Kantian

A plain vanilla portrayal of subjectivism is in tall order: subjectivism is the endeavor to realize (in a subjective approach) what seems to be a collection of judgments that are objectively either true or false, independently of what we believe, want, or hope. Some subjectivists claim that all these judgments are actually derived from our attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Others argue that they are neither true nor false, but camouflaged commands or expressions of attitudes. In epistemology, a subjective notion of epistemic rationality or the standards of rational beliefs are what the individual (or what the preponderance of the members of the community of the individual) sanctions.

Gilles Deleuze defines subjectivity as "the movement through which it is developed," "that which develops itself." The "only content [of] the idea of subjectivity is meditation and transcendence."
Jean-Paul Sartre sees subjectivity as the pre-reflective cogito since the subject or the ego is an object.

The mind represents the world in different ways. The question is whether that is subjective or objective by nature. A better way to formulate this ancient problem of philosophy is to figure out exactly whether the world is represented according to the architecture of the mind or the world in itself contains elements that dictate representation. In the endeavor to differentiate between whether our view of reality has its source in the subjective architecture or reflects reality in itself, we engage in metaphysics and the philosophy of the mind.

Objectivity is achieved once the subject refers to his representations according to a set of criteria he checks the subjectivity of his representations against the objective world. The term subjective is contrasted with a term that is defined as "correspondence to what is out there," which is a product of what is in here. Echoing Dewey and Nietzsche, the traditional notion/concept/idea/treatment of Truth as correspondence to the intrinsic nature of reality is a dinosaur, a trace of the scholastic idea of submission to the Will of God. We are better off without Truth as correspondence with reality.

In Kantian terminology, subjective actually means that a particular claim or judgment is not secured objectively, but develops from the peculiar architecture of the empirical subject. This distinction refers to space and time (from Kant's Inaugural Dissertation) that they are not objective or real, but "the subjective conditions which [are] necessary ... for the coordinating of all sensible things." (ID 14) In the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjective is "a determination of inner sense through the manifold of intuition ... is empirically given." (CPR B 139) Objectivity is not derived from either objects or platonic ideal grounds. Objective judgments are actually derived from the subject, the subject being understood in transcendental terms. In order to achieve critical philosophy, the "subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity, ... they can furnish conditions of the possibility of all knowledge of objects." (CPR A89/B 122)

Classical subjectivity is actually mentalist epistemology, and it implies that the knowing subject can disclose for itself a privileged sphere of immediate and absolutely certain experiences that does not concern objects directly but instead reflexively on its own representations. Charles Sanders Pierce, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein are among the popular critics. The presuppositions of mentalist epistemology are as follows:

• We know our mental states better than anything else.
• The 'knowing' occurs essentially in the mode of representing objects.
• the truth of judgments rests on evidence that vouches for their certainty.

here we have three myths of subjective epistemology:

• the myth of the "given."
• The myth of thought as representation.
• The myth of truth as certainty.

~Transcendentalist~

Keith Russell

Kant, you said:
"Skepticism is basically the claim that knowledge is impossible, while a subjectivist will claim that their knowledge is entirely of their own creation. Two completely different things."

Keith: I'm not convinced. I don't think one can 'create' knowledge. 'Knowledge' (yes, as I use the term) has to be independently verifiable; it cannot be 'self-created'. So, the skeptic contradicts herself when she says 'I know that I can't know', but the subjectivist also contradicts himself when he says 'I know because I know'.

As for the criticism of Rand's 'cake' example, it's cute, but not convincing.

Just because the word 'have' can have different meanings, doesn't mean that Rand was being unlcear. You ought to know what Rand meant, even if a partciular word in here statement might have other possible meanings--but only had someone else said them, and within an utterly different context than Rand's.

Keith.

Keith Russell

Hugo:

Thanks for the link; I've saved it in my 'favourites', and will check it out when I have a bit more free time than I have at present.

