A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

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Veritas Aequitas
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A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Another problem you have not being able to solve is the existence of other subjects (real subjects-in-themselves independent of yourself). When you deny their existence as objects-in-themselves, you have denied the very basis of the cognitive apparatus that supposedly Kant's TI wishes to explain, and yet you and Kant make the claim that this cognitive apparatus is universal to all subject beings, even though they cannot exist as real subjects-in-themselves independent of Kant (or yourself).
I have already countered the above point.

As I had posted earlier, there is a difference between,
1. -the person-in-itself leading to the idea of a soul.
2. -the empirical self.

I deny 1 but not 2.

One of the central element of Kant's CPR is the empirical self, i.e. the "I Think" that he differentiated from the "I AM" [person-in-itself]. This is dealt within his concept of 'Apperception' which is very complex. Are you even aware of this?

Note this;
Transcendental Apperception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcend ... perception
"One consequence of Kant's notion of transcendental apperception is that the "self" [the person] is only ever encountered as appearance, NEVER as it is in itself."

In the CPR Kant presented very complex and extensive arguments to justify the person as only an empirical self and NEVER as it is in itself" as the latter would lead to an eternal soul that survives death.

Views??
Atla
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Wed Jun 16, 2021 6:34 am
Another problem you have not being able to solve is the existence of other subjects (real subjects-in-themselves independent of yourself). When you deny their existence as objects-in-themselves, you have denied the very basis of the cognitive apparatus that supposedly Kant's TI wishes to explain, and yet you and Kant make the claim that this cognitive apparatus is universal to all subject beings, even though they cannot exist as real subjects-in-themselves independent of Kant (or yourself).
I have already countered the above point.

As I had posted earlier, there is a difference between,
1. -the person-in-itself leading to the idea of a soul.
2. -the empirical self.

I deny 1 but not 2.

One of the central element of Kant's CPR is the empirical self, i.e. the "I Think" that he differentiated from the "I AM" [person-in-itself]. This is dealt within his concept of 'Apperception' which is very complex. Are you even aware of this?

Note this;
Transcendental Apperception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcend ... perception
"One consequence of Kant's notion of transcendental apperception is that the "self" [the person] is only ever encountered as appearance, NEVER as it is in itself."

In the CPR Kant presented very complex and extensive arguments to justify the person as only an empirical self and NEVER as it is in itself" as the latter would lead to an eternal soul that survives death.

Views??
You are saying: if we can't encounter X as it is, then X can't exist.

You are saying: if we believe that we encounter X as it is anyway, then we must also believe that X has an eternal soul.

So how many publishers rejected your Grand Theory of Everything so far?
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

In Kant, thinking is always thinking about something. To be aware is to be positively aware of the reality of an object, even when that object is our own awareness. But is that all that our awareness is to our perception? Is there more to it, or is appearance and memory all we are self-aware of? And what kind of object is our awareness? (Ie. Can we draw some analytic propositions from it.) I can doubt almost any appearance, but I cannot doubt that I think, according to Descartes anyway. In asserting ourselves (e. g. to be acknowledged as a human being, like in Hegel's master/slave dialectic, like Duckman, that is, to be valued and revalued), do we perceive ourselves just as an appearance?

Maybe in concentrating on immanent questions, we neglect the transcendental ones. How does Kant (hierarchically) justify the necessity of a transcendent being - what is the link - is the transcendent local - and how does this differ from Aquinas/Descartes/Hume?
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Fja1 wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:36 pm In Kant, thinking is always thinking about something. To be aware is to be positively aware of the reality of an object, even when that object is our own awareness. But is that all that our awareness is to our perception? Is there more to it, or is appearance and memory all we are self-aware of? And what kind of object is our awareness? (Ie. Can we draw some analytic propositions from it.) I can doubt almost any appearance, but I cannot doubt that I think, according to Descartes anyway. In asserting ourselves (e. g. to be acknowledged as a human being, like in Hegel's master/slave dialectic, like Duckman, that is, to be valued and revalued), do we perceive ourselves just as an appearance?

Maybe in concentrating on immanent questions, we neglect the transcendental ones. How does Kant (hierarchically) justify the necessity of a transcendent being - what is the link - is the transcendent local - and how does this differ from Aquinas/Descartes/Hume?
I don't see that in Kant, "thinking is always thinking about something."
That 'about something' is highly conditional and qualified because the masses of humans are conditioned by 'cause and effect'. [note Hume on the Problem of causality].

