarenesses of items in terms of awarenesses of awarenesses of items

meta-awareness a helpful way of thinking about this for example is you can think about category theory you know so awarenesses of items the relation between awareness of items and awarenesses of awareness of items as categories of awarenesses in a category theoretical sense then use this category theoretical abstraction which is the language of class equivalents between objects and their respective modes of presentation to think about how we can mention or quote awareness awarenesses of items by way of awarenesses of

awarenesses of items it's like you see in category theory this is a point and you can point so this point you can describe the point but describing the point meaning that you are pointing to the point the point is really the limit of your pointer. So this point is what you might call to be awareness of items, whereas the mentioning device, the faculty of inner sense is the pointer, a way of pointing and describing it. And then once you have a pointer, according to category theory, then you can create different concatenations of pointers, different meta representations or meta-awarenesses

awarenesses of awarenesses of items in the world. Now, and you know, this new collection of pointers consists of what could be called, you know, meta-awareness or an awareness of awareness. Moreover, we would be able to go even further by decomposing the new collection of pointers to yet another collection of pointers, making a concatenation of pointers that function as meta-representants, like equivalence relations as opposed to equality relations, corresponding

to a potentially infinitely nested structure of awarenesses of awarenesses of awarenesses of. what Hume called self as a bundle of human perceptions. It is perhaps necessary to mention that at the level of these impressions, we really don't have self in a Kantian sense, it's just a self in a human sense. So in this fashion, what our rudimentary subject requires in order to have a perspectival temporal awareness is not only I-O-B1 and I-O-B2 as two modes of awareness of items,

qua impressions and reproductions, but also two types of awarenesses of awarenesses. That is, impressions and reproductions of awarenesses. We call them AB1 and AB2. So these are awarenesses of awarenesses. AB1 corresponds to IO, impression, IO, B1, and AB2 corresponds to IO, B2, impression and reproduction. Now here A stands for the object of these new modes of awareness.

Now it functions as a coating device, citation marks, mentioning devices. A meta-representing awareness. Within the meta-representational structure of these new modes of awareness, We can talk about impressions B1 and reproductions B2 of awarenesses. We can see an emerging nested structure once we do that. So, do we have some sort of pen so I can... Actually, I can write it like this. this you can you can see that the meta meta representing awareness is something

like this b1 and etc or b2 etc now what you can do with this you can do something interesting so you had IO I'm not typing it all I I OB one impression and I O B to reproduction now you see now you have created a mentioning device so insert

these inside the quotation marks I B 1 quotation closed B 1 Sorry, and I B, sorry I can't see, I B to B2, and it goes on and on. So you are introducing, so the whole idea is that the faculty of the mind needs to mention its impressions and reproductions to itself. It's essentially reconstruction,

meta-representation of impressions and reproductions. And this meta-representing can be understood, again, as a quotation device, where you can create these mentioning, these structures of these meta-awarenesses in terms of, for example, quotation IOB1, quotation closed B1, and quotation IOB1, quotation closed B2. So you are essentially meta-representing

impressions and reproductions. Equally, you can have I O B 2, quotation I O B 2, quotation closed B 1, and I quotation I O B 2, quotation closed B 2, as corresponding with meta-representings of your reproduction. So it depends on what you put in the quotation marks. If there are impressions, there are meta-representings of the impressions. If there are reproductions, then you put the reproductions inside the quotation devices. But then you can take this even further. The construction of meta-awarenesses,

namely awareness of awarenesses, via meta-representing awareness can be continued even further. You can have nested quotations, like quotation, quotation, Quotation three quotations I O B 1 quotation closed B 1 two quotations B 1 or three quotations I O B 1 quotation closed B 1 two quotations B 2 and Go on and on and on Equipping the our our regimentary subject with a global faculty for meta-representing in the form of meta-awarenesses

has now provided our regimentary subject with a representational armamentarium adequate for bringing about a potentially infinite complex of nested awarenesses which are being reported to the mind as de facto its own. If we were to formulate meta-aware... So, now, the thing is that the significance of meta-awarenesses, or meta-representing awarenesses of items, as a global faculty for generating a complex of nested awarenesses, is that it introduces a special functional role for B1 and B2.