I perused the titles of the various articles, and I've read several of these articles already.

But, the link is great, now I can access all of these pieces from one convenient site.

Keith.

Keith Russell

Kant said:
"Objectivity is achieved once the subject refers to his representations according to a set of criteria he checks the subjectivity of his representations against the objective world. The term subjective is contrasted with a term that is defined as "correspondence to what is out there," which is a product of what is in here."

Keith: The problem is that if 'what is out there' is actually a product of 'what's in here', then 'what is out there' is actually 'in here', and thus there is no 'out there' at all.

Kant: Echoing Dewey and Nietzsche, the traditional notion/concept/idea/treatment of Truth as correspondence to the intrinsic nature of reality is a dinosaur, a trace of the scholastic idea of submission to the Will of God. We are better off without Truth as correspondence with reality.

Keith: 'We'? Don't presume to speak for me, please. As an atheist, I simply don't understand your statement 'trace of the scholastic idea of submission to the Will of God'. 'God' is an invalid concept, so basing one's metaphysics on a rejection of an invalid concept is a fine start, but one needs to replace the rejected invalid concept with a valid one. I don't believe you have done this.

Kant: In Kantian terminology, subjective actually means that a particular claim or judgment is not secured objectively, but develops from the peculiar architecture of the empirical subject.

Keith: But, if everything is 'in here', even this subject is 'in here', and there's not really any 'subject'--she, too, is simply a product of my (the sole existing) consciousness. There is also no way to study 'the peculiar architecture of the empirical subject', since what I see as that architecture is also a product of the 'in here'--my own (sole existing) consciousness.

Kant: This distinction refers to space and time (from Kant's Inaugural Dissertation) that they are not objective or real, but "the subjective conditions which [are] necessary ... for the coordinating of all sensible things."

Keith: If space and time are 'in here' (not objective or 'real'), then by what means would one 'coordinate them'? How would one verify that they had been 'coordinated' correctly? And, why wouldn't they already be coordinated when they were initially imagined?

Kant: In the Critique of Pure Reason, the subjective is "a determination of inner sense through the manifold of intuition ... is empirically given." (CPR B 139)

Keith: I've read this, but I'm not sure the book can actually be understood. How can 'a determination of inner sense' by 'empircally given'? I believe that Rand's assessment of Kant, that Kant wished to destroy his readers reliance on--and ability to--reason, is accurate.

Kant: Objectivity is not derived from either objects or platonic ideal grounds.

Keith: Agreed. Ojbectivity requires a subject in addition to an object, and Objectivism rejects Platonic Idealism (as being mystical/irrational).

Objective judgments are actually derived from the subject--

Keith: Yes, but not derived only from the subject. Objectivity is the relationship between the subject and external reality. Objectivity is neither intrinsic nor subjective.

Kant: --the subject being understood in transcendental terms.

Keith: I'm sure I don't understand what you mean by 'transcendantal terms'. Would you mind explaining?

Kant: In order to achieve critical philosophy, the "subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity, ... they can furnish conditions of the possibility of all knowledge of objects." (CPR A89/B 122)

Keith: Again, I'm not sure how anyone can claim that this was written to be comprehensible. "...subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity..."? I mean, one can string words together like this, but they lose their meaning.

Kant: Classical subjectivity is actually mentalist epistemology--

Keith: Again, more jargon. Please explain what you mean by 'classical subjectivity' (apparently as opposed to the 'other' kinds of subjectivity) and 'mentalist' epistemology. Thanks.

Kant: --and it implies that the knowing subject can disclose for itself a privileged sphere of immediate and absolutely certain experiences that does not concern objects directly but instead reflexively on its own representations.

Keith: This sounds a great deal like the very 'Divine Revelation' that you appeared to reject, earlier.

Kant: Charles Sanders Pierce, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein are among the popular critics.

Keith: Wittgenstein is next on my 'to buy' list, but I am also going to read Hopper, who I believe had a great deal to say about Wittgenstein...