For Kant, we cannot be hasty in jumping to conclusion as to what that "something" really is - depending on their state of mind.
For Kant the real 'something' is confined to the empirical and possible experience which is immanent. As such what is real is not mere appearance but the whole shebang of the cognitive processes that include the self within an environment, where the self is not independent of the environment.

The realist on the other hand insists there is something that is independent of the self even though he does not have any direct relation to that something. This is chasing an illusion.
This is where Kant stated, the insistence on the transcendent is being deluded by an illusion.
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them [the illusions].
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
B397
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:29 amI don't see that in Kant, "thinking is always thinking about something."
That 'about something' is highly conditional and qualified because the masses of humans are conditioned by 'cause and effect'. [note Hume on the Problem of causality].

For Kant, we cannot be hasty in jumping to conclusion as to what that "something" really is - depending on their state of mind.
For Kant the real 'something' is confined to the empirical and possible experience which is immanent. As such what is real is not mere appearance but the whole shebang of the cognitive processes that include the self within an environment, where the self is not independent of the environment.

The realist on the other hand insists there is something that is independent of the self even though he does not have any direct relation to that something. This is chasing an illusion.
This is where Kant stated, the insistence on the transcendent is being deluded by an illusion.
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them [the illusions].
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
B397
I din't quite understand your first sentence, but here's what I've digested:

Represantion is never a 1:1 representation exclusively of one thing-in-itself, but representation is always manifold; representatation is a representation of one of many things-in-themselves, but we are limited in our ability to truly filter out a single thing-in-itself that projects the representation, as this is highly conditioned by our perspective and conditions of perception. (In lack of a better riff.) This is why this thing-in-itself is inaccessible, trancendental, no? We can only positively filter the experience/sensation as a conditional argument. (Which Hume revendicates to familiarity and pattern.)

Other philosophers attempt a complete dissolution of the thing-in-itself. "Esse est percipi" of Berkeley (and apparently Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, although Nietzsche turns this around into some sort of realism, saying that appearances are the only real thing which exist). Why would I as a person not be reductible to representation, then? Why do I not, in making choices, transfer my will into representation by modifying external conditions? (Maybe thought is predicated, and the "I" is the predicate.) In self-affirmation or emancipation (e. g. Hegel's master/slave -dialectic), such self-consciousness is only reflective perception and thus represenation, but what about someone I seek valuation from? He may refuse to be made into an object, he may become self-conscious as a subject and thus incomplete as an object, "restarted" so-to-speak. Do we here finally touch upon some temporal horizon between a subject and an object? To be an object is to be objectified (constituent subjectivity) and to be a subject is the reverse (non-constituent subjectivity)?
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Fja1 wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 1:12 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:29 amI don't see that in Kant, "thinking is always thinking about something."
That 'about something' is highly conditional and qualified because the masses of humans are conditioned by 'cause and effect'. [note Hume on the Problem of causality].

For Kant, we cannot be hasty in jumping to conclusion as to what that "something" really is - depending on their state of mind.
For Kant the real 'something' is confined to the empirical and possible experience which is immanent. As such what is real is not mere appearance but the whole shebang of the cognitive processes that include the self within an environment, where the self is not independent of the environment.

The realist on the other hand insists there is something that is independent of the self even though he does not have any direct relation to that something. This is chasing an illusion.
This is where Kant stated, the insistence on the transcendent is being deluded by an illusion.
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them [the illusions].
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
B397
I din't quite understand your first sentence, but here's what I've digested:

Represantion is never a 1:1 representation exclusively of one thing-in-itself, but representation is always manifold; representatation is a representation of one of many things-in-themselves, but we are limited in our ability to truly filter out a single thing-in-itself that projects the representation, as this is highly conditioned by our perspective and conditions of perception. (In lack of a better riff.) This is why this thing-in-itself is inaccessible, trancendental, no? We can only positively filter the experience/sensation as a conditional argument. (Which Hume revendicates to familiarity and pattern.)
To the naive realist, representation is a case of 1:1 with the thing-in-itself.
To the indirect realist, representation is NEVER the case of 1:1 with the thing-in-itself BUT nevertheless there still exist a thing-in-itself to be corresponded with.

For Kant, there is no thing-in-itself existing as real and independent awaiting to be corresponded with in the first place.
The thing-in-itself is invented by humans as an inherent and natural activity of the human mind and pure reason, in this case by realists [philosophical].