in our syntactic language of representing inner sense. It allows one of these modes of being presented, impressions and reproductions, to fall within the scope of other. So impressions can become mentioned by way of reproductions, and reproductions can be mentioned by way of impressions at the level of meta representations. And in doing so, it provides our rudimentary subject with distinct representations for being one, of some items being two, and the beings two of the same items being one. The memory of an impression

and the impression of a memory. In other words, our rudimentary subject has now the adequate adequate representational resources to distinguish between an item that is being encountered now and one that is not being encountered now but was encountered and is reproduced that is the distinction required for having a perspectival temporal awareness of is and was. Even though our rudimentary object does not have the conceptual resources to see this distinction as is and was, it nevertheless exhibits and instantiates a temporally perspectival awareness that

can be legitimately described via analogy with our own concepts as the the temporal distinction between is and was, and respectively the distinction between mind's own experiential content and the one that has been provided at the level of sense impressions by items in the world. Now having orderly elements of the past and the present, the only thing that the temporal experience of the automaton is missing is the future of course. Now recall that what we talked about the structure of memory, it's not just impression

reproduction but it's also anticipation. So beside retaining and reproducing the memory generates anticipation. The third model of items being three so we have so we have B1 B2 and B3 in addition to being one and B2 adding this third model of items to the previous types of awarenesses does not disrupt or alter the potential infinite nested structure necessary for the realization of a

temporal temporal perspectival awareness. Instead of two types of awareness the automaton has now three types. AB1, AB2, and AB3. And you can now make that mentioning of impressions and reproductions that nested fashion and and applying it to also B3 type of awareness of items. In possessing these three types of awareness and correspondingly the nested structure that comes with them, a rudimentary subject has acquired three capacities, memory, awareness of the beings of items,

and anticipation, awareness of the being three of items, and reflexive meta-awareness, awareness of being one, being two, being three of items. But also more importantly, the subject now has thus fulfilled the condition of possibility for the fundamental faculty of inner sense, the necessary capacity of the mind to be affected by its own states and to actively respond to being so affected with representations, core intuitions of item in the mind, even if the object that produced such impressions

is no longer present. So you see that inner sense opens the gates to thinking. The thinking no longer needs to be under the constant tutelage of the external object, because now you can meta-represent reproductions and anticipations. So time, in this Kantian sense, you see that transcendental ideality of time is the gate to thinking. Sorry, can you repeat the part about being three in the future? Yes, so I said that... Sorry, let me drink a little bit.

So I said that in possessing these three types of awarenesses and correspondingly the nestless structure that comes with them, the subject has acquired three capacities, memory, awarenesses of being two of items, anticipation, awarenesses of the being three of items, and reflexive meta-awareness, awareness of being one, being two, and being three of items. But also and more importantly, the automaton has thus fulfilled the condition of possibility

or the fundamental faculty of inner sense, the necessary capacity of the mind to be affected by its own states, not objects anymore, by its own states, and to actively respond to being thus and so affected with representations, qua intuitions of items in the mind, or cogitations, standing in temporal relations. so analogous to the outer sense where objects are reported to the mind inner sense is a faculty with this is not correct so inner sense is a faculty to

that completely strike out that sentence I don't know why the sentence is there because it's completely wrong inner sense is a faculty to which representations, remembrings, anticipations and proceedings, etc. are reported to the mind. At the core of this faculty is an operational and synthesizing time order, a de facto time order, and without this fundamental faculty it is impossible to cross over to the qualitative domain of a perceptive subjectivity. Kant, so I'm finishing with Kant's passage page 228. He says, whatever our representations may

arise whether through the influence of external things or as the effects of inner causes whether they have originated a priori or empirically as appearances as modifications of the mind they nevertheless belong to inner sense and as such all of our cognitions are in the end subjected to the formal condition of inner sense namely time as that in which they must all be ordered and brought into relations this is a general remark on which one must ground everything that follows so you see that the