Keith.

[ September 28, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]

[ September 28, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]</p>

Kantian

I am merely pointing out how subjectivism and skepticism are not identical, that you have been confusing or inappropriately mixing up different definitions in your earlier posts.
I'll go in depth on why "knowledge" as the subject's creation is a fundamental outcome of idealism in my next post.
Incorrect. That's not a contradiction, but a tautology. The statement "I am Kant because I am Kant" only restates the assertion that my name is Kant. I am Kant because I call myself Kant. I know that I am called Kant because I know the fact my name is Kant. Mere tautologies, and do not really add any knowledge, but these statements are not contradictory. Unless you'd like to explain yourself?
Are you aware of Ordinary Language philosophy outside of Rand's constant strawman attacks?
After my initial phase as a proud Objectivist (i read all her fiction and non-fiction literature), I studied philosophy for the past several years and came to this conclusion: Ayn Rand was utterly ignorant of philosophy, especially the new developments in modern philosophy. While she had a rudimentary understanding of philosophy in general, her constanct invectives against other thinkers led me to their works. My investigation, to this day, has affected my admiration for Rand to the degree that she no longer figures as a philosopher in my perspective- but that of a literary writer. Her best work is fiction, personally i think it's Fountainhead, but her non-fiction works leave a lot to be desired.

Yes, Ayn Rand is quite clear- she was fond of making bifurcation fallacies allover her writings. It's either the creator or the second-hander, the capitalist or the looter, the individual or the collective, God or the Devil, what have you, and nothing else.
~Transcendentalist~
[sacrificed to the God of grammar]

[ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: Immanuel Kant ]</p>

Kantian

First things first: You must understand that Kant was not writing with today's audience in mind, i.e. you, rather he was a professional philosopher who wrote chiefly for other philosophers. In order to swim through all these confusing terminology you have to do a lot of homework. In any case, I will give you the dumbed-down version, which will be unfair to Kant anyway.
Exactly! Why would that be a problem? The notion of "what is out there" is essentially a subjective concept, and not truly identical with the object it refers to. The words "external world" is not the external world itself but a concept that refers to it. One infers from a collection of sense data that there is a pattern of regularity, a notion of contiguity, and makes a generalization of such assumptions about the uniform state of his senses, and sums up this generalization as the "external world."

Brute existence is not identical to the human convention of language. Words are but feeble points of reference that men trace upon their environment for the purposes of convenience. I cannot say two words without referring to existence, but words will never touch it. The human consciousness confronts existence, and by being repulsed by its presence, it creates abstract categories in order to organize it. However, these abstract categories are not the basis of reality, despite how much philosophers would have you believe otherwise!
You're correct. Apparently several years of academic training in philosophy will irrevocably infect anyone with the philosopher's disease, which is that lovely presumptuousness where they overlook their egocentric stand and pretend their gifted reasoning awards them a privileged status for an appropriate representation of the entire human race. I should watch my mouth. It does get the best of me at times.
God may not be a valid concept, provided one sticks to empirical standards, but it does carry a context of meaning that it is the supernatural sanction of one's beliefs. Who better to have recourse to in order to back up whatever a person believed? Truth as a correspondence is merely a shift from our ties to scholastic theology. There is a historical precedent to objectivism (not the randian version) in Christian theology, when it subjected philosophy as a handmaiden. The valid concept left, after we ignore the absurd portentousness of the idealists in the 19th century, is perspectivism.
Sort of. I wouldn't really argue with you there since there's no disembodied Cartesian subject in Kantian idealism, that the subject is but a formal requirement. It is trivially true that all experience entails "experience for a subject." Kant accepted the first premise of Cartesianism by claiming that the unity of apperception, the "I think," is the ultimate condition of experience. However, Descartes thought that he had proven the "I" or the cogito that follows the condition of experience, while all he had actually done was prove that there are thoughts. Kant said the subject is not something substantial but a logical requirement. Nothing necessarily follows about the nature of one's self from the fact that he or she declares that he is thinking. The "representation 'I' ... [is] simple, and in itself, completely empty ... we cannot even say this is a concept but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts. Though this I or he or it which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of thoughts equals X." (CPR B 404). The "I am" is a mere representation, a thought, not an intuition (an empirical concept).

