I'll admit I still haven't read the Critique all the way through and I listen to Wolff because I like him. He's leading me to truths that I fear are too inaccessible at the moment to me. Yet Wollf with his idiosyncratic delivery of these principles is doing something for me. I have purchased Meinklebugers translation of COPR and I have read the two prefaces and have yet to approach anything actually read by Kant. But Wolff is a very likeable person and I don't think it's a problem that I watch this without reading the material, although watching this will make it difficult to not read the Critique in its entirety. I haven't even read all of Aristotle and Plato, yet philosophy is not about that. You can jump into the conversation. I just want to have points of reference. God bless you rabbi Wolff.
I agree with you, it's a gradual process. Reading the critique is a very important investmant in time and energy, I think that it shouldn't be one of the first book you read in philosophy, you have all your time.
In regards to the question at 31:20 in my translation ( Pluhar, Hackett edition ) offers the translation "presentation" instead of "representation" which I have found to be easier to contend with. The following is the explanation at footnote 73 in the preface to the second edition "Vorstellungen. The traditional rendering of Vorstellung (similarly for the verb) as 'representation' suggests that Kant's theory of perception (etc.) is representational, which, however, it is not (despite the fact that Kant sometimes adds the Latin repraesentatio). For one thing. vorstellen, in the Kantian use of the term that is relevant here, is not something that Vorstellungen do; it is something that we do. Moreover, vorstellen as so used never means anything like 'represent' in the sense of 'stand for.' Even an empirical intuition, e.g., does not stand for an object of experience (let alone a thing in itself, but rather enters into the experience which that object of experience is. (Because 'presentation' too is slightly awkward, I have in some contexts replaced it- if clarity could be enhanced at no risk of distortion-by 'conception' or 'thought'; similarly for the verb.) Presentations, as the term is here used, are such objects of our direct awareness as sensations, intuitions. perceptions, concepts. cognitions, ideas, and schemata. ..."
Love the example with the class of six who have to write a story. I enjoy these lectures in 2021, I find them great. Read the Critique of Pure Reason and did not understand it quite well, these lectures are giving me a better understanding of the book.
Wolff talks about Kuhnian scientific revolutions. Best summary I've ever heard. We don't simply improve or refine our mention of the four humors in describing human health. Instead, we chuck those concepts in favor of better ones. We understand that any four-humor theory is merely a groping and grasping at the truth. I wonder what Prof. Wolff would say to the suggestion that, when learning from Kant, rather than trying to become fluent with his vocabulary of "representations", "intuitions", etc., we should chuck out a whole lot of it and just focus on salvaging what can be presented in modern day terms.
I was very surprise by your dismissal of the schematism and this might be based on a misunderstanding. Yes, there is the issue of how categories can apply to a manifold, which might be a non issue, however, there is another problem in how we come to know the categories. In the schematism, Kant gives an account of how judgement is able to refer to itself a priori and in advance through transcendental time determinations. The homogeneity between concept and intuition provides a route for our being a able to reflect on a given concept, not just our ability to know the object given to us through intuition. If the categories are heterogeneous with intuition then Kant has to give a different account of how we are able to reflect on the Pure concepts of understanding, and his answer to this is really just the pay off of the transcendental aesthetic--that Space and Time constitute something of a medium in which the Pure concepts becomes homogenous with intuition and this is what guarantees the reflexivity of judgement.
Isn't Levinas' ethical/metaphysical theory the way you could resolve the conflict between Kant's epistemology and ethics? ie the appearance/arrival of the Other, the Face of the Other, is a rupturing of the laws that otherwise govern the empirical world (nature), and even of the laws of history, if there are any.
I’m not well red on Levinas. When he tells us that the human face cannot be reduced to properties of my mind, is he referring to a metaphysical face? Otherwise it’s sounds like a fallacy of phisiognomy. Couldn’t a sentient being not have a face? An alien..an ai computer... what properties of the face make us acknowledge another transcendental unifying agent? If it’s not a literal face, then how could he prove that we are observing something beyond our mind. Is it because that other seems to act sentient? We dream up sentient characters. We write them in books, we bring them to life in video games but we don’t believe they’re real agents just because they imitate our own sentient behaviors.