transcendental ideality of temporality time is transcendental ideality of temporality it's not some sort of ad hoc thing that can't wants to put it as some sort of law or something it is really the one that basically allows you to move from the level of sensations whether inner and outer to the level of hierarchicalities precisely because mind no longer is required to respond to the objects because mind never respond to the objects that would be empiricism mind only respond to its representations which are awarenesses of awarenesses of items in the world

and that's from this point onward you can see that a relative autonomy starts a relative of autonomy in the sense that in so far as these representations are temporally ordered that correspond to some sort of experiential history for the subject, thinking doesn't mean... So basically the faculties from this point onward precisely because of this ingression of time and this temporal ordering mind is not what you might call to be the slave of foreign causes

it has a relative spontaneity it only responds to its own states its own representations with understanding that these estates representations are equivalent classes are of what original sensory impressions at the level of outer sense Questions?

In terms of awareness, probably a dumb question to ask, but I was thinking, so for Kant there certainly is like a transcendental point there is like an outside to it all but can we put you are were there any in history of philosophy kind of questions to that because it seems like it's possible to build all that on a meta meta meta level so in the end so for con this is the outside but it seems like it can be based as it's not only awareness to an awareness three there can be infinite amount of awarenesses. Well you see what he's really interested is not, when we are talking about awareness

at this level we are thinking about seeing one, simply what you might call to be pure perspectival encounters with the world. At this level, in fact, you can have many, what you might call it to be, many forms of encounters with the world. But your awarenesses are also very rudimentary, precisely because they are at the level of sensation. The thing when you go to the level of awareness too, we are not in fact in the business of sensation. We are in the business of a priori concepts. At the level of a priori concepts, you might think of this, that our awarenesses are more

complex but they are more constrained in how they can, or our conceptual consciousness is more constrained. By what? By rules, by a priori necessary laws. So Kant doesn't believe that we can have, in fact, too many qualitative forms of awareness. We can have many, many quantitative forms of awareness, one, but when we get into the realm of the a priori consciousness, awareness two, seeing two, then that is the quality of consciousness. no other way of quality of consciousness, because if you are talking about a different

kind of consciousness, that would be conceptual consciousness, with fundamentally different contingent principles, then it wouldn't be really a subject of philosophy, it would be a subject of pure speculation. Precisely because conceptual consciousness follows, is only conceptual by virtue of the fact that your awareness one of particular items in the world are ordered, synthesized, and organized by way of universal rules, universal and necessary rules, a priori. They are applied across the board and formats. So I think that if Ken was going to answer this question,

would say yes at the level of for example awareness once a large in awareness one you can have many awarenesses but at the level of awareness too which is conceptual consciousness no there is no such a thing every form of awareness rudimentary awareness is ingressed by or encroached upon by concepts they are all all being constrained by our faculty of judgment and conception. They have the quality that unites them, the quality of being conceptual. And it sounds kind of like the way you're describing the freedom that you're describing

is that it takes place either in the past or in the future, but not in the present. Koso, can you elaborate on this? Because it sounds like you have to sort of bracket your impressions and quotation marks and then reflect on them so you're able to get some distance from them conceptually, but it just doesn't seem clear to me how the raw reception of the signal of the present experience is something that can't, is clearly making something that we're creating or that the mind is somehow, I mean, it's already established in like, you know, time, but I'm just wondering what sort of flexibility is there in even those sorts of concepts for CAD? Yes, okay, that's actually a very good point.

I see how you're, but one thing that, word of caution, the word reflection shouldn't be applied to inner sense, because reflection is a conceptually conscious activity. You are not in the business of reflection or even introspection. That's why I said that inner sense is at the level of causal, de facto causal still. So it's really mind at the level of causal becoming affected by its own states. And yes, so in presence, what you might call to be the presence, analogically speaking, the level that you are in in in the busy in the situation of intervention by

external items in the world hence in the at the level of the presence we can't talk about the spontaneity of mind sellers in fact uh shows that can't that's why i mentioned can't only thinks that this level of what you might call the spontaneity is relative precisely because of this because you can think of this as as a uh you know as a computer again um a computer you know you start the machine um it starts you know making this wearing sound and then it starts to pull up a program it runs some things it's you know some applications or software's