However, Sartre would agree with you, specifically that the subject is a creation of the subjectivity of the pre-reflective cogito. Whenever you are doing something, as in playing basketball, you are not conscious of the thought "here I am, driving against this hacks-a-lot dude who reaches too much." You're actually conscious of the phenomenon of "the defender to be beaten to the hole." The "I" does not appear until later; for example if you get embarrassed at your shot being redirected towards your face.
Not quite. This is exactly where Kant made the "Copernican" turn in philosophy, and rescued the project from the nadir of Humean skepticism. He set out to argue that there is a third category of knowledge, beyond the old Leibniz dichotomies of analytic (tautologies) and synthetic (contingent information), a priori (pure reason) and a posteriori (empirical information)- the synthetic a priori. How "synthetic a priori" judgments are possible is the fundamental question the entire book Critique of Pure Reason attempts to answer. Modern commentators like Strawson and Wilkerson interpret this cumbersome question in this way: "what are the necessary conditions of a possible experience?" For Kant, space and time and causality are synthetic a priori judgments, or in modern terminology, structures of the mind that dictates whatever sense data we receive.
You misread the excerpt. I will explain why. One does not coordinate them (space and time) but rather, they are conditions that coordinates all sensible things. That means in his Inaugural Dissertation Kant was arguing against his idol Leibniz that space and time are not systems of relations "abstracted" from particular situations and mysteriously "apprehended," but that they are "synthetic a priori judgments," meaning they are presupposed in all of sensations, sensible things, empirical data, sense data, intuitions, any information we receive from the senses. In all of our senses we bring concepts to the pure experience- that the mind automatically presupposes they contain spatial and temporal characters. The ideas of space and time are intuitive, (the "pure" type of judgments, i.e. synthetic a priori, because they are known or supposed prior to experience) not conceptual.

Kant adopts a lot of Humean criticism of rationalism, and seems to accept the principle of significance: a concept must contain empirical worth. The consequence of the principle is that one cannot derive certain concepts from pure empirical information such as causality, the self, and other metaphysical dinosaurs.
I thought as much before I actually read the book. Ayn Rand's failure to understand Kant should not be your own, too. Do not hide behind her ignorance- unless you prefer being a second-hander and accept everything your goddess said or wrote as the divine Truth.
Simple- there is no subjectivity without empirical input.
False. Rand never read Kant or studied his philosophy, and instead perhaps reacted strongly against second-hand information. She was great at making summations entirely from the strength of the cover of the books she never read. Knee-jerk reactions or initial impressions are not apodictically true, and should never be final. Have you done your homework and studied Kant in order to make an independent opinion of your own? If not you should form your own opinions, and in doing so, you are obligated to give equal time to both Rand and Kant. Only afterwards are you capable of forming an independent opinion, one that needs no sanction from anybody, much less a fiction writer!
This is where naïve realism rears its head and falls back to gutter empiricism of Hume. You must study how empiricism has not advanced one iota from Hume, over 200 years ago, and how Kantian transcendentalism trumped his skepticism.
Not in the least! Explaining obscure concepts can't but help enrich my own understanding of them. "transcendental" in Kantian usage means either the "pure" or "a priori" features of experience that jettisons all trivial contingent concepts, i.e. sausages, basalt rock, and leave behind only the necessary features of experience (space, time, substance and causality). A transcendental enquiry is an analysis of the possibility of a priori knowledge and does so by investigating a priori features of our knowledge of objects. In the phrase you broken up, the "subject being understood in transcendental terms," is whatever the necessary conditions of experience characterizes the subject itself.
Sure, to the layman. But the layman is no paragon of knowledge, so let's not pretend that all writings must conform to a certain standard- i.e. yours. Furthermore, when you take a sentence out of context and examine its apparent face value, you overlook the big picture. Kant wrote that sentence after having demonstrated the validity of the "synthetic a priori judgments" in his great critique.