Thus the realists instinctively [naturally] invent the thing-in-itself and then correspond the appearances/perception of the supposed thing-in-itself with itself.

This is why Kant insisted, the claim of the thing-in-itself [which is unconsciously self-created] as the real, objective and an independent thing is delusional.

Hope you get the point?

Other philosophers attempt a complete dissolution of the thing-in-itself. "Esse est percipi" of Berkeley (and apparently Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, although Nietzsche turns this around into some sort of realism, saying that appearances are the only real thing which exist).
To jump to the conclusion of "Esse est percipi" is too rough and crude. Btw, Berkeley was motivated by God as the most real and whatever he deemed anything else as not significant is not a worry to him as a theist.

As I mentioned above, to understand why 'what is real' is real is a complex issue and we need to cover the whole shebang of cognition, reality and the self/consciousness.
Why would I as a person not be reductible to representation, then? Why do I not, in making choices, transfer my will into representation by modifying external conditions? (Maybe thought is predicated, and the "I" is the predicate.) In self-affirmation or emancipation (e. g. Hegel's master/slave -dialectic), such self-consciousness is only reflective perception and thus represenation, but what about someone I seek valuation from? He may refuse to be made into an object, he may become self-conscious as a subject and thus incomplete as an object, "restarted" so-to-speak. Do we here finally touch upon some temporal horizon between a subject and an object? To be an object is to be objectified (constituent subjectivity) and to be a subject is the reverse (non-constituent subjectivity)?
Firstly, the appearance of other humans can be reduced to representations.
There is no permanent self-in-itself extending to a soul-in-itself that survives physical death.
There is only the empirical self of a person which is always changing till it disappear upon physical death.

Secondly, what we understand of other humans individually can be transposed onto oneself as another human being like all other human beings out there.
Thus there is no ''me-in-itself" and so no room for the "me" to hope for heaven or fear be in hell.

Ultimately it is about consequences and utilities [pros and cons] to the individual[s] and humanity relating to the adoption of whether to believe the independent thing-in-itself or me-in-itself exist as real or not.

In the past and at present, to believe in the instinctive and natural thing-in-itself had more pros than cons for the masses, BUT the reverse should be the case in the future from now onwards.
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:27 amTo the naive realist, representation is a case of 1:1 with the thing-in-itself.
I think since classical times, such a notion is almost unheard of. (Although I'm largely ignorant of Descartes.) Hume even went on to say that causality is not the object of reason.
To jump to the conclusion of "Esse est percipi" is too rough and crude. Btw, Berkeley was motivated by God as the most real and whatever he deemed anything else as not significant is not a worry to him as a theist.
Nietzsche's conclusion may be easily misconstrued as "Esse est percipi", but I think what he's arguing is that appearances are "reality", not that they are "being", and while he repeatedly mentions Kant, I think his criticism is more properly directed at Descartes and Platon:

"The world which appears to our senses is the only real one, and one should rehabilitate the senses, unjustly discredited by platonism or kantism, which see in them a source of error : the senses don't lie insofar as they show the future, disappearance, change. The world of appearances is the only real one : the "true world" is added solely by the lie."

"Philosophers inverse real values. They confound the last things with the first things. They place at the beginning that which comes at the end. (...) the highest conceptions, that is, the conceptions which are the most general and the most empty."

There is no permanent self-in-itself extending to a soul-in-itself that survives physical death.
To weaken your argument (which I don't know how to do), it would be sufficient to show that there is merely a temporal or transitory self-in-itself, like a non-recurring event which is relayed and warped in the news. The self-in-itself would not even need to be a permanent trajectory. (One could even invoke a "world soul" which is not permanent in a person.)

I'm mainly preoccupied with how to bridge the gap in understanding between the kantian subject and the "dynamized" subject (Hegel, Marx, Sartre and being which precludes existence etc.). The "dynamized" subject is merely a question of hierarchical orientation, an individual whose affect is expansive ("dynamized" and "affect" both in a spinozian sense); while this doesn't necessitate a kantian subject, I don't see why we should not be able to decompose the "dynamized" subject into the contingency of a kantian subject. (Explanation: construct an argument which is necessary, but not sufficient, to justify an apriori kantian subject. Ps. What makes a subject, in any of its definitions, apriori?)
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Fja1 wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:54 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:27 amTo the naive realist, representation is a case of 1:1 with the thing-in-itself.
I think since classical times, such a notion is almost unheard of. (Although I'm largely ignorant of Descartes.) Hume even went on to say that causality is not the object of reason.
Note sure of your point.
Note Naive Realism,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
To jump to the conclusion of "Esse est percipi" is too rough and crude. Btw, Berkeley was motivated by God as the most real and whatever he deemed anything else as not significant is not a worry to him as a theist.
Nietzsche's conclusion may be easily misconstrued as "Esse est percipi", but I think what he's arguing is that appearances are "reality", not that they are "being", and while he repeatedly mentions Kant, I think his criticism is more properly directed at Descartes and Platon:

