Hello and welcome to the 14th session of Khan's Circle of Revenge. We were just having a long conversation and we can continue that if we want. I'm going to pass the mic to Reza Negri-Stone. Peter has been silent. I think Pete needs to say something at this point. i'm sorry i had a big weekend man but i'm really fascinated by the discussion so far i was listening to it and i was thinking wow i i because i'm a bit tired now i'll re-watch this on the recording you know yes no i mean you you are in australia if i'm not mistaken yeah that's right Yeah, I mean, I have told you, I think the sheer commitment of some of you is just beyond me.
I have told you, if Plato himself comes to downtown and gives his lecture on the good, his best lecture ever he gave, I'm not going to participate. I'm not going to even lose a moment of my sleep to listen to him. and the sheer commitment that you guys have. I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best, but that's going to be maybe a bit more passive today, I think. Where in Australia are you? Melbourne. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alice, how are you from Australia as well? Yeah, I live in South Australia, so in Adelaide. You have a very Australian accent, I must say.
I have lived with Australian person for quite a while and I can even if your accent is subtle, I can easily say that you are Australian. And I'm sure that you also have a twisted sense of humor because all Australians do. It's even worse than the British ones. It's just that the Americans don't have a sense of humor. Wow. Wow. Theo is laughing. I have a hard time telling Australian accents from British ones.
There is, you see the Australian accent is something, it's something, it's like a twisted version of Canadian accent to be honest with you. I really liked it. I mean, also they have these kinds of, you know, words that you don't even get them in English language, in British, you know, colloquialism. You can always tell. I just threw that dirty word for the Australian rednecks. It's like Bogan or something. I don't know. No, I mean, the thing is that I'm really
afraid of your country, by the way, if you don't know that. I've watched Wolf Creek. What is that? Oh, yeah. You know, I always found myself as the africando of horror movies and I used to watch you know massive amount of gory horror movies I mean I was huffing horror as if it is glue but but some reason either because you know you age or you become softened I watched Wolf Creek you know when it came and my god it was like really I said that okay no more I'm going to watch a romance and comedy from this point onward I really
think that there is this kind of I think this is kind of really realistic way that Australians think about horror and you know kind of grotesque stuff which is just too realistic for us sentimental Middle Easterners Americans Europeans so on and so forth it's just their view is too harsh for us to take it at the face value. Okay, ask any question before I start with the axioms of anticipations.
Well I was just gonna notice one thing about the conversation we were having earlier uh you spoke about this tendency to uh apply downward towards like the microscopic mindedness like looking seeing ants as as minded creatures um it seems like there's there's this other tendency to apply upward the macroscopic tendency to um to view either like economy as minded just in its the movement of capital and the theological error of seeing the cosmos is minded sure but do you don't you think that in
fact what you call a micro macroscopic trends like economy mark market being a a minded thing, market being intelligent, culture being like this and that, that these are in fact the symptoms of our micro abstractions in the sense that we think of intelligence as quantitative, quantitative problem solving rather than qualitative, conceptual. In the sense that why do you think that we call market intelligent? Precisely because it exhibits a behavior, a collection of behaviors
that represent in quantitative terms, you know, are problem-solving faculties. It's a bigger view. It's not just one quantitative problem-solving, but nevertheless, what you might say, it's like a global view of problem-solving. Market as intelligent, economy as Skynet, so on and so forth, capitalism as Skynet. I think that these are in fact the symptoms of the quantitative micro abstraction.
Precisely because the difference between micro and macro, adequately understood, is not the difference between quantity. It's not a quantitative difference, as if you could put together these amounts of quantitative faculties so as you can arrive at a higher level at something like intelligence. It's actually a qualitative difference. Concepts are different from problem solving precisely because they are not problem solving. That's the whole point. our problem solving capacities are modeled
our qualitative conceptual faculties. So I think when I'm saying that micro macro level difference, you should think about it in terms of the difference between quantitative and qualitative. No matter how much quantitative faculties we put together, nothing guarantees that we can ever reach something like a qualitative difference, like a qualitative conception of mindedness. this is not just because there is a fundamental gap between quantitative and qualitative
but also because maybe and again I'm really open to this line of inquiry that the mode of integration by which we combine our quantitative faculties needs not to be quantity per se, means that it needs to be on a higher scale. It might be, as a matter of fact, the very case that everything that we do, everything that we think is qualitative, might in fact be qualitative. It might be the case that the speciality of the human mind
can be exposed as ununique and un-special, algorithm by algorithm, by artificial intelligence and computer science at some point. But the very fact that we have something that is qualitatively different means that there is something more, an emergent property or that the mode of integration of these quantitative faculties is also important. And what we haven't really paid attention to enough is this mode of integration.
