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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Joy of this, Joy of that
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2024 12:37:36 +0000
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 15/12/2024 11:11, D wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, 14 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 

>> 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?
> 

I was firmly in the materialist camp. Id been taught science and that 
was the way I understood the world.

Having to reluctantly dump that model in the face of the evidence was 
very hard.

>>> 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. 
>>
>> 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.
> 
Id never seen it before, but it was very comprehensible once I looked up 
the meaning of some of t he terms he is using.
He4 sort of buys part of the argument but rejects the conclusions mainly 
on the grounds as far as I can tell that it doesn't get him where he 
wants to go.

Which seems to me to be the certainty of the materialist's credo.

He wants to know 'what's really there' and Kant says 'we cant ever know 
that'


>> 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.

That is his mistake.  He is unable to grasps the difference  between 
'realism-materialness, Idealism and Transcendental Idealism, which is a 
hybrid

To put it it a bastardised mathematical notation materialism is:

P,C=f(R) - what we Perceive is ONLY a function of what's really there. 
Ans so is consciousness.

Whereas Idealism is :

P,R=f(C)  - What we Perceive as Reality is simply an emergent property 
of Consciousness or Mind.

Transcendental Idealism rearranges the equation so that

P=f(C,R) - What we perceive is a function of what's 'really there' there 
AND of the means by which we transform it into a reality we can deal with.

He (Strawson) doesn't appreciate that  while the set of possible Rs is 
infinite, so is the set of impossible Rs.

And in the end it is not the business of humanity to attempt to 
comprehend something that is completely beyond them. Our job is to map 
it into something we *can* understand.

"Me Tarzan, you Jane. Banana tree that way==>"

Once you appreciate that everyday reality is a *transform* or a *map* of 
'what's really there' you cannot cling to a single value of 'the Truth', 
  That is the purpose of Enlightenment, to make the point that reality 
as we experience it is not what's really there, but a transform of it - 
a map of it into co-ordinates that we fined easy to handle. Space time 
matter etc.

And furthermore, that we have a choice as to how we interpret it.

Which is what science is really doing.

> 
>>> 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.
>>
>> 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"?
> 

Ah. I think my understanding of Enlightenment and metaphysics is that 
none of them are true. They are all models, Some better, some worse.

You move through a mental model of what you *think* is there, never 
encountering directly what *is* there. Or at least that is a meta-model 
of metaphysics itself that works.
That is, we have genuine  choices in what metaphysics we adopt. 
Although we don't know that, and its very hard to change.

Realist/materialists - I never know wh9ch term is the best - are looking 
for a model which covers all cases.

But as Korzybski says "The map, is not the territory"

Some people don't care about the terrain, they just want a map that 
shows the bars. And the roads connecting them

To them the terrain simply does not exist. They only see the bars, and 
the roads.

her people want maps showing the mountains. They climb up and say 'look, 
the world is not only roads leading to bars' but the others say 'who 
cares?' 'not on my map'

....

>> 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.
> 
I dunno.
Strawson is like Penrose. He starts off examining things like 
consciousness, and then collapses back into his old materialist world 
view that matter is real, consciousness is an emergent property of it 
and thereby fails to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

>> 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.
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