"The world which appears to our senses is the only real one, and one should rehabilitate the senses, unjustly discredited by platonism or kantism, which see in them a source of error : the senses don't lie insofar as they show the future, disappearance, change. The world of appearances is the only real one : the "true world" is added solely by the lie."

"Philosophers inverse real values. They confound the last things with the first things. They place at the beginning that which comes at the end. (...) the highest conceptions, that is, the conceptions which are the most general and the most empty."
As we are now more aware of physical reality from the theories of Quantum Mechanics. fundamental reality is full of paradoxes [wave or particle, entanglement, etc.]. As such we must understand that opposites are complementary rather than being dogmatically clinging to one point of view only.

What is happening within Philosophy is the masses and most philosophers tend to cling to one side [which is natural, inherent and unavoidable] and ending with opposite camps.

Kant's approach is the middle-way between the two camps and thus will end up with criticisms and attacks from both camps.
There is no permanent self-in-itself extending to a soul-in-itself that survives physical death.
To weaken your argument (which I don't know how to do), it would be sufficient to show that there is merely a temporal or transitory self-in-itself, like a non-recurring event which is relayed and warped in the news. The self-in-itself would not even need to be a permanent trajectory. (One could even invoke a "world soul" which is not permanent in a person.)

I'm mainly preoccupied with how to bridge the gap in understanding between the kantian subject and the "dynamized" subject (Hegel, Marx, Sartre and being which precludes existence etc.). The "dynamized" subject is merely a question of hierarchical orientation, an individual whose affect is expansive ("dynamized" and "affect" both in a spinozian sense); while this doesn't necessitate a kantian subject, I don't see why we should not be able to decompose the "dynamized" subject into the contingency of a kantian subject. (Explanation: construct an argument which is necessary, but not sufficient, to justify an apriori kantian subject. Ps. What makes a subject, in any of its definitions, apriori?)
Actually there is no specific Kantian subject.
What Kant insisted is whatever one claimed as subject, i.e. empirical or transcendental, one should not be dogmatic about it but understand the basis why one adopt such and such a stance regarding one's view.

The problem with Hegel, Marx, Sartre, Heidegger, Schopenhauer and others is they are stuck with one view only, even Neitszche one view re perspectivity, i.e. they are not adopting the Middle-Way.

They are trapped in a delusion re what I quoted of Kant earlier, i.e.
Kant in CPR wrote:Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them [the illusions].
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
B397
If you want to clear whatever philosophical cobwebs, you have to understand the psychological elements that entrapped those into an inherent*, natural and unavoidable delusion [*note inherent in ALL humans].
Atla
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Atla »

Hmm if VA is correct and Kant did deny anything beyond the appearances, then that would mean that Kant is only considered a great philosopher because everybody misunderstood him, believing that there's no way he could have been so dense. Equating "unknowable" with "nonexistent".
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:01 am
Fja1 wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:54 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:27 amTo the naive realist, representation is a case of 1:1 with the thing-in-itself.
I think since classical times, such a notion is almost unheard of. (Although I'm largely ignorant of Descartes.) Hume even went on to say that causality is not the object of reason.
Note sure of your point.
Note Naive Realism,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism
My point being that I can't think of a philosopher who argues for naive realism as a philosophically valid method of logical investigation. (At least not any philosopher after classical antiquity). What can be a valid argument seen through the filter of everyday experience ("I burn my finger because the fire is hot"), is not a complete and coherent argument for a philosopher whose object is reasoning itself.
As we are now more aware of physical reality from the theories of Quantum Mechanics. fundamental reality is full of paradoxes [wave or particle, entanglement, etc.]. As such we must understand that opposites are complementary rather than being dogmatically clinging to one point of view only.

