Arising_uk wrote:HexHammer wrote:I read "Kan't" when I was a mere teen it been too damn long and I'm an ol' feeble man by now, you present something relevant from Kan't now that you seem so in luv with him.
Not me, I'm in love with Anglo-American Philosophy and whilst I studied the Continentals, as I wasn't interested in an academic career, I found his Idealism not to my taste, did like the phenomenologists tho. I think this 'old' man shtick a cop-out(so says an old man) and think it may well be useful for you to re-read his Critique of Reason if you truly wish to stop the cozy-chatters talking nonsense, as I'm re-reading him now and he appears different through older eyes. As such I think his idea of synthetic a posteriori propositions, i.e the empirical propositions of science are an interesting distinction(not sure if I agree with the distinction or not just yet), and his attempt to ground metaphysics as an independent discipline is also interesting(again not sure if I think it viable just yet), and his overall analysis of what Reason can and cannot say would be useful to all in a world where Science is the driving force as too many appear to have no idea how to understand what it is scientists can and cannot say about things and this leaves them upon to the wiles of unscrupulous politicians who manipulate the scientists I think it would behoove democracy if more of its citizens became more philosophically minded, i.e. trained in critical thinking, epistemology and the philosophy of science. That or that they should learn more science.
Interesting AUK (hello) that you are rereading C of R. I have likewise recently been rethinking this work. Interesting because you are rereading it rather than drawing from what you remember of it. And I asked: what exactly Is a synthetic a priori and
why would he be positing and exploring it? What Is a categorical imperative? Of course, one can view him in the historical context and say he was adding to while responding to philosophically presented situations of his time, but we all do, we must have something by which to ground what we say, we must have references.
But it appears to me that what he is saying differs in content when it is taken against such questions that have to do with some posited history, that is to say, when he is speaking of himself as a human being as I am likewise a human being.
Synthetic is where what is presented is synthesized, which is to say, put together: the predicate is not evident in the subject. I have been considering this reading in view to how Lyotard presents his situation in his book "the Differend": the subject is the individual, and the predicate is that by which the subject is justified. Kant's examples are to illustrate how phrases work, how subjects and predicates function to reveal what is true. A priori is that which justifies before the experience. The question then is how such synthesis is justified a priori.
The categorical imperative, if I remember correctly, for Kant implies a category that cannot be otherwise, a judgment that must follow the given condition. Thus he posits a type of ethics where one does what the category demands. Hypothetical imperative has to do with events that do not require a specific activity.
These two thus supply a critique that stems from a 'pure Reason', a reason that demands particular consequences, particular activity. Hence what is right or correct ethically. I am pondering that he is proposing a type of experience that occurs synthetically but is justified by a categorical imperative a priori such that what is synthesized is already justiified, that is, a type of experience that can be or behave no other way than that it does, that proceeds I this way synthetically, that is, using the predicates of the subject to show how such an experience might be true. The predicates thus appear in 'practical reason' which is the exposition of hypothetical categories as such an arena requires a different imperative, one that is justified in predication, in analytical modes, where the predicate is always evident in the subject, such that sees no imperative but that the subject exists in the potential of hypothetical reasoning.
The predicate is not evident in the subject, this being justified independent of experience. The individual that uses predicates that are not evident in the individual, but who is justified independently of the experience that is gained by the predication (practical reason) of the individual. The only way that this can happen is if it occurs by a categorical imperative, by a category that demands a particular and not hypothetical justification.
