Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:18:48 +0100
Subject: Re: Ge-lassen-heit


Rene, you wrote:

>Traditionally colour belongs to the secondary qualities, which are merely
>"subjective". Colour is an impression, Kant's terminus is "Empfindung",
>which is that in experience, that can only be received.

ok, yes, that's why i find reading Wittgenstein so refreshing and
enlighting at times, because he is constantly trying to warn us that
transcendental arguments are rife with linguistic pitfalls, which
subsequently blur all our ontological claims

>But Kant is after objective knowledge. The proposition "The rose is red"
>is, as such, a Wahrnehmungsurteil (perceptional judgment), whose object
>must be given a posteriori. But the 'is' in it TENDS to objectivity. When I
>say or think the proposition, I intend to say: the rose ITSELF is red, and
>not merely: I have an impression of something roselike and red.

bravo Rene, so your're realist too :-)

>Their connexion (synthesis) is an objective one. That doesn't mean,
>I can know this proposition a priori, but what I can know a priori and
>objectively, are those layered connexions, through which these sensations
>can become an object for me, and these connexions are the categories.

i think i understand this, but some things are still puzzling me, f.e.:
- why must i say that i know 'those layered connexions a priori and
objectively' ? -- i mean, and this is Wittgenstein's question, what is
the basic constructive argument that shows that this knowledge is
"a priori" and not "learned" ?

>Nothing can enter the realm of the selfconsciousness, except objectified
>by the categories, according to the AT. (same unity in all)

here the AT (incl. the categories) seem like some sort of brain
structure ? --- hmmm, how come i alway get the impression that
Kant is more interesting for neuro-psychology than for philosophy ?

>The old question, how a proposition with a S-P structure refers to reality,
>is solved by Kant: by tending subject and predicate to possible experience,
>(i.e. eventually to sensation), through which an object can become an
>object for me., as was required initially by the AT.

sorry, i don't see this solution yet

>But what about colour? Otoh it must appear in space, so it must have a
>quantity.
>Otoh, what can be said as to its quality, which is different for everybody?

but we don't know if it "is different for everybody" (or the same),
because language (-use) per se cannot solve this problem for us:
that's Wittgenstein's whole point !

>Kant: the red must have an intensity, otherwise it couldn't be an object
>for me.
>What can be known objectively of it, must be layable along a scale from zero
>to a maximum.

you mean: Kant = Pythagoras + Descartes ?

>(We seem as far as possible remote from the rose without a why.
>Leibniz: ratio est in natura, why something is rather than not.
>Kant: The only ratio in nature is the one by which it becomes a possible
>object.
>Critical, transcendental philosophy makes possible the possibilities, that
>are required for objective knowledge. There is something very strange herein,
>something that circles in itself. A whole of conditions, that condition
>each other.
>There is a line from the Critics, via the "Metaphysical foundations of
>natural
>sciences", to the Opus posthumum, where the scientific experiment  is exposed.
>Leibniz's monad is a unity of perception and will, appetite (perceptio and
>appetitus). It searches after ground)

i'm a bit lost here Rene, but can you tell some more on Kant's views
regarding the use of experiments in science ?

>Witgenstein does exactly the opposite thing. He concentrates on the
>unbridgeable
>difference of sign and world., like Magritte's "this is not a pipe". No,
>the picture of a
>pipe isn't a pipe itself. Objectivity has become so doubtful to him, that
>of a headache
>I can't even say, it's mine. It's the same in everybody, that have it. I
>think, Nietzsche
>does better: subject-object as necessary belief in order to stabilize life.

Nietzsche and Wittgenstein ? ;-) well, let's leave that couple for
another thread, it's getting complicated enough for me already,

viva vista,
jan




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