I am in full agreement that Kant was a terrible writer, that his book was a patchwork of hurried notes and collected thoughts, as opposed to the smoothly written masterpiece of Hume's Treatise or Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation.
Descartes introduced classical subjectivity. Modern subjectivity takes radical leaps from Cartesianism- see Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Mentalist epistemology may be characterized as the project where philosophers adopted the self as a privileged center for dictating theories of knowledge. Idealism is a popular label for those who engaged in mentalist epistemology.
How so? I would greatly appreciate it that you did not break up my sentences anymore. That reflects poorly upon your attempts at understanding my interpretation of subjectivism.
Who's Hopper? Do you mean Paul Hopper, the <a href="http://eserver.org/langs/times-of-the-sign.txt" target="_blank">author of this article? </a>
~Radical subjectivist~
[gremlins in grammar]

[ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: Immanuel Kant ]</p>

Keith Russell

Kant:

I spend too much time reading art and philosophy, and I sometimes mix up my artists and my philosophers.

I was thinking about Edward Hopper, but I meant to write Karl Popper.

Sorry,

Keith.

Keith Russell

Kant said:
Exactly! Why would that be a problem? The notion of "what is out there" is essentially a subjective concept, and not truly identical with the object it refers to. The words "external world" is not the external world itself but a concept that refers to it.

Keith: Kant, I'm more than aware that our concepts are not the things to which they refer. I also know that words often have more than one meaning; a given word might--depending on context, among other things--refer to more than one concept.

Kant: One infers from a collection of sense data that there is a pattern of regularity, a notion of contiguity, and makes a generalization of such assumptions about the uniform state of his senses, and sums up this generalization as the "external world."

Keith: I don't have any problem with the above paragraph.

Kant: Brute existence is not identical to the human convention of language.

Keith: Again, I am fully aware that our language, and our concepts, are not the things to which they refer.

Kant: Words are but feeble points of reference that men trace upon their environment for the purposes of convenience.

Keith: Here, I disagree. We don't 'trace' words onto the environment, unless by 'their environment', you mean 'individual consciousness'.

Kant: I cannot say two words without referring to existence, but words will never touch it.

Keith: You can say hundreds of words, thousands even, without ever referring to reality; it's called fiction. As far as words 'touching' reality, could you be a bit more specific about what the word 'touch' means in the above...? (Are you also aware that by claiming to know that it is true that 'words will never touch it', you are claiming to touch reality?

Kant: The human consciousness confronts existence, and by being repulsed by its presence--

Keith: If you wish me to understand what you mean by 'repulsed by its presence', you're going to need to explain what you mean by those terms.

Kant: However, these abstract categories are not the basis of reality, despite how much philosophers would have you believe otherwise!

Keith: Is this more of the same? That our words and concepts are not the things to which they refer? If so, you've now stated this three times, and I have agreed with you three times. (Although I will admit, I don't know how you can say that we cannot 'touch' reality, and yet you have enough knowledge of reality to know that our abstract concepts are not the 'basis of reality'.

Keith.

[ September 29, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]</p>

Kantian

Karl Popper is, or was unfamiliar with Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the sensationalistic biography, Wittgenstein's Poker, Popper assumed Wittgenstein never changed his mind after the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and prepared as such in their infamous 10 minute showdown.

He is a poor representative of Wittgenstein- one who considered Ludwig the enemy of philosophy- so i'd suggest you look elsewhere.

~Transcendentalist~

Keith Russell

Kant, Part Two...