I think looking at Kant's transcendental psychology shows that the mode of integration is extremely important. So you have a stuff that can happen in any part of this God-forsaken universe, sensibility, intuition, so on and so forth. Then why is that? We as humans can form such judgments and not other things. Maybe it is the case that these non-especial, these quite ordinary quantitative processes,
which are prevalent in nature need to be integrated, combined or organized in a very qualitative way, in a very special way. And that's what's missing. And that's also what makes us human. it seems like there's maybe a potential for more grievous error in qualitative evaluation it seems like that would I can't think of an example why but wouldn't that be
wouldn't we be more prone to anthropomorphize if we're looking for qualitative characteristics of life? The answer is both yes and no on two grounds is that the notion of anthropomorphization that you are using with conjunction to qualitative characterization is both necessary and redundant. Redundant in the sense that of the negative sense of anthropomorphization in the sense of subjectivist anthropomorphization. But there is a necessary component to it.
It is anthropomorphized and we cannot so immediately step outside of it. That's our resources of how we can judge whether you want it or not. The good sense of anthropomorphization, cognitive faculties, reasoning, so on and so forth. So this is important. Second is that it's not just that the qualitative perspective is susceptible to misjudgments and biases, but so as quantitative worldview of intelligence or mindedness in fact I would say the latter is far more susceptible to biases why because first
of all the very criteria of quantification of intelligence or mindedness is modeled on our existing resources too. The idea that we can come up with a quantitative resource, with a quantitative account of intelligence requires us in every moment to explain why is that? We call it intelligent in the first place. So there is always a criteria of judgment
implicit even to quantification of intelligence and mindedness. It's implicit in the quantitative paradigm and that's really i think the kernel of so many misunderstanding and misjudgments in these quantitative approaches to intelligence precisely you say that well you know this thing this rat can go through this labyrinth so it's intelligent and well yeah it might be intelligent have exhibiting intelligent behavior but can you really call it a minded creature in the sense that we constrain mindedness to certain kind of criteria no if you say so if you say yes then explain why and
let me know how can you explain why without recourse to some of those things that are implicitly qualitative even if you think they can be decomposed to quantitative criteria so this is this is really important i think they are both susceptible to their own uh you know misunderstanding and uh kind of distortions but i would say precisely because the quantitative worldview has already given up dispensed with with the qualitative criteria of judgment it is far more susceptible to fall prey to
dogmatic metaphysics than the qualitative worldview because once you endorse the quantitative worldview means that you have already given up with human as a qualitative difference and if you have done that then you have rendered yourself susceptible to carry on implicit anthropomorphic traits under the rubric of radical quantitative difference That's I think the really scary thing. And I think that every single anti-humanist, radical post-humanist person that I have seen,
has been susceptible to this symptom. They have given up on the qualitative difference. By virtue of that they have fallen in the trap of the most entrenched forms of anthropocentrism. I mean, it seems like then it's the way we're able to talk about mindedness is radically tethered in Yes, tethered in it's constrained
through and through yes, absolutely And then you cannot talk about mind in the world without actually being responsive or sensitive in one way or another, but also critical to this tetheredness, to this being constrained. you expand on what you meant by it could possibly be the case that these quite ordinary quantitative processes which are prevalent in nature need to be integrated combined and organized in a very qualitative way it's the second part of that sentence I don't quite get sure
then being yeah sure you see this is already something that mentioned by Kent so you get something like conditions of possibility of mindedness but when you look at the conditions of possibility of mindedness is that each Each of them by themselves can actually be replicated outside of what we call human, by a machine, by artificial means, by algorithm, so on and so forth. But then what is that? We are capable of doing things, thinking things
that are beyond the scope of the machine. regardless of whether the machines have more power or less power than ours I'm saying that because even today the machines can actually do things that we can't do but nevertheless why is that we are still have something more than them we are still capable of having a conception of ourselves in the world and by virtue of that change ourselves the true test of a machine is not a Wozniak test like you ask a coffee machine to make the greatest coffee in the world
the real great test is a platonic one Ask a machine, just as you ask yourself, ask a human, can you make something better than yourself? That requires a conception of better, but also a conception of yourself in the world. A machine can't do that. Can you give me a machine at this moment? It's not that in principle can't do it you know i think i can do it precisely because i don't believe in such a distinction between machine and humans but i think that in the existing paradigm of how we
you know formulate mindedness and intelligence general intelligence machines can't do it can you ask a machine to make a better something better than itself and make make a better machine no Well, we are absolutely such machines that we can make better things than ourselves. We can make machines that can make a far better proof theoretical account of some physical principle than any fucking mathematician on the world. So that's the whole point. So the point is that there are such a thing as quantitative conditions of possibility,
but what is really important is that how they hang together, how they are integrated, so that they can provide something, an emergent property that is not already included in them. You can only have this with human as a category and not a biological species. We have something called reason and judgment. No matter how much a stuff, quantitative stuff you put together, you never even remotely at this point get to something
like a judgment about not only what the world is but who i am in the world but also the human problem the distinction between art and ease what i ought to do given what the world is what kind of machine can do that that requires a qualitative difference a qualitative integration of faculties. Do you see any significant advances in moral psychology since ancient ethics? Moral psychology or ethics in general?
