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Analytic-synthetic vs priori/ posteriori

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Analytic-synthetic vs priori/ posteriori

ragus
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Posted 07/26/09 - 05:13 AM:	#91
keda wrote All properties of physical objects take the form of numbers, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Numbers and quantity go together. Where does quality fit in?
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

Death Monkey
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Posted 07/26/09 - 05:30 AM:	#92
keda, So where do numbers enter the picture? In my above scenario, do I have to establish that something exists that we can call a "number" in order for it to be possible for the person to gain knowledge of the world through his senses? Yes, and in any case. All properties of physical objects take the form of numbers, both quantitatively and qualitatively. I don't follow you. In what sense are you claiming that properties take the form of numbers? I don't have any idea what that is supposed to mean? What do all senses have in common? The real measure of spatiotemporal distribution of forces. How do you mean? We don't even sense things like forces. So how can that be something that our senses all have in common? And if you are correct, then you could only know that through investigation and comparison of those senses, which would make the knowledge a posteriori. Attractive forces cannot be directly measured but are infered, as they cannot directly affect the senses, but through repulsive forces and the measure of extent, which is quantitative measure, namely size and duration. The qualitative measure is an intensive magnitude (e.g. loudness, hardness or greenness), which is the estimation of the repulsive force affecting the subject's internal state i.e. its intensity. I cannot make any sense out of this. What do you mean by "force" here? I don't understand what you are trying to say. I don't understand what you mean by "intellectual intuition". This was explained in post #70 I know. It didn't make any sense to me then, either. I don't see how you can justify that claim. Certainly our senses seem to function in terms of space and time, but I cannot see how this could be said to be necessary. I can certainly imagine a being whose senses work completely differently than ours, existing in a world in which what we call "space" and "time" have no relevance to anything. It is not possible to imagine anything as not existing in space and time. How do you figure? The word image itself already implies some sort of spatial projection. I didn't use the word "image", I used the word "imagine". If you prefer, use the term "conceive of" instead (I suppose then you will try to rope me into Kant's notion of "concept"?). The point is, that I can hypothesize such a scenario, and cannot see any reason why such a scenario would be logically impossible. Space is a necessity to distinguish objects from ourselves as well as objects from one another, and Time is a necessity for any sensation as it implies the alteration of the subject's internal state, which implies a temporals sequence. Sure, for the way our senses work. But again, the only reason you know this is because of investigation of your own memories of sensory information. I don't see any way to justify the assertion that this is the only way it could work. jtoma, I can certainly imagine a being whose senses work completely differently than ours, existing in a world in which what we call "space" and "time" have no relevance to anything. Really? You must have