Kant: Sort of. I wouldn't really argue with you there since there's no disembodied Cartesian subject in Kantian idealism, that the subject is but a formal requirement. It is trivially true that all experience entails "experience for a subject."

Keith: 'Trivially' true? What do you mean by that?

Kant: Kant accepted the first premise of Cartesianism by claiming that the unity of apperception, the "I think," is the ultimate condition of experience. However, Descartes thought that he had proven the "I" or the cogito that follows the condition of experience, while all he had actually done was prove that there are thoughts. Kant said the subject is not something substantial but a logical requirement. Nothing necessarily follows about the nature of one's self from the fact that he or she declares that he is thinking.

Keith: Nothing except the fact that one exists. Now you may claim that that fact reveals nothing about the 'nature of one's self', but I disagree. It reveals that much, and nothing more or less. It reveals that one exists.

Kant: The "representation 'I' ... [is] simple, and in itself, completely empty ... we cannot even say this is a concept but only that it is a bare consciousness which accompanies all concepts.

Keith: The above is a claim, offered without support.

Kant: Though this I or he or it which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of thoughts equals X." (CPR B 404).

Keith: More jargon: 'transcendental subject of thoughts'. Is this stuff able to be understood well enough that you might describe it in your own words? Besides, just because you say that what I call 'I' is only a 'transcendental subject of thoughts', changes nothing. By any other name... A remains 'A', whether we call it 'A' or a 'transcendental subject of thoughts'.

Kant: The "I am" is a mere representation, a thought, not an intuition (an empirical concept).
However, Sartre would agree with you, specifically that the subject is a creation of the subjectivity of the pre-reflective cogito. Whenever you are doing something, as in playing basketball, you are not conscious of the thought "here I am, driving against this hacks-a-lot dude who reaches too much." You're actually conscious of the phenomenon of "the defender to be beaten to the hole." The "I" does not appear until later; for example if you get embarrassed at your shot being redirected towards your face.

Keith: Aha! Just because I don't go around consciously saying to myself 'I am here, doing this' changes nothing about the reality of the situation.

Keith: (earlier)...there is also no way to study 'the peculiar architecture of the empirical subject', since what I see as that architecture is also a product of the 'in here'--my own (sole existing) consciousness.

Kant: Not quite. This is exactly where Kant made the "Copernican" turn in philosophy, and rescued the project from the nadir of Humean skepticism. He set out to argue that there is a third category of knowledge, beyond the old Leibniz dichotomies of analytic (tautologies) and synthetic (contingent information), a priori (pure reason) and a posteriori (empirical information)- the synthetic a priori. How "synthetic a priori" judgments are possible is the fundamental question the entire book Critique of Pure Reason attempts to answer.

Keith: I think the entire book rests upon several blatant contradictions.

Kant: Modern commentators like Strawson and Wilkerson interpret this cumbersome question in this way: "what are the necessary conditions of a possible experience?" For Kant, space and time and causality are synthetic a priori judgments, or in modern terminology, structures of the mind that dictates whatever sense data we receive.

Keith: (earlier) If space and time are 'in here' (not objective or 'real'), then by what means would one 'coordinate them'? How would one verify that they had been 'coordinated' correctly? And, why wouldn't they already be coordinated when they were initially imagined?

Kant: You misread the excerpt. I will explain why. One does not coordinate them (space and time) but rather, they are conditions that coordinates all sensible things. That means in his Inaugural Dissertation Kant was arguing against his idol Leibniz that space and time are not systems of relations "abstracted" from particular situations and mysteriously "apprehended," but that they are "synthetic a priori judgments," meaning they are presupposed in all of sensations, sensible things, empirical data, sense data, intuitions, any information we receive from the senses. In all of our senses we bring concepts to the pure experience- that the mind automatically presupposes they contain spatial and temporal characters. The ideas of space and time are intuitive, (the "pure" type of judgments, i.e. synthetic a priori, because they are known or supposed prior to experience) not conceptual.