Well, neither really. Has there been any significant advances? I mean, yes. No, I think ethics, ethics, I think that it is, to be honest with you, the more I have read about ethics since, you know, Parmenides and Plato to Espinosa and, you know, later on, it seems that ethics, so basically the whole idea is that ethics is either the metrologic of logic or it is the the twin face of logic. So these two are indistinguishable at some point. And I think what we haven't really grasped yet
as really the qualitative difference is really this whole ethics problem. Not ethics as morality per se, but ethics as being conjoined to logic, ethics as what you might call to be the organon of aughts. rather than the organ of is. One of the things I've really picked up in these classes I've been taking with you is after reading Desjardins' book on Plato, and then I read Longuinesse's book on Kant, you get this idea that they're arguing that these are cohesive systems. And that it seems like you're trying to suggest that maybe we could make this idea of a system, a qualitative emergent property of a system, somehow more sophisticated using something like Puntel or some of the stuff you've been mentioning
on toy philosophy lately. Yes, no, I think this is already in fact present in something like, you know, some of these commentaries and specifically in Plato and Espinosa in the sense that the further you enhance the repertoire of your logic, the further you can broaden the scope of what ethics might be. And ethics is really the general organon of a minded creature. A minded creature is not really a representational system par excellence. No, a minded creature only represents the world to the extent
that its primary concern is with its world building. It is to the extent that I want to build a world responsive to my normative needs that I need to objectively represent the world. And even then, is and ought are distinguished. So the whole idea of a normative creature, an ethical creature, is a really complex one. And I think that, to be honest with you, I haven't seen in any philosophy, in any work
of a thinker, this has been sufficiently articulated. Yes, it has been articulated partially through the works of Plato, Espinosa, Kant, even Hegel, but really the whole idea that what is this ethical species, what is this ethical subject And how does it really differ from simple representational one, a cognitive one? Because an ethical creature doesn't only need cognitive faculties, but also ideal faculties
or aesthetic faculties, faculties which are pure, which can form odds even if the is is such and such. We are already those kinds of creatures. We are already saying that, as the Xenofeminist Manifesto had at this last line, we already know that if nature is unjust, even if this is the fact, objective fact, that science tells us, who gives a fuck? The whole point is to turn nature commends your role with your needs if you think nature is unjust then just change nature
this is the very definition of an ethical creature this this idea that a minded creature only represents the world to the extent that it wants to build a world responsive to its normative needs. It sounds like a kind of sort of pragmatist thesis to me. It is a pragmatist to an extent. But remember, if you think of the normative needs, not as egotistic needs, not as purely in a negative sense, pragmatic needs but needs commensurables with objective constraints of reality then it is not
a holy pragmatist thesis you see if we are changing nature and that's we already do and what we have already done, then what does it mean to change nature in coordination with its constraints? Think about climate change, think about resources, think about the complexity of the factors of the physical universe that pose problems to every step of our attempts to change it. I think that's kind of what I was getting at too, Reza. You helped me kind of clarify that as it seems like, I mean, it seems like the most sophisticated ethics are coming from
very tightly wound systems like Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Plato, Stoicism. So it seems that in order to have a sophisticated ethics you need to have some sort of very complex system a complex theoretical system yes absolutely it's the whole idea that and again this is really i think the discovery of parmenides and plato there is no such as there is no such a thing as a structure without being and there is no such a thing as being without a structure these two come hand in hand and without these two you can't go on making practical injunctions esthetic injunctions
ethical moral injunction so on so forth so this is the constraints yes and this is like i think for me one of the big problems i have when i see people like rejecting kant's ethics but somehow retaining his metaphysics and his logic and his like the critique yes yes anything else they reject Absolutely, or vice versa. You can't just have the ethics of enlightenment without somehow endorsing transcendental philosophy, the relation between mind and world, structure and being, theory and object, logic and objectification.
One thing that I thought with respect to Stanley's question and about whether or not, you know, like serving the normative needs is pragmatist or not is that, you know, with reason, you know, we arrive at prioritizing different needs and, you know, it unbinds us from the particularity of, you know, our natural needs. And so like the ends to which we try to change the world to are changed when we arrive at new ends through the process of reason. Yes. The thing is that I think the ranking of, you know, such priorities might be pragmatic
in one sense and not pragmatic in the other. I think, and Stanley, please do correct me if I'm mistaken. I think the kind of pragmatism that Stanley used was, you know, the kind of, the negative connotation of pragmatism. But there is also... I don't know. I didn't necessarily mean it in a negative way. But it wasn't, what I'm saying, it wasn't pragmatism in the vein of brandon. Yeah, okay. Yes. In a kind of a more traditional understanding of pragmatism. Yes. Yes. In that sense, I don't think that the ranking is pragmatist in that sense.