interact with one another so you might say that this is at it's a level of this minds as a relative a spontaneity so this is a real real spontaneity precisely because at the level how it should how these in fact these autonomous seemingly autonomous interactions in the computer or the mind are initiated it's precisely because it's responding to environmental input you've started it you are punching some keyboards you have made some commands so it is so can't believes that ultimately actually that's a that makes him more in line with something like you know kind of Daniel Danette or Metzinger that he believes

that conceptualizing mind as a relative autonomy precisely because always it's being affected by its own estate is always under the influence of foreign causes in the present which means heteronomy rather than autonomy but the thing is that Salars mentions this that for something to be under the influence of a foreign cause doesn't mean that it is heteronymous obviously the reason that system in such and such a state is because it has been caused at the beginning by a foreign cause but the trajectory of how it evolves these

estates moving from one state to another are not dictated by the foreign cause that's that's why it is also a relative autonomy a relative autonomy or relative spontaneity it's exactly like so mind in the present always situational it's It's basically the way that we think and the mind interacts with its own estates is precisely because it's all, they're the intrusion of this situational influence coming from items in the world. That's how we think. But the ordering between these representations, these estates is essentially Kant believes

It's mental. It's of mindedness. It's a representation of the order, which belongs to the realm of mind. That makes it, so you get the idea that mind is causally, atronomous, logically autonomous. Anything that comes between the two is of relative autonomy. It seems like it might be somewhat of an ethical question with Kent a little bit, but we're not really going there. Maybe it seems like, you know, going forward, you know, an ethical action maybe for Kent, it might be more ethical in that domain with Kent.

The idea of like, how am I supposed to act in this moment and dictate my action and be creative in that process of, you know, engaging in the present, you know, and how am I supposed to understand that in a way that my act can be you know ethical? Yes, I don't know if how Kant would answer this. I think Kant would say that's why you see the idea of categorical imperative comes into play. So I don't think that Kant really I can answer this question coherently without fundamentally screwing up his system of ethics.

He needs to bring some stuff like categorical imperative or transcendental idealities, like the good, the justice, the beauty. we as humans we need to forge our lives according to these and in the present moment we need to first have a priority we need to have the priorities of this categorical imperatives and only to the best of our capacities as single subjects correspond our actions in the present to them. Well of course this is, you know, this obviously is a whole can of words precisely because

where do you derive the categorical imperative? Because categorical imperative also comes from, you know, either you go the Neokantian route you say that ethics is logic or you go to Kantian route that ethic is rooted in experiential subjectivity and if you do that then how can you derive really transcendental ideals because it wouldn't be that your thoughts of transcendental ideals would be under the intrusion of what foreign causes as well well, the very fact that you came up with these ideas, that there was no real autonomy

in deriving them. So yeah, I generally don't have a good coherent answer to this, at least from . I'll think about it a little bit . There was some passage in the Transcendental Analytic where he was explaining why the true good and beautiful, the true good and unity aren't in the categories, why they're not included, which were included in previous metaphysical systems. And the reason is because they effectively amount to the program

running well. compiling properly or like not faulting, like because they correspond to sort of the unity of soul, world, and God. I mean, I guess I would have said the kind of neo-continues, like deriving ethics from logic. Some audio glitches on my end, sorry. Hard to say. I think the way that Kantians think about it is quite actually Hegelian, in the sense that you see precisely because what is logic? Logic is thinking. Logic is

all the laws of thought. And they, for example, Cohen believes that logic and ethics are two sides of the same coin. The only way that he can arrive at this idea is to fundamentally reserve a pure dimension for cognition, a pure dimension that is fundamentally detached from what you might call to be experience or sensibility or sensible intuitions. That would be the logical dimension that allows you to derive ethical forms, ethical ideas from the organoon of such

a logic. But in so far as Kant always wants to bring back everything into intuition and it does not leave any room for the systematization of logic. can't really get into that kind of no Kantian position all it can do is by smuggling in new concepts concepts which somehow some of them are quite pre-critical in fact or what you might call to be a scholastic you know wool soul categorical imperatives so on so forth questions go on well it definitely just