Keith: Sorry, to claim that you know that something is known or supposed prior to existence, is just silly.

Kant: Kant adopts a lot of Humean criticism of rationalism, and seems to accept the principle of significance: a concept must contain empirical worth.

Keith: But, Kant's whole point seems to be to deny both empiricism and reason. To claim a mystical (arbitrary) dimension, to remove identity, and then state that knowledge exists prior to existence, is to utterly destroy the concept of concepts and 'empirical worth'.

Kant: The consequence of the principle is that one cannot derive certain concepts from pure empirical information such as causality, the self, and other metaphysical dinosaurs.

Keith: So, are we left with nothing but (the even more ancient) Platonic forms? I mean, if 'dinosaur' is supposed to be the final insult to a philosophical idea, Plato's forms are far older than Rand's Neo-Artistoteleanism.

Keith: (earlier) I've read this, but I'm not sure the book can actually be understood.

Kant: I thought as much before I actually read the book.

Keith: But I actually read the book. I didn't have an opinion of it before I read it, I read it to 'check my premises', as Rand would say. I read it to find out if Rand's assessment of it was correct. I think she was a bit kind to Kant, actually.

Kant: Ayn Rand's failure to understand Kant should not be your own, too. Do not hide behind her ignorance- unless you prefer being a second-hander and accept everything your goddess said or wrote as the divine Truth.

Keith: If you're going to persist with these insults, this is going to take a great deal longer than necessary. Rand is not 'my goddess', and I am not hiding.

Keith: (earlier) How can 'a determination of inner sense' be 'empircally given'?

Kant: Simple- there is no subjectivity without empirical input.

Keith: You can string words together any way you like, but you cannot string them together this way, if you wish them to retain meaning.

Keith: (earlier) I believe that Rand's assessment of Kant, that Kant wished to destroy his readers reliance on--and ability to--reason, is accurate.

Kant: False. Rand never read Kant or studied his philosophy, and instead perhaps reacted strongly against second-hand information.

Keith: This is a claim, given without support. And, I have read Kant, and I agree with Rand's assessment. If she hadn't read Kant when she formed her opinion of him, even more amazing.

Kant: She was great at making summations entirely from the strength of the cover of the books she never read.

[b]Keith: Is it just me, or does it seem that you have seen her library to know that she owned the books, but you also know that she never actually read them?

Kant: Knee-jerk reactions or initial impressions are not apodictically true, and should never be final.

Keith: I agree completely, which is why I actually read the Critique of Pure Reason, and plan to read it again, along with Wittgenstein, Hume, Hegel, and Popper.

Kant: Have you done your homework and studied Kant in order to make an independent opinion of your own?

Keith: I would not say that I have yet studied Kant, though I have read the Prolegomena, and the Critique. I don't think reading them once, and referring back to the occasionally would constitute 'study'. But I do intend to study them more in a more thorough fashion in the future.

Kant: If not you should form your own opinions, and in doing so, you are obligated to give equal time to both Rand and Kant.

Keith: I agree. You don't have to try to sell this idea to me further; I purchased it long ago.

Kant: Only afterwards are you capable of forming an independent opinion, one that needs no sanction from anybody, much less a fiction writer!

Keith: Yet, you continually quote Kant directly, not even putting his concepts into your own words...

Keith: (earlier) Yes, but not derived only from the subject. Objectivity is the relationship between the subject and external reality. Objectivity is neither intrinsic nor subjective.

Kant: This is where naïve realism rears its head and falls back to gutter empiricism of Hume. You must study how empiricism has not advanced one iota from Hume, over 200 years ago, and how Kantian transcendentalism trumped his skepticism.

Keith: And you know this because your teachers said so? Sorry, but just because this is the popular view in no way makes it true.

Keith: (earlier) I'm sure I don't understand what you mean by 'transcendantal terms'. Would you mind explaining?