precisely because pragmatism in that kind of rudimentary sense is ultimately what you might call to be empirical individualism. It's rational choice theory. We are simply prioritize and rank our goals according to our individual preferences. preferences which are given in advance by a history of evolution. So this is not in any sense rationalist. I don't think that this kind of pragmatism in any sense
entertains the idea of ought versus is. It is in fact in the domain of is. There's a really nice quote by Badiou that touches upon this ranking thing. He says that philosophy proposes a triage, and triage is, you know, ranking of the priorities of how you treat wounds in war. Philosophy proposes a triage in the confusion of experience from which it draws an orientation. and I just really like that quote I think it does touch I mean Badiou
despite so many of his eccentric tics so much characteristics of French philosophy I think he is quite on point most of the time but yes the whole point is that the ranking this whole idea of ranking is a species of ethics with the understanding that ethics is simply the other side of the coin is simply the twin of logic and logic is the organ of objectivity Can you expand
on that? I've seen I've seen Pete Wolfendale make similar kind of nomic statements about the relationship between ethics and logic which I have not been able to get a grasp on you see what is really the principle of behind undergirding behind logic whether you think it of as a as a canon in a Kantian sense or as an organ in the brain of Heiko, it's the idea that logic is a criteria of objectivity to court, simply objectivity. What is objectivity?
Now, we can understand objectivity in two senses. One, objective reality, objective art. but also objectivity in terms of intersubjectivity that our judgments about different phenomena about different aspects of the world are not utterly incommensurably dissimilar No, they are in fact similar precisely because they are intersubjective. They are the products of intersubjectivity rather than individual subjectivity.
When I see this thing is red, it's because I know the concept of red. It's because I know how to apply the concept of red. And also I'm beholden to endorse its consequences in relation to other interlocutors to whom I'm speaking, whom I say that, well, this is actually not red, this is purple on this and that ground. Precisely because our private thoughts are modeled on the use of a public language. so two senses of objectivity i think these two senses of objectivity is where the entire domain of logic is built on and and is concentrated now obviously so this is a question of is now is
is not just is about the state of the world or the furnitures of the world or the aspect of empirical world but also the state of intersubjectivity so this is what we might call to be logic as a domain of is in the broadest possible sense now what is exactly ethics ethics is domain of art in the broadest possible sense Meaning, if there are such constraints in the objective reality, whether in the intersubjective dialogues, dialogical intersubjectivity, or in the empirical reality, then what does it mean for us to form a demand?
a demand whose answer can only be couched in terms of one ought to do this or that. So ethics, essentially what you might call to be a discourse, constrained by the logical ises in the broadest possible sense, namely objective demands, what Plato called physis or nature, Not nature in the way that naturalism understands, but nature as objective principles, as differentiated from social nomos or social conventions. A good example of this made by Stellar's, a Platonic example, I have made it in Plato course.
think of this so for you to make a house you need to you need to have you know certain kinds of objective principles well it should have wall it should have ceiling it should have windows it should be robots it should withstand the calamities of weather and nature and so on and so forth So this is one kind of responsiveness to objective principle. But there is also a stronger sense, which is ethical one. I am building the house because I would like to protect my fellow humans from such and such adversities.
So the house serves an external purpose, and this purpose is not already in ises, neither in nature nor in intersubjectivity. It's something that we ourselves have arrived at and turned into a principle for ourselves, based on the kind of conception of what we have in the world. So this is a sheltering house, is an out. But this out also needs to be responsive to certain kind of ises and also subclasses of oughts, which we call objective principles.
So Plato says that these objective principles required to make happen, you know, the external purpose, the higher goal of making a house, are always objective. Now imagine that you have arrived at certain kinds of objective principles and these objective principles can always change according to the development of science, my theoretical capacity, so on and so forth. Let's say we have already come up with some minimal state of that. Now there is this Builders Guild who knows what these objective principles are.
And for the sake of streamlining, it turns these objective ises or objective principles, fuses, into nomos or social conventions. This is exactly what looks like a builder's code. Builder's code doesn't essentially in a one-to-one manner represent the objective principles, but it gives a kind of streamlined version of it. So they will say to you that if you want to build a house, well, you need to use this material. You need to make this kind of dig hole in order to pour the concrete, make the fundaments,
the armature, so on and so forth. But also imagine later on, given sufficient time, this builder code gets corrupted. It's the corruption of social conventions, of the nomos versus objective principles. that if the Builders Guild has a monopoly over certain kinds of materials, like wood, certain kinds of metal, then they ask everyone to use that kind of metal in order to make a house. It still serves the purpose, but in a very distorted way, in a corrupted way. So the notion of ethics here as a concrete example serves two purposes.
One is that by way of comparison to your objective principles, you see how much you have diverged from them to mere social conventions, from objectivity to mere social conventions. But also, to what end and to what purpose these current existing codes or gnomuses are actually serving the very purpose for which you made the house in the first place, sheltering homeless people. If it doesn't serve it, or if it does serve it,
with flaws and weaknesses, then this is not a good social convention. This is not a good, basically, code. The only way that you can revert back is using ethical criticism to show at once that they have diverged from objective reality, objective principles but also the codes that they have in place don't serve adequately the objective the ethical the art sheltering people that was made in
the first place as a reason to make a house you Sally go on let me know if I need to clarify stuff no I think I think that's enough to be getting on with already yeah I need to go back and listen to that I think so it's really the most important thing is the idea you want essentially three things
objective principles arts according to arts a co in accordance with objective principles and then the nomosis, social conventions, and the relation between these three. You see that every time that the relation between objectivity and the purpose that you have arrived based on your own needs according to the constraints of reality is being distorted by nomos, then you need to make a change. Ethics is responsible for both diagnosing the
inadequacies of this relation but also coordinating objective principles and extra objective normative arts. I want, I have a conception of myself as an individual, as free, as a surviving living creature. So obviously in order for me to maintain my survival, I need to have a shelter. So the shelter is a timeless conception for me. It's what Sebastian Rode calls a time general thought. Meaning that no matter how many instances of me making a house, none of these will ever satisfy me.