seems like the positing the the subject as the determinant or determination of heteronymous materials that's something that transcendental philosophy has to do but logically it's not possible to I'm trying to figure out the phrases in terms I guess it's it's how does the subject I mean we have to assume that the subject is in some way involved in heteronymous determinations

in order to be doing transcendental philosophy. Absolutely. And that's sensations. We can't say anything about it causally from a logical perspective. There's an epistemically we have to say it as a limit. Yes, absolutely. Yes, that is true, yes. The whole idea is that logic is not about causal in any sense. Absolutely, if you are not... So the thing is that if the human doesn't have heteronomy, then you are not in the business of transcendental philosophy. You need to have both certain levels

of autonomy, and that's the autonomy of what we want to call to be pure concepts or pure cognition or a priori laws, but you also need to have causal heteronomy. Because the whole idea that if you don't have causal heteronomy, you don't have sensibility. If you don't have sensibility and sensation, then there is no such a thing as synthetic a priori down the road. I mean, this is actually sort of a little bit of my confusion about his usage of the word a priori in this passage on 228 where he's talking about the organization of inner sense by the principle of a priori, universal necessity.

which here he means it logically but there's a little bit of mystery as to whether he means this causally too yeah no I think there are places we get to that instantaneous I think that he also means it causally because there are passages nothing critical but I will find them for you So now that we got into the machinery of inner sense and the significance of the form of time, representation of time as a form of intuition or appearance, now we get to a level

of transcendental logic. So I think, sorry, I'm trying to. So Kant says, our cognition arises from two fundamental sources in the mind, the first of which is the reception of representations. The receptivity of impressions, you see, it shouldn't in fact use the word representations here. And just state with the idea of receptivity of impressions

because just, you know, we talked about it. When we are in the business of representation, We are not in the business of the outer sense. We have already crossed into the inner sense, re-presenting impressions to the mind. So nevertheless, it goes on and says that the receptivity of impression, the second, the faculty for cognizing an object by means of these representations, spontaneity of concepts to the form to the former an object is given to us

again you know when he talks about object now you need to be very careful it's not object with objectivity it's just an item in the world there's a particular item because if object is given to us then what are we doing in transcendental philosophy objects are being constituted by the transcendental machinery so the first object that is given to us is not really object it's just a particular item to the latter it is thought in relation to that representation as a mere determination of mind so thinking object

belongs to a level of pure determination of the mind intuition and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all of our cognitions so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in some way nor intuition without concept can yield a cognition. The old, you know, famous maxim that, what is it exactly, the concepts... Contents are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. blind yes now it goes on he says both are either pure or empirical empirical its sensation which presupposes the actual presence of the object you see so

So empirical intuitions and empirical thoughts or empirical cognitions are essentially the ones that you are, you might call them, at the level of synchronicity. I O B 1 or A B 1 at the level of impression because you remember the difference between impressions reproduction was that the categories of impressions were presupposing the actual presence of the object whereas the the reproduction were of the diachronic type where a metal representation where

you are basically the object has gone away and you have a reproduction of it and corresponding family of nested metal representations or metal awarenesses so essentially empirical ones always need to be at belong to the type of of synchronic impressions, AB1 or IOB1, insofar as they presuppose the presence of an actual object. Empirical, if sensation, which presupposes the actual presence of the object, is contained therein, but pure, if no sensation is mixed into the representation.

One can call the latter the matter of sensible cognition, thus pure intuition contains merely the form under which something is intuited. And pure concept only the form of thinking of an object in general. Only pure intuitions or concepts alone are possible a priori. ones only apostrophe. If we will call the receptivity of our mind to receive representations in so far as it is affected in some way sensibility, then on the contrary the faculty of bringing forth representations itself or the

spontaneity of cognition is the understanding. Now you see that essentially the initial gesture of the transcend what is exactly transcendent logic it's a logic of how mind cognizes itself as a part of the world In order for it to arrive at that kind of machinery, transcendental machinery, you need to have, again, hierarchies of this transcendental logic, like exactly transcendental psychology.