What is happening within Philosophy is the masses and most philosophers tend to cling to one side [which is natural, inherent and unavoidable] and ending with opposite camps.
This boils down to a habitual, petrified notion of what it is to be a philosopher in which expression is indiscriminately deployed into a philosophical outlet. Inversely, philosophizing (and being a philosopher) may even have a symbolic value, rather than grounded in conscious investigation. Sartre found an additional expressive outlet in fiction, but perhaps didn't exploit it enough, and in his self-congratulary philosophical project to indiscriminately and completely invert (rather than merely decompose) Spinoza's determinism in investigating what it means to be conscious, he only succeeded in turning the philosophical straightjacket inside-out, unless taken as what it means to be conscious collectively speaking, as collective experience.

On the contrary, Nietzshce had no such ambitions, and for all his ramblings, he left the reader to be alert and think for themselves. Rather than accusing Kant and Hume, many of his arguments can be seen as an attack on incautious readers of Kant and Hume. A common theme in Nietzsche is to inoculate the reader against applying any philosophical ideas of others too generally without appropriate filtering. Such is his warning against the notion that appearances are universally less real than being itself. Such is his warning against applying Kant's philosophical arguments universally to human psychology etc. (This is Nietzsche's decomposition of Kant's epistemology. The decomposition of Kant's moral arguments and ontology where Nietzsche essentially accuses Kant of egotism is a bit more complex than that.)
Actually there is no specific Kantian subject.
What Kant insisted is whatever one claimed as subject, i.e. empirical or transcendental, one should not be dogmatic about it but understand the basis why one adopt such and such a stance regarding one's view.
I oughta specify that I was earlier speaking of a 'subject' as an universal, such which is used in a context of reification.
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:29 am
Fja1 wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:36 pm In Kant, thinking is always thinking about something. To be aware is to be positively aware of the reality of an object, even when that object is our own awareness. But is that all that our awareness is to our perception? Is there more to it, or is appearance and memory all we are self-aware of? And what kind of object is our awareness? (Ie. Can we draw some analytic propositions from it.) I can doubt almost any appearance, but I cannot doubt that I think, according to Descartes anyway. In asserting ourselves (e. g. to be acknowledged as a human being, like in Hegel's master/slave dialectic, like Duckman, that is, to be valued and revalued), do we perceive ourselves just as an appearance?

Maybe in concentrating on immanent questions, we neglect the transcendental ones. How does Kant (hierarchically) justify the necessity of a transcendent being - what is the link - is the transcendent local - and how does this differ from Aquinas/Descartes/Hume?
I don't see that in Kant, "thinking is always thinking about something."
That 'about something' is highly conditional and qualified because the masses of humans are conditioned by 'cause and effect'. [note Hume on the Problem of causality].

For Kant, we cannot be hasty in jumping to conclusion as to what that "something" really is - depending on their state of mind.
For Kant the real 'something' is confined to the empirical and possible experience which is immanent. As such what is real is not mere appearance but the whole shebang of the cognitive processes that include the self within an environment, where the self is not independent of the environment.
My take-away from this is that thinking, contrary to desire, is non-dualistic. (Desire is always dualistic, because we have the one who desires, and the desired object.)
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Fja1 wrote: Wed Jun 23, 2021 7:17 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 8:29 am
Fja1 wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 5:36 pm In Kant, thinking is always thinking about something. To be aware is to be positively aware of the reality of an object, even when that object is our own awareness. But is that all that our awareness is to our perception? Is there more to it, or is appearance and memory all we are self-aware of? And what kind of object is our awareness? (Ie. Can we draw some analytic propositions from it.) I can doubt almost any appearance, but I cannot doubt that I think, according to Descartes anyway. In asserting ourselves (e. g. to be acknowledged as a human being, like in Hegel's master/slave dialectic, like Duckman, that is, to be valued and revalued), do we perceive ourselves just as an appearance?

Maybe in concentrating on immanent questions, we neglect the transcendental ones. How does Kant (hierarchically) justify the necessity of a transcendent being - what is the link - is the transcendent local - and how does this differ from Aquinas/Descartes/Hume?
I don't see that in Kant, "thinking is always thinking about something."
That 'about something' is highly conditional and qualified because the masses of humans are conditioned by 'cause and effect'. [note Hume on the Problem of causality].