In fact, everything that I do is going to be in response to my general thought. And this general thought is nothing but a consequence of what I take myself to be in the world and what I think I am entitled to in accordance with that self-conception. While you are thinking, I need to get us something water. Sorry, I'm running out of, yeah, it's a little throat.
My apologies. We're just taking a five minute break, so people should be back in a couple minutes. Sure. Well, that took care of analogies of experience. I have more questions in the sidebar. I know they'll further derail us. I feel, you know that my eyesight is far less optimal.
Okay, I can read them. Sure. Or Chaggy's, I think you just... I just wanted to make a small comment related to what he was just saying. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, just everything you're saying, Reza, just reminds me, your ethical injunction at the end of your first post on toy philosophy reminds me so much at the end of Kant's critique of practical reason. This whole idea of getting your science right and understanding the need for both ethics and the critique of pure reason and the critique of practical reason. and I think you know what you're saying it just it's just echoing I think your first post on Toy Philosophy and also to me when I'm hearing it sounds so much like just like the end of the critique of practical reasons to me yes no you see I mean I know that some of you think that um me criticizing Kant means that you know I'm
kind of like i i don't like kent or but no i think kent is really a philosopher who puts everything into motion you see one of the greatest uh achievements of kent uh is really the whole notion of critique and critical pure reason is only one part of it he might fail in certain aspects of it but as a whole critical pure reason you know the judgments and the aesthetic you know practical so basically theory practice and aesthetic as a
as a whole, make a full system that's really, absolutely, I don't think that any person at this point can dismiss or somehow try to circumvent the problem posed by the system. Yes, Kant's methods might be inadequate, but I think the kind of ambitions and the kind of objectives that Kant's put forward, absolutely I think are still on top of the philosophical praxis. And I yet to see a philosopher who adequately tackle with these Kantian problems as a whole. It seems like your critique of Kant accords a lot
with the way that Finlay critiques Kant, As well as like the way that Carnap critiques Wittgenstein. Okay. Wittgenstein's prison. I mean, it seems like your whole emphasis on the fact that Kant doesn't pose the problem of, you know, liberating from particular transcendental conditions of subjectivity and putting an emphasis on being able to carry out that critique is what Carnap poses to Wittgenstein to liberate oneself from Wittgenstein's prison. And likewise with Finley in his axiology. Yes. Yeah. No, no, no.
Yes, absolutely. I mean, and I don't think that any of these philosophers, well, maybe less so about Wittgenstein, but Wittgenstein is also, you know, another monster of philosophy. But I think that they were completely aware of the shortcomings of their philosophy. I mean, let me, to be honest with you, when we do philosophize, we know the dodgy discussions that we have launched. You know, we know the weaknesses of our problem. And Kant does know his. I think he tries to rectify some of them, but some of them are just, can't be solved by Kant.
Not just because Kant doesn't have enough methodological resources in his time, but also because we are all as individuals beholden to our philosophical prejudices. If anything, it shows that the task of philosophy, the task of the critique is nothing but a collective task. No philosopher can ever tell you what the case is, what you ought to do and what you should not. as I have said I mean any person it's like it's like a regular world any person any single single
person a Marxist hacker say that oh I'm going to change the world and I can do it you need to be really suspicious of that only a psycho thinks that he or she can individually change the world that is the sense I really on this whole idea of logic as organon versus canon,
not only with regard to the problem of ethics as a methodologic but also in relation uh to uh you know objective reality objective art uh i really recommend uh you know two kind two two a strain two trajectories of investigation one no kantians uh herman cohen uh in particular with regard to the you know uh the relation between ethics and logic um and two um you know people like Lorenz Pontell and Uy Peterson with regard to how logic actually constitutes objectivity.
The more unbound conception of logic you have, a better grasp of objectivity you will arrive. Questions? I wanted to ask you this before, Anne-Rosa, in terms of, this might be a throwback for a long time, but I've been kind of trying to reconcile the question of general versus transcendental logic in the transcendental logic chapters.