You need to have pure or empirical forms of intuition and cognition. So in a way allow you to move from understanding down to the level of sensible intuition and also organizing this stuff from the level of sensible intuitions or empirical intuitions to the level of pure cognitions, the level of understanding. So any, OK, before I move forward, any questions, now that you have read? So I know how to kind of tailor what

I'm going to say to your questions and stuff. Now that you have read this chapter, any questions? Anything? Artem, Aaron, Alice, Peter, Stanley, anyone, Shagis, Christian? I had a question going back a little bit, but you brought up Metzinger, and I know something I've been wondering before or two if you could kind of relate this account of inner sense with with Metzinger's concept of non-normal

transparency and sort of where it fits into into the account of inner sense I think it's well I think it kind of intersects yes I mean the whole idea that you see self-model, I mean, it believes that self-model is just simply a form of computational simulation that, you know, obviously has been evolutionary emerged in order to, you know, attributes maximum reward to the maximum target system. That's exactly what computational account of self-models

are built on. Now the thing is that, OK, so coming back to this idea, that the illusion of transparency. So you already get this in Kant, or at least implicitly. is that Ken doesn't talk about this and that it is representations are de facto represented are de facto represented then using intentional vocabularies when we have them, how can we break out of essentially a kind of black box system of de facto causal

representations that are doing at the level of inner sense? Because, okay, so we are saying that our concepts allow us to introspect, look into the realm of this rudimentary consciousness, this causal consciousness. But then also we have proposed that the original gesture of mindedness begins with inner sense at the level of de facto causal representations. So how do we know that this is really the case? How can we access this structure of causal de facto structuring, you know, if our concepts

are also somehow bound by these causal de facto representations, mind being aware of its own states, at some basic intentional level? then obviously you either need to say that it is only ... We are in the business of ... So, okay, so either you need to allow room for something like Metzingerian transparency as opaqueness, that all of our self-introspections are widowed by the black box of de facto causal

representing or you need to come up with this idea that essentially whatever we talk about these de facto stuff are simply analogical modeling nothing more nothing less precisely because we are the only way that we in fact we can think about something as causality, as Kant would say, or causation, or process, whatever, is because we are in the business of theory construction, in the business of not intentional vocabularies really, but intentional vocabularies or intentional estates are caught up in a

more systematic space which is the space of our theory constructions like scientific theories that you know science and we apply a certain you know paradigms of causality counterfactuals and they are completely hang together and then everything else whether our ordinary intentional or whether our scientific way of thinking are bound with inside this kind of logical system. So it depends that if we are talking about scientific perspective, I don't think that Metzinger

can push too far for this idea of transparency as opaqueness. Precisely because this very definition of you identifying something versus something else, you are already in the business of theory construction, where you have already diverged from that kind of, you have some sort of presupposition, conceptual presupposition, you have diverged from the level of the causal, what you might call it, so-called causal transparency. You are doing something else. You are not even doing intentional vocabularies. But if you are talking about a level of ordinary talks made by individuals like us, then you

And yes, that would be just, you might say that it's individual illusion, rather than illusion as such. It's precisely because the way that our intentional vocabularies, aboutness, aboutness of mind, we are reflecting or introspecting are bound with perceptual, basically specific perceptual structures specific to each individual. When we are at the level of theory construction or at the level of scientific talk about the brain and consciousness, we are no longer using these kinds of rudimentary coupling

between our perceptions of what is the case and talking about them. Hence the talk of consciousness, transparency, illusion of transparency, is I think, not futile, but you need to be very careful about it because then if you are talking about, you are overemphasizing the idea of illusion of transparency, then how did you arrive really at your thesis? Because if you are already presupposing some conceptual autonomy that

gave you some advantage, vantage point to you in order to see some opacity as versus transparency, transparency versus opacity, some sort of look into what is really the case, a theoretical claim, a theoretical claim. But yes, at the level of me or Theo, when we are talking about, you know, introspection, Yes, we are definitely, even if Metzinger didn't exist, we are differently in the illusion of, you know, transparency as the greatest opaqueness. Precisely because every majority of our intentional vocabularies are bound with our specific perceptual illusions and cognitive biases.