Its one of the reasons I’m avoiding going back to Paris. I remember as a kid walking around Ile Saint Louis every Saturday morning and taking the bridge over to Notre Dame. What a loss:(
Upto 20””: Of course, people-in-themselves are not the same as my perceptions of them, but isn’t Kant just saying the objective appearances of people that I perceive correspond to people-in-themselves in the noumenal world?
" But isn’t Kant just saying the objective appearances of people that I perceive correspond to people-in-themselves in the noumenal world?" If you can not have knowledge about noumenal world, then how could you form a judgement of correspondence. When you say there is a cat on the floor, the judgement is corresponding to the sense data the cat and its surroundings send to you. But this is all about the phenomenal world.
David Qin i guess you can have knowledge of the noumena but only very partially . I.e the noumenal cannot be accessed perceptually but only through the intellect. I mean wouldn’t the inferred existence of the noumena itself be a paradox to the idea that it is things in themselves that we cannot access? It must be then that he means direct perception of things in themselves.
@@ElectricQualia But according to Kant you can't even know things in themselves even partially. And reason can only be used to make sense of empirical reality.
@@davidqin7033 Kant calls the idea that there are appearances without things which appear (things-in-themselves) absurd. He takes them for granted. Philosophers after him have argued that this position contradicts the rest of his metaphysics, either on epistemological grounds (like you argue) or etiological ones. Kant did allow partial knowledge of things-in-themselves at least insofar as he allowed negative knowledge of them. He also wrote that negative knowledge isn't really knowledge, though, so it's tough to use that to justify positing things-in-themselves.
bravo - I had a good laugh at something - but the class was silent: - psychology of mind - thank you Professor for your groundwork - the morass of confusion that you clarify - and to describe some of it as "cockamamie" -
Angels could not be 'bound' by the moral law because there would be no possibility of them transgressing it. For their to be freedom in the sense Kant talks about it there must also be inclination which works against that freedom, or, freedom which works against inclination. Only a rational that exists in the phenomenal realm can be moral and exhibit freedom
Or represent = present (a thing) back (to an observer), which doesn't seem all that different from presenting in front of an observer. Compare return (turn back), recede (fall back), remit (send back), revoke (call back), refund, repeal, repel, refer, relegate, remove, receive, etc.
The problem of moral obligation when all one has is the field of experienced objects? Wouldn't the way people deal with this issue IN PRACTICE be to act AS IF the empirical appearance of the other person was or somehow re-presented their noumenal being? That this is a philosophical error does not keep persons from "sacrificing themselves" which I speculate they deal with by imagining a world benefitting from their sacrifice in which they are no longer present even though they are observing it. If a person identifies with the transcendental experiencing event, wouldn't that spoil all the propaganda to sacrifice oneself for one's country in a war, i.e., to trade apodictic self-awareness for an empirical [fallable] hypothesis [object] in that awareness??
Like my mother used to say, What if everybody did that? Or, you ought not to use folks. She knew the categorical imperative without knowing it. But the example of the creative writing class is not a good analogy. Appearance is the appearance of something in real life. I am not writing a story. Transcendental simply means rational critic, not a world beyond or over and above. Anyway, maybe I didn't understand the analogy. The TAO assumes that in order to communicate there is an objective reality that we do not make up. How do we know there is a unity of consciousness? But in the TAO we do not synthesize different realities. Kant is describing this process and we understand it because we are not consciously synthesizing experience but actually.
Poor guy, I'm watching this in 2022. Hope he's having a nice time in Paris.
I'll admit I still haven't read the Critique all the way through and I listen to Wolff because I like him. He's leading me to truths that I fear are too inaccessible at the moment to me. Yet Wollf with his idiosyncratic delivery of these principles is doing something for me. I have purchased Meinklebugers translation of COPR and I have read the two prefaces and have yet to approach anything actually read by Kant. But Wolff is a very likeable person and I don't think it's a problem that I watch this without reading the material, although watching this will make it difficult to not read the Critique in its entirety. I haven't even read all of Aristotle and Plato, yet philosophy is not about that. You can jump into the conversation. I just want to have points of reference. God bless you rabbi Wolff.