And I was just thinking whether you think, when we were talking about artificial intelligence, for example, do you think the ability to overcome contingent representations and critique them validly bases itself on general logic as this kind of very important system or do you think this is do you think it's formal logic like general logic is just one of the elements that is that should be present in order to critique to arise do think it's like more or less important do you have a autonomy of that okay good question um i see that this is somehow also related to the question that he posted
um it's a kind of a variation of that so the thing is that you know obviously logic can tell us a lot but so let's put it this way the whole idea that can't thinks that the very reason that we have experience that we the only reason that we have such thing as an empirical source for truth the The very reason that we have particularities is because we are already inhabiting a world populated by abstract universalities, the a priori, on the top of which is the formal
logical, the general logic, general and pure logic in Kantian sense. if you don't have logic, then how can you ever expand the scope of your experience? How can you ever see this particularity versus that particularity? The very fact that, in fact, that's my criticism of Kant, and I really, really disagree with Pete on this front with regard to the issue of logic, is that, I mean, the whole idea transcendental logic while it is made on the right track it's modeled precisely because can't wants to at the same time rescue the empirical source of truth and also say that
well these truths are a priori constituted namely the relation and sensibility Dear Sage of Konigsberg, you can't have it both ways. You can have it, but not in the way that you are trying to formulate it. It is because we have something like general logic, which is divested from the empirical realm, that we can in fact have empirical experience because our empirical observations are embedded
within such a logic the very fact that they can be a statement is because to the extent that they are statements couched in the system of pure and general logic. Now, so the whole point is that I don't think that, like, Kant says, you know, well, general logic, you know, is just illusory, what he calls dialectical, which is just means bad, you know it's not dialectical in the sense of Hegel it's a slang for Kent so I don't think that that's really a good way to handle this problem precisely
because okay if you are dispensing with the dimension of pure general logic then how can you ever talk about the relation between understanding and sensibility Because if you are doing that, then you are only putting your foot in the domain of the sense given, the sense data. And hence, you are just an empiricist, to be honest. The only way that you can do it is by understanding the unboundedness of general logic and how it can unbind your experience by allowing you to plug your observations,
your empirical sense data into it so you can format them so you can have something like transcendental logic. You can have a kind of experience. So this is... my initial impression of the whole problem now i think um we need to be more subtle than this that by itself can't fully be commensurated with empirical data with observational statements with sense impressions so on and so forth
Why? Because I think Kant made an actual observation that, and also Plato, and this is not really Kantian, it's really Plato. I mean the whole idea of general logic, if it is just general and pure logic, it's law for the sake of law. It's regularism. If you say that this is a rule then you should say that what does really warrant your correct application of this rule then you have to say that well another set of rule and then after that another set of rule and then add infinitum a regress argument so what is really the profit the solution tentatively i think the solution to this problem
is really in today's perspective on general and pure logic, namely formal logic. Formal logic is no longer understood as logic per se, but as logic in correspondence with two other domains, mathematics, mathematical structures, and computation. Not only covering the interaction between empirical and ideal, but the interaction between symbolical rules of any given language.
So I think that in order for us to really appreciate Kant, but also a step outside of his conservatism with regard to general logic, we need to reinvent logic as in correspondence with mathematics and computation. And in that trajectory also broaden the scope of what we mean by computation. As a general term for interactions. That has already something that Turing put forward. Albeit he didn't appreciate the consequence, but has become a huge driving force in today's
theoretical computer science. Computation is ultimately interaction. And what is interaction? One action constraining another action. sensibility constraining understanding understanding constraining the empirical one rule constraining another rule so on and so forth And... Axioms of intuition perhaps?
Axioms of anticipations. Okay, we have 30 minutes to go, nevertheless, just for the sheer fun of it, even though we are going to fail, we are going to start the axioms of anticipation. So we know, according to Kant, a concept is a sort of thing that can have multiple instances. A principle of unity of one over potential many.
In this sense, a concept serves as a principle of unity for a manifold insofar as it collects the items that are subsumed. But we also know that concepts serve as rules for counting the items that are subsumed under them. So with respect to a particular concept like C and a manifold of presented items, we can normally ask how many Cs or C items are or were present in a given manifold.
Kant says the process of counting occurs only over a stretch of time. The question then can be framed either synchronically, how many C's are present at time t, or diachronically, how many C's were present during the interval ti to tj. Now of course we can think of mathematical principles of pure understanding, The axiom of intuition and anticipation of perception as addressed to the first of these questions. Insofar as they bracket diachronic considerations, both the axioms and the anticipations are anticipatory of experiences of full-fledged spatiotemporal objects.
That is to say, items in the world that can be encountered and re-encountered at various times. Hence, anticipations. The principle of the axioms tells us something about all intuitions. By intuitions here I mean the intuiteds, the intuited objects. and the principle of anticipations tells us about appearances what an intuition or appearance need not to be an object we already know that things like pain sound after image even feelings can qualify for this
The axioms and anticipations we might say unpack the generic Kentian understanding of what the concept consists in. One, appearance of an item in an environment. the analogies of experience will then unpack the richer but more a specific concept what do they unpack the perception of an object in the world and not simply the immediate environment which is present to your intuition to your sensibility
remember the whole idea of you know impression i o one i o i o one t i o t i o 2 t i o 3 t that was an anticipation the whole point was that the object at the level of anticipatory impression was no longer present it was not in the immediate it wasn't simply an item in the environment namely and you're in in your immediate surrounding it was par excellence an object in the world
We know that in order to be aware of any item, we must be able to distinguish what belongs to the item from what is distinct from it. So, whenever we have an item in the environment, there must be a boundary between them. What is a boundary?