I mean even before I think Metzinger really arrived at this you know at this thesis you can look at into a stoics this is essentially an historic thesis that's there are two concepts online one mind as what you might call to be a mind under the basically yoke of experience and perceptions and illusions which is basically the mind of the individual and another thing is that mind as a hegemonicum

in a stoicism mind as a hegemonicum is what you might call to be mind as at the level of pure logic and concepts at that level things are detached from perceptual illusions But at the level of mind as a minded individual subject mind is always You know entangled with illusions of its own self transparency They thinks it can look into itself reflect upon itself detached from possible illusions, perceptual illusions, so on and so forth.

That latter version of mind is sort of what Frege is talking about in Thought. No, that's, oh you mean as a kind of a psychologistic... no no mind is not mind as yoke but mind is the as a logical dimension as a yes yes that's that that would be is what the story calls a hegemonic one and the whole idea is that again coming back to the ethical dimensions of this obviously things are not just black and white because self the notion of self for subjects of self consciousness a conceptual consciousness is not just

this black box self of the fact of causal regimes but it is a self that has been individuated by other selves by way of intersubjective communication intersubjective language so on and so forth so the art there so there is also the extremely among our scientists is extremely you know rampant that when people talk about self-consciousness do you really mean phenomenal self consciousness or do you mean conceptual self consciousness or do when you are talking about you know phenomenal consciousness that self consciousness do you again do you mean intentional phenomenological or logical for

there are all these grades of self consciousness and I don't think that's these kinds of neuroscientific discoveries or philosophies of neuroscience like Metzinger can be applied to all forms of consciousness or the whole concept of self. Because self is such a slippery concept. Self can be understood purely on an evolutionary causal level, but also self as a perceptive self can only be understood intersubjectively. But we are no longer in the business of brain, the stuff, brain sciences.

But we are looking into the formal condition of intersubjectivity, language, logos. So it's 2.30 right now. So I think let's hear some questions and then, so Transcendental Logic is easy, I will, and we have talked about a little bit of critique of it already. I will go and cover it quickly next session and then we read the whole next chapter, we

move forward. Again, you know, because obviously, because you know, there are questions and we can't get into the nitty gritty at some point. We need to, you know, kind of make these giant leaps. But nevertheless, Google Classroom I think is a good opportunity to get into the actual the details so it'll post the excerpts from the text if you think that something is needs clarification or something doesn't sound you know logical or consistent with the rest of what can has said I would be delighted to you know

answer and we'll have discussion in the classroom but you know more detailed stuff So next time we do analytic of principles? That's where we are. That's where we are. Can you say that one more time, Aaron? Sorry, I was just clarifying the reading. For next time we're doing analytic of principles up until where? Let me see. The analytic concepts, so... we are reading until well end of chapter it's page 218 it's the doctrine of elements part 2 division 1 book 1 chapter 1 it's B what is that I can't

see it so it's a book 1 analytic of concepts chapter 1 yeah but is it book book 26 you want to read through 18 through chapter 2 the first section right is that true? We should try to do the maybe because I've already done it all. On the clue to the discovery of all pure concepts of the understanding, third section.

So this whole thing has again subsections, I'm saying to the end of that, which is basically It's before Transcendental Analytic second chapter on the deduction of pure concepts. Well, actually, this is it. Yeah, yeah. So it's book one, all of chapter one, which is three sections. And then we shouldn't go into chapter two yet. Is that what you're saying? Sorry, I am confused with this app thing. maybe because then this is the so this is analytical concepts

goes up to yes and then stop here I stop at the chapter 2 on the deduction of pure concepts of the understanding the synthesis I know in chapter two that's where I've got questions oh yeah synthesis are the most interesting ones I think the senses are the best yeah yeah I thought we were already ever supposed to have read that what are we being up to for today hunter I just have to I have to mute you

Hunter because your echo is really bad um no that what we were supposed to read up to today was transfer all of the transcendental doctrine of elements which is the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental logic right and now we'll be next week we'll be starting the transcendental analytic which has or sorry yes that's the transcendental analytic and then the after So that would be the deduction of categories. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of what you said today, I read the whole analytic this weekend.

