Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

What is your opinion on the transcendental error?
 The Transcendental Error: One significant flaw in Kant’s thinking is what has been termed the “transcendental error.” This refers to Kant’s tendency to conflate the limits of human cognition with the nature of reality itself.

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I never thought that at all. He was in fact completely distinct in his thinking between 'the world in itself' and 'the world of our perceptions., as being utterly different -  though related.
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Many materialist simply cannot understand it - to them the world is what they think it is and see it as, and therefore Kant is simply nonsense.

Yes, I think we've established that this is why we keep talking past each other on this subject. Were you at one point in the materialist camp, and then you reached enlightenment, or did you always feel that the materialist camp was unsatisfactory, and after Kant everything sort of clicked into place for you?

According to critics like Peter Strawson, while Kant correctly seeks to explore what we can understand about our experiences, he mistakenly concludes that these limits are imposed by our cognitive faculties on a reality that could be structured differently.

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That is exactly right, and to my certain knowledge it can be: Because Strawson cant do it doesn't mean it cant be done.

This is true. I was curious about what you would say about Strawsons argument.

Strawson seems to be a Beleiver. He wants there to be a simple objective reality that we can grasp. Kant says 'its there, but we cannot grasp it: It has to go through our processes of categorisation before it is intelligible to us'.

I think the point is that, if we can never grasp it, we can never say it is or anything about it, and I think that is why he argues it collapses into idealism, or potentially, solipsism.

Kant's system requires the existence of noumena to prevent a rejection of external reality altogether, and it is this concept (senseless objects of which we can have no real understanding) to which Strawson objects in his book.
 

Well there ya go. If you are creating a real metaphysical system you end up with awkward bits that many people don't like.
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Strawson presumably didn't like quantum physics either :-)

This is another very interesting topic. Which interpretation is true, is anyone
of them true? Or should we adopt the stance and "shut up and calculate"?

I shuffled this all around in my head and came to various conclusions and people said 'you sound like Schopenhauer' and a friend who is a philosophy professor threw Kant at me and he was right. I had arrived in the same ballpark as Kant. And more so Schopenhauer, at least in the context of the best model of what 'external reality'  was.
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But I disagreed with both of them on the moral and life choice conclusions they drew, as far as I can remember.
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The 'problem' of transcendental idealism is it must needs introduce an element that is anathema to materialist and realist alike , and that is the necessary postulating of  an independent entity that takes 'whatever is the case' - the 'world-in-itself'  - the 'noumenal world' and turns it into [maps it, performs a 'transform' on it]  the 'phenomenal world' that everybody casually takes as 'real'.

I think this is the fundamental disagreement and what Strawson feels is the
fundamental error that collapses it into idealism.

Dyed in the wool materialists don't want consciousness and choice to be independent. They have already decided to make them emergent properties of *matter*, and so they think Kant is a cunt, trying possibly to reintroduce the supernatural by the back door.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

My own thought is that right or wrong, the  answers that that model gives, solve a huge amount of subjectivity in the human experience.

Each answer has its own pros and cons. Since it's philosophy, there is always the risk that the conversation will still be going on in a 1000 years. ;)
Thank you for your comments and explanation. I think I understand you better
now, and where the key-disagreement is.

A cross section of the history of ideas and philosophy of science maybe? It is very interesting!
 

I spent many years looking at religions, magical systems, cults and so on. And the paranormal and unexplained 'weird shit'. It is even more peppered with total bullshit than philosophy, but it does give a clue as to how  weird some peoples minds are.

This is the truth! It seems to me that "magic" has collapsed into pop-psychology
in our current day and age. I am very interested in the subject, from that
angle. I think magic dovetails nicely with the philosophy of Feyerabend and
perhaps you can add a pinch of pragmatism as well. At least that seems to be the
justification I get when talking to "occultists" and wiccans.

And now and again I glimpsed something that might have made sense, if it hadn't been  reported by complete idiots who couldn't think clearly.
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Some one said once I should invent a new religion. I did a test. I invented the Church of the Yo-yo.  Believe in the Yo-yo and be saved.  I had a great little electric yo-yo . Mesmerising. Some twit from the 'children of God' even believed me.
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I stopped there. I don't lust for power over peoples minds, and their purses.
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Funnily enough, I was very familiar with UFO cults and the like and the 'men in black meme' and when the film came out I was  super amused when one of my employees insisted in explaining what 'men in black' were.
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I didn't think admitting I probably knew ten times more than they did was consistent with running an orderly business.

Maybe you stopped too soon? If not, you would have had a nice old age, with many
young women to support you! ;)