Boundary is where something differs. falls on one side of a boundary must be different at least in some respect from what falls on the other side of it. This is a more Kantian presupposition behind the idea of boundary but even today we have refined our idea of boundary even more since the time of camp boundaries are fuzzy mark markers so think of purse example
or carnapp's example of red patch or purse example of a a blot of ink on a blank piece of paper so even if you have a blank uh you know uh drop of ink on it on a white piece of paper the boundary is not so straightforward it's not this side versus that side no this boundary is separated by fuzzy values those little fuzzy things that have shades of gray that connect the
white to the black and so as for Carnap when I'm saying a patch of black patch of red this doesn't mean that the patch of red is just pure red. It's that it might have blue and green dots in it, but there are for some structural similarities where I have idealized either consciously or unconsciously precisely because that's my representational, that demarcates the limits of my representational system, the difference between red, blue and green.
So I see everything as red to the extent that the blue and green dots share the red dots, the boundaries of the red. But the red is the only color that shares both something with green and something with blue. and hence is what you might call to be the predominant color what i perceive it what i call it as a red patch so as i mentioned what what the item consists of is this matter how it's bonded in its environment
is its form. For example, an item is a particular figure. Think of a dark grey cross, the environment, the light grey background against which it appears. Dark grey indicates the matter, cross the form. As I mentioned, this can only happen in the Kantian universe, where you have already arrived an idealized definition of boundary, namely where something differs from something else.
without that how can you in fact constitute an object say this red big book out there because this very red big book has far more fuzzy connections with what is outside of it than what it appears to you explicitly or what you explicitly formulate. So to have an item in the environment, then, we need both matter and form. In Kantian parlance, the matter is the real,
which is an object of the sensation, the form, and intuition in space and time. an item is so much so and so configures such and such stuff. This is plainly an Aristotelian conception and directly contrary to the Cartesian conclusions regarding, for example the bit of wax that figures in his thought experiment in the second meditation where he says the truth of the matter is that this wax was only a body which a little while
ago appeared to my senses under these forms and which now makes itself felt under others But what is it? To speak precisely that I imagine when I conceive it in this fashion, let us consider it attentively and rejecting everything that does not belong to the wax. See what remains. Certainly nothing is left but something extended, flexible and movable. So extension flexibility and movability encompass the geometrical properties of size, shape and changing position. Well when we ask what is it to which these
formal properties pertain, Descartes account which deliberately excludes all sensory contents supplies no real answer. Alternatively consider the wax turns out to be all form and no matter. In the same vein, Locke's representative realism delivers the corresponding empiricist picture the accurate properties of matter are all primary qualities secondary qualities exist only in the mode of potentiality as dispositions or powers but already berkeley saw that it was that
this basically is insufficient although it is an easy matter to consider extension of motion by themselves, as Berkeley says, abstracted from all other sensible qualities, as mathematicians do, we cannot separate the ideas of extension and motion from the ideas of all those qualities which they who make the distinction term secondary. So like Descartes' extended substance, Lockean matter is ultimately formed without content, which as we have been talking about in Kantian world is absolutely an empty thought.
so both Descartes and Locke's accounts are both explicitly concerned with objects but as Kant recognize the principles that they fail to respect obtain more generally the distinction between the form and matter of an appearance and the correlative distinction between extensive magnitude and intensive magnitude is more fundamental than the distinction between a persisting substance and its changing attributes. The axioms and anticipations, we might say, formulate synthetic,
all priori truths that hold for all empirical consciousness. So, even though Kant in the headings talks about axioms of intuition and anticipations of a perception however he only go so far as presenting one axiom and one and anticipation so you know he formulated plurally but
his explicitation is singular in deduction b for the axioms it reads all intuitions are extensive magnitudes For the anticipation in B207, it reads, in all appearances that real, which is an object of sensation, has intensive magnitude, i.e. a degree. So taken together with the opening remarks of Kant's proof of the principle of anticipations in B, the formulation of the principle of the
axiom in A, namely all appearances are as regards their intuition extensive magnitudes, makes it clear that these principles are in fact intended to have the same scope, which is to say all empirical consciousness that is one in which there is at same time sensation as instances of such empirical consciousness appearances according to Kant are more than pure and merely formal intuitions like a space and time for these cannot be perceived in themselves they therefore also contain in addition to the intuition the materials sorry the materials
for some objects in general though which something existing in a space or time is represented i.e. the real of the sensation as merely subjective representation by which one can only be conscious that the subject is affected. B207. 7. So to be brief, while the principle of the axioms and so extensive magnitude pertains to the intuition, i.e. the form of a presented item, how it is configured and bounded in a space or time, the principle of anticipation and so intensive magnitude pertains to the real of
sensation, which is to say it's matter, the sensory content that is thus configured and bounded. Each principle Kant will say guarantees the possibility of a fundamental form of applied mathematics. We know that the axioms of intuition and anticipations of perception themselves are the synthetic
a priori principles of mathematics whose objective validity is to be secured by those arguments. The former paradigmatically include the axioms of geometry, the latter the fundamental principles of the mathematics of infinitesimals, according to Kant. What Kant articulates and defends at this point in the first critique, in other words, are philosophical meta-principles. In other words, they are not the synthetic a priori principles that properly belong to mathematics, but, sorry,
but those on which the possibility and objective of priori validity of the latter are grounded, which are thus to be regarded as the principle of these principles, A 160 slash B 199. So at the conclusions of these sections, Kant says that the principle of the axioms and anticipations were called mathematical in contrast to dynamical principles, which will follow precisely in consideration of the fact, as Kant says, remarks, that they justified applying mathematics to appearances and taught how both their intuition, i.e. their form, and the real
in their perception could be generated in accordance with rules of a mathematical synthesis. Hence, how in both cases, numerical magnitudes and with them, the determination of the appearance as a magnitude could be used. A, 178. B, 221. Is it, it's here, in other words, that we finally find the essential of Kant's explicit solution to the Pythagorean puzzle. and that requires a more careful analysis. We know that a magnitude, in essence, is a determinate quantity.