And all of the stuff that you're talking about, like the reproductions and whatnot, and the unity of the self and that gets into like the third synthesis of the synthesis of recognition and what not really good. That's like caught at some of his most... Oh yeah, absolutely. It's precisely when Kant becomes artificial general intelligence, philosopher of artificial general intelligence. It's really, I mean, the whole idea of the threefold synthesis is, I think, is when he shows that he is truly a transcendental philosopher.

Because it's all about the whole idea that what is exactly the complex interplay between understanding and sensibility, which he had already laid out in a transcendental logic. ultimately the structure of mindedness, transcendental psychology, the conditions for the possibility of having mind. Yeah, yeah. That's what I said that I had questions about with regards to synthesis and whatnot. I'm wondering, does him saying synthesis and the threefold synthesis have to do with the word synthesis and like say synthetic priori judgments? Okay, the best way to read the idea of synthesis in Kant

for the threefold synthesis. Yes, of course it's part of that. They are coming from it. But in a way to make it less confusing, think about synthesis as a process of integration and organization. So we already saw that everything that is registered at the level of outer sense need to be ordered. So we saw the first massive amount of, it looked rudimentary, but it was massive, the level of organization at the level of outer and inner sense, the spatial and temporal. Now they have created, now you can say that these impressions or representations are somehow

have have been have been ordered synchronically and diachronically now obviously you need to add different kinds of layers of organization on top of this to construct different layers of organizations on top of your manifold of intuition sensible intuition then you need to add new faculties and these new faculties require for synthesis namely integration of one manifold to another manifold so it's like this whole idea of synthesis is like that you have so basically you have some stuff that are loosely connected or disconnected and then you are creating a by way of introducing

a faculty, you're creating an integration between them that always happens through time. That integration creates a unity, a new unity of them, turns this manifold into a different manifold with a higher order unity, a higher level of integration. And then you see that these, essentially these three forms of integration, three forms of synthesis are responsible for moving essentially downward from sensibility to understanding sorry upward from sensibility to understanding and downward from understanding to sensibility

from pure concepts to empirical impressions. Wouldn't this be at the level of not just intuitines, but I would kind of like at that verbal form of not the understood, but the understandings, and not the intuited, but the intuitines, as in like not having sort of like insofar as it is sort of like a constituted app perception.

It hasn't yet, or it will, but it's prior to the sort of solicitation and generation of that experience. Hmm. I'm saying is it the synthesis responsible for like the generation of time and of experience well the threefold synthesis are really what you might call to be the machinery of experience without

these synthesis there is no such a thing as experience because all you get are de facto stuff or pure concepts that's it so how they can put together so they can create experience and also experiential unification that's the job of synthesis okay so it seems like it's a little experience without the synthesis synthesis are really the machinery behind experience these kinds of ways of you know pulling up data upward or you know applying some forms to this data or structure downward that's that's how the synthesis

move. All right that makes quite a bit of sense. The status of imagination in this is kind of mysterious to me. It seems like sometimes he associates it with kind of just the second synthesis you know the association reproduction but he also can sometimes he seems like he's treating it like its own faculty that's kind of between understand imagination absolutely that's imagination absolutely new faculty comes between understanding and intuition the thing is that yes there is this lecture not part of we Kantian themes, but he says that, this is exactly when he talks about imagination,

Kantzeler says that you need to be like a hawk, watching him, because he does a lot of conceptual gerrymandering. We will get into that, particularly the way that basically sometimes Kant tries to say that as if in Twitteds are somehow directly connected to the understand. But everything goes by way of the oblique way by way of an extra faculty that comes between the two and its imagination and imagination also comes in different shapes you know some are less rudimentary some are more rudimentary in in the relate in the way that understanding and intuition come to play against one another

Shall we? Sounds good. Yeah. All right. Last questions or we can end the broadcast. Any questions? Nothing? Okay. Thanks, everyone. See you next week and hope you will have a great day. I have a loud logistical question when the broadcast ends. All right, I'll end it.