Kant: Not in the least! Explaining obscure concepts can't but help enrich my own understanding of them. "transcendental" in Kantian usage means either the "pure" or "a priori" features of experience that jettisons all trivial contingent concepts, i.e. sausages, basalt rock, and leave behind only the necessary features of experience (space, time, substance and causality). A transcendental enquiry is an analysis of the possibility of a priori knowledge and does so by investigating a priori features of our knowledge of objects.

Keith: Don't you see the contradiction here? "A transcendental enquiry is an analysis of the possibility of a priori knowledge--"

Yet, you just said that 'transcendental' (in Kantian terms) means "pure or a priori", and yet you say that a 'transcendental enquiry' is an analysis of the possibility of a priori knowledge. How can an 'a prior' (transcendental) enquiry be used to check the possibility of a priori (transcendental) knowledge, when you've already assumed its existence from the get-go? You're going to conduct an a priori investigation to determine if a priori knowledge is possible?

Kant: In the phrase you broken up, the "subject being understood in transcendental terms," is whatever the necessary conditions of experience characterizes the subject itself.

Keith: The 'subject' being your (earlier) mere 'transcendental subject of thoughts'. But, what have we really said?

Keith: (earlier) Again, I'm not sure how anyone can claim that this was written to be comprehensible. "...subjective conditions of thought can have objective validity..."? I mean, one can string words together like this, but they lose their meaning.

Kant: Sure, to the layman. But the layman is no paragon of knowledge, so let's not pretend that all writings must conform to a certain standard- i.e. yours.

Keith: Ahh, so this was designed to confound, rather than enlighten.

Kant: Furthermore, when you take a sentence out of context and examine its apparent face value, you overlook the big picture. Kant wrote that sentence after having demonstrated the validity of the "synthetic a priori judgments" in his great critique.

Keith: Just because you say he demonstrated the validity, doesn't mean he actually did it. Just because you say the critique was great (which means 'large', by the way), doesn't mean it was. You do this a great deal, though, call things something, in the hopes that your reader will accept your word on your authority.

Kant: I am in full agreement that Kant was a terrible writer, that his book was a patchwork of hurried notes and collected thoughts, as opposed to the smoothly written masterpiece of Hume's Treatise or Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation.

Keith: I've read some of Hume's works, but not that one (adds it to the 'to-buy' list), but I haven't read the Schopenhauer (add it, too).

Keith: (earlier) Again, more jargon. Please explain what you mean by 'classical subjectivity' (apparently as opposed to the 'other' kinds of subjectivity) and 'mentalist' epistemology. Thanks.

Kant: Descartes introduced classical subjectivity. Modern subjectivity takes radical leaps from Cartesianism- see Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. Mentalist epistemology may be characterized as the project where philosophers adopted the self as a privileged center for dictating theories of knowledge. Idealism is a popular label for those who engaged in mentalist epistemology.

Keith: Gotcha, thanks!

Keith: (earlier) This sounds a great deal like the very 'Divine Revelation' that you appeared to reject, earlier.

Kant: How so? I would greatly appreciate it that you did not break up my sentences anymore. That reflects poorly upon your attempts at understanding my interpretation of subjectivism.

Keith: I have tried not to break up your sentences, here.

You have already stated that Kant's a priori knowledge preceeds existence. If the universe exists, then what preceeds existence is outside the universe; in either space, time, or both.

Kant, as Rand claimed, is thus proposing another dimension, where at least some knowledge exists. This invalidates reason as being humanity's only means to knowledge.

If this a priori isn't 'natural' (as our univserse is) then it could be called 'supernatural'/'mystical'.

A means to knowledge that is not in the universe, and is contrary to the universe, sounds a great deal similar to the mystics' claim of 'Divine Revelation'.

Rand claimed that Kant was trying to make philosophy safe for religion, yet again. Thus far, my reading of Kant has confirmed this, and you have in no way offered an alternative interpretation of Kant.

Keith.