For Kant, we cannot be hasty in jumping to conclusion as to what that "something" really is - depending on their state of mind.
For Kant the real 'something' is confined to the empirical and possible experience which is immanent. As such what is real is not mere appearance but the whole shebang of the cognitive processes that include the self within an environment, where the self is not independent of the environment.
My take-away from this is that thinking, contrary to desire, is non-dualistic. (Desire is always dualistic, because we have the one who desires, and the desired object.)
Thinking is dualistic in that we have the thinker and the thought.
My earlier point was,
for Kant, thinking is NOT always about the thought of something-in-itself.

Btw, what is your specific view whether the Kantian 'person' is a thing-in-itself.
A thing-in-itself by definition is a thing that exists absolutely independent of all human conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 5:42 amThinking is dualistic in that we have the thinker and the thought.
This is very good! I'm not sure where I got the idea that thinking is always thinking about something. (Maybe I sometimes confuse Descartes with Kant?)
My earlier point was,
for Kant, thinking is NOT always about the thought of something-in-itself.

Btw, what is your specific view whether the Kantian 'person' is a thing-in-itself.
A thing-in-itself by definition is a thing that exists absolutely independent of all human conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
I don't have one, but I'm tempted to discover arguments in favor of the thing-in-itself person. This can yield innovative approaches in reading Kant. Kant is traditionally read in terms of thinking and perception, but I'm interested how Kant's thing-in-itself would play out in terms of desire. Certainly we need to be aware that our impulsions towards satisfaction are highly conditioned by the environment, and we oughta distinguish instrumentalized desire from non-instrumentalized desire, to make a coherent argument in which the desiring subject would not be reductible to appearances. The ineluctable question to ask is how a subject desires (consubstantially) himself : to show that the Kantian 'person' is not a thing-in-itself, one may have to show how the person who desires his own virtual "me" (as a subject superposed on an object) is reductible to appearances and representations.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Fja1 wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:14 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Jun 24, 2021 5:42 amThinking is dualistic in that we have the thinker and the thought.
This is very good! I'm not sure where I got the idea that thinking is always thinking about something. (Maybe I sometimes confuse Descartes with Kant?)
My earlier point was,
for Kant, thinking is NOT always about the thought of something-in-itself.

Btw, what is your specific view whether the Kantian 'person' is a thing-in-itself.
A thing-in-itself by definition is a thing that exists absolutely independent of all human conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
I don't have one, but I'm tempted to discover arguments in favor of the thing-in-itself person. This can yield innovative approaches in reading Kant. Kant is traditionally read in terms of thinking and perception, but I'm interested how Kant's thing-in-itself would play out in terms of desire. Certainly we need to be aware that our impulsions towards satisfaction are highly conditioned by the environment, and we oughta distinguish instrumentalized desire from non-instrumentalized desire, to make a coherent argument in which the desiring subject would not be reductible to appearances. The ineluctable question to ask is how a subject desires (consubstantially) himself : to show that the Kantian 'person' is not a thing-in-itself, one may have to show how the person who desires his own virtual "me" (as a subject superposed on an object) is reductible to appearances and representations.
What is real is the empirical self and the whole shebang of existence that is related to the person BUT there is no person-in-itself.

Note Hume's Bundle Theory.

Kant present similar ideas of the self but explained in more complex details how the empirical self emerge via apperception.

The empirical self and its complexity is never a self-in-itself.
Those who insist there is self-in-itself are those who claimed
1. there is a permanent constant person in one life or/and
2. a soul that survives physical death.
To insist such a self-in-itself is real is an illusion.

Since the thing-in-itself or self-in-itself is illusory there is no question of linking it to desires.
It is only the empirical self that is linked to desires.
Fja1
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Re: A Kantian Person is NEVER a Thing-in-Itself

Post by Fja1 »

What I'm standing on is that one can make an argument which is analoguous to a self-in-itself of a person, from a social perspective impermeable, and you've covered the obstacles which prevent us from transposing this idea to a person who is (epistemologically or otherwise) a self-in-itself.
Fja1 wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 7:26 pmMy point being that I can't think of a philosopher who argues for naive realism as a philosophically valid method of logical investigation. (At least not any philosopher after classical antiquity). What can be a valid argument seen through the filter of everyday experience ("I burn my finger because the fire is hot"), is not a complete and coherent argument for a philosopher whose object is reasoning itself.
I believe this point has been covered by William James, from the point of interest, where the argument "I burn my finger because the fire is hot" is pragmatically valuable (he says: a belief which is verifiable), despite insufficient for philosophical reflection.
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