It is a quantity that is susceptible to being measured. The axioms, accordingly, concern magnitudes pertaining in the first instance to the form of, to the forms of appearances, that is, to determinate regions of a space or stretches of time insofar as they are susceptible to measurement. Now think of how we go about measuring a determinate length or interval. one thing that we need to do is to select some units, meters, centimeters or even seconds for time. The representation of any determinate length or interval is always the representation of an
aggregate of such units. For example, two centimeters, ten meters, five seconds, so on. And in that sense, we always implicitly represent a spatial or temporal region itself as if it had been produced centimeter by centimeter, second by second, by a successive synthesis of such homogeneous units. can cause such a magnitude in which the representation of the parts make possible the representation of the whole and therefore necessarily precedes the latter extensive. So this is the definition of what I called extensive magnitudes.
but since space and time as such cannot be perceived the forms of intuition cannot themselves be intuited in order to assign a determinate measurement to a length or interval we also need to make both what we are measuring and the units with which we propose to measure it. Thus we might in particular measure, for example, the distance between a bed and a desk,
use the successive centimeter marks on a mirror stick as our unit. Similarly, we might measure the time between a flash of lightning and the sound of a thunder using the ticks of a clock or oscillations of a pendulum as our units. In any event, our ability to assign a determinate measure to a spatial region or temporal interval always depends upon our ability to assign such a measure to the contents of such a region or interval. In so far as regions of a space and intervals of time are susceptible to measurement, in other words,
they need to be generated or constructed through the successive synthesis of what kent calls a homogeneous manifold and this remarks uh from kent uh a 162 to 3 is slash b 203 he says i cannot represent to myself any line no matter how small it may be without drawing it in thought i.e successively generating all its parts from one point and thereby first sketching this intuition it is exactly the same with even the smallest time i think they're in only the successive progress from one movement to another where through all parts of time and their addition
a determined magnitude of time is finally generated i think we're almost close so So you have it until here and hopefully we will, you know, extend this. I will, I'm really hoping to cover both, you know, axioms and anticipations in the next session.
But for now, if you have any questions. Yes, no, you see, the thing about axiom and anticipations, I've thought about this a lot, I mean, from just a very writing kind of perspective. I think it would have helped if Kant had somehow given a very rudimentary version of these two problems
before actually embarking on his point of transcendental project. You see why? Because Kant pretends that our sense of space and time are ideal, but then he talks about also measurement. But of course, the kind of measurement that Kant already talks about means that it's already ideal. so you need to somehow talk about this stuff before you actually set out the project but then i thought that maybe not maybe the readers should be in the dark until it reaches you know these two kind of elucidating uh chapters because i think a lot of problems that are usually
people attribute to Kantianism Orthodox problems I'm not talking about Theos problems which are not Orthodox Orthodox problems that are actually addressed in these two chapters Also, it's a sin to listen to philosophy on Sunday. I mean, what has gone wrong in your life so far that you are listening to all of this at this very moment?
nevertheless let me entertain your questions go on i was just going to comment on you know the absurdity in the weird alienation of like finding myself at like two o'clock in the morning like chain smoking and like reading mathematical papers and whatnot and it's just like how how have I let my life devolve to such absurd extent yes absolutely you know you know people usually ask themselves when they are serial killers but I think philosophers should ask themselves this question what really did I exactly do wrong and what in
conjunction they're actually turn out to be this it's really bad yes mental anomaly not in any good sense because you are bother other people with it you know it was just mental anomaly as a kind of individual sentiment yeah that would be fine but philosophers have the habit of pester other people with their questions it becomes a tool of bludgeoning the public yeah it's like the socratic gat fly
i think i'm going to try and um write out the questions that i had in the side are in a different setting or I don't know if it's going to come back to the critique that easily but maybe you can try to and then I'll send them to either the classroom or to you. Sure absolutely. And maybe we should, you know, turn off the live recording. Sure.