I agree with you, it's a gradual process. Reading the critique is a very important investmant in time and energy, I think that it shouldn't be one of the first book you read in philosophy, you have all your time.
In regards to the question at 31:20 in my translation ( Pluhar, Hackett edition ) offers the translation "presentation" instead of "representation" which I have found to be easier to contend with.
The following is the explanation at footnote 73 in the preface to the second edition
"Vorstellungen. The traditional rendering of Vorstellung (similarly for the verb) as 'representation' suggests that Kant's theory of perception (etc.) is representational, which, however,
it is not (despite the fact that Kant sometimes adds the Latin repraesentatio). For one thing. vorstellen, in the Kantian use of the term that is relevant here, is not something that Vorstellungen do; it is something that we do. Moreover, vorstellen as so used never means anything
like 'represent' in the sense of 'stand for.' Even an empirical intuition, e.g., does not stand for an object of experience (let alone a thing in itself, but rather enters into the experience which that object of experience is. (Because 'presentation' too is slightly awkward, I have in some contexts replaced it- if clarity could be enhanced at no risk of distortion-by 'conception' or 'thought'; similarly for the verb.) Presentations, as the term is here used, are such objects of our direct awareness as sensations, intuitions. perceptions, concepts. cognitions, ideas, and schemata. ..."
Love the example with the class of six who have to write a story. I enjoy these lectures in 2021, I find them great. Read the Critique of Pure Reason and did not understand it quite well, these lectures are giving me a better understanding of the book.
Yeah, I thought that was such a cool analogy. I will definitely be thinking about it more
Thank you so much Sir, eagerly waiting the upcoming lectures.
Wolff talks about Kuhnian scientific revolutions. Best summary I've ever heard. We don't simply improve or refine our mention of the four humors in describing human health. Instead, we chuck those concepts in favor of better ones. We understand that any four-humor theory is merely a groping and grasping at the truth.
I wonder what Prof. Wolff would say to the suggestion that, when learning from Kant, rather than trying to become fluent with his vocabulary of "representations", "intuitions", etc., we should chuck out a whole lot of it and just focus on salvaging what can be presented in modern day terms.
The "complication" from 37:47 seems to echo Douglas Hofstadter's Strange Loops.
9 busses!
I was very surprise by your dismissal of the schematism and this might be based on a misunderstanding. Yes, there is the issue of how categories can apply to a manifold, which might be a non issue, however, there is another problem in how we come to know the categories. In the schematism, Kant gives an account of how judgement is able to refer to itself a priori and in advance through transcendental time determinations. The homogeneity between concept and intuition provides a route for our being a able to reflect on a given concept, not just our ability to know the object given to us through intuition. If the categories are heterogeneous with intuition then Kant has to give a different account of how we are able to reflect on the Pure concepts of understanding, and his answer to this is really just the pay off of the transcendental aesthetic--that Space and Time constitute something of a medium in which the Pure concepts becomes homogenous with intuition and this is what guarantees the reflexivity of judgement.
Luke Desobry it seems a bit likepan pan psychiam to me
Discussion of Critique begins at 22:10 - the first section discusses Kant's ethical theory.
So the syntethic unity of apperception is synonimous with the self?
yep. or at least the self understood in a particular sense
Isn't Levinas' ethical/metaphysical theory the way you could resolve the conflict between Kant's epistemology and ethics? ie the appearance/arrival of the Other, the Face of the Other, is a rupturing of the laws that otherwise govern the empirical world (nature), and even of the laws of history, if there are any.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
Luke Desobry: Thank you for your response. {nice to know I'm not alone :)
I’m not well red on Levinas. When he tells us that the human face cannot be reduced to properties of my mind, is he referring to a metaphysical face? Otherwise it’s sounds like a fallacy of phisiognomy. Couldn’t a sentient being not have a face? An alien..an ai computer... what properties of the face make us acknowledge another transcendental unifying agent? If it’s not a literal face, then how could he prove that we are observing something beyond our mind. Is it because that other seems to act sentient? We dream up sentient characters. We write them in books, we bring them to life in video games but we don’t believe they’re real agents just because they imitate our own sentient behaviors.
Also Stein and the Problem of Empathy
I’m so sad when he speaks of Notre Dame. It’s 2019, just a few days after it’s burned down.
Its one of the reasons I’m avoiding going back to Paris. I remember as a kid walking around Ile Saint Louis every Saturday morning and taking the bridge over to Notre Dame. What a loss:(
Upto 20””: Of course, people-in-themselves are not the same as my perceptions of them, but isn’t Kant just saying the objective appearances of people that I perceive correspond to people-in-themselves in the noumenal world?
Bhigr Bond Yes, glad to be able to infer other people-in-themselves share the same opinions.!
" But isn’t Kant just saying the objective appearances of people that I perceive correspond to people-in-themselves in the noumenal world?"
If you can not have knowledge about noumenal world, then how could you form a judgement of correspondence. When you say there is a cat on the floor, the judgement is corresponding to the sense data the cat and its surroundings send to you. But this is all about the phenomenal world.
David Qin i guess you can have knowledge of the noumena but only very partially . I.e the noumenal cannot be accessed perceptually but only through the intellect. I mean wouldn’t the inferred existence of the noumena itself be a paradox to the idea that it is things in themselves that we cannot access? It must be then that he means direct perception of things in themselves.
@@ElectricQualia But according to Kant you can't even know things in themselves even partially. And reason can only be used to make sense of empirical reality.
@@davidqin7033 Kant calls the idea that there are appearances without things which appear (things-in-themselves) absurd. He takes them for granted.
Philosophers after him have argued that this position contradicts the rest of his metaphysics, either on epistemological grounds (like you argue) or etiological ones.
Kant did allow partial knowledge of things-in-themselves at least insofar as he allowed negative knowledge of them. He also wrote that negative knowledge isn't really knowledge, though, so it's tough to use that to justify positing things-in-themselves.
I remember the intensity of fall 2016. It feels dwarfed compared to 2020
bravo - I had a good laugh at something - but the class was silent: - psychology of mind - thank you Professor for your groundwork - the morass of confusion that you clarify - and to describe some of it as "cockamamie" -
Another reason to hate Trump .. we missed the second part of the series ..
i don't hate, but your comment is most apropos and appreciated
Still waiting on that one way ticket ...
I'm sorry I just have to put the "You are no Jack Kennedy" here: th-cam.com/video/O-7gpgXNWYI/w-d-xo.html
Angels could not be 'bound' by the moral law because there would be no possibility of them transgressing it. For their to be freedom in the sense Kant talks about it there must also be inclination which works against that freedom, or, freedom which works against inclination. Only a rational that exists in the phenomenal realm can be moral and exhibit freedom
Nvm you said what I said basically
Vorstellung = vor stellung =to present (place) in front of; representation = re-present = to present again
Or represent = present (a thing) back (to an observer), which doesn't seem all that different from presenting in front of an observer.
Compare return (turn back), recede (fall back), remit (send back), revoke (call back), refund, repeal, repel, refer, relegate, remove, receive, etc.
The problem of moral obligation when all one has is the field of experienced objects? Wouldn't the way people deal with this issue IN PRACTICE be to act AS IF the empirical appearance of the other person was or somehow re-presented their noumenal being? That this is a philosophical error does not keep persons from "sacrificing themselves" which I speculate they deal with by imagining a world benefitting from their sacrifice in which they are no longer present even though they are observing it. If a person identifies with the transcendental experiencing event, wouldn't that spoil all the propaganda to sacrifice oneself for one's country in a war, i.e., to trade apodictic self-awareness for an empirical [fallable] hypothesis [object] in that awareness??
Like my mother used to say, What if everybody did that? Or, you ought not to use folks. She knew the categorical imperative without knowing it. But the example of the creative writing class is not a good analogy. Appearance is the appearance of something in real life. I am not writing a story. Transcendental simply means rational critic, not a world beyond or over and above. Anyway, maybe I didn't understand the analogy. The TAO assumes that in order to communicate there is an objective reality that we do not make up. How do we know there is a unity of consciousness? But in the TAO we do not synthesize different realities. Kant is describing this process and we understand it because we are not consciously synthesizing experience but actually.
Hell no, you need to look into the continuum hypothesis.
Kant specialist without knowing German! impossible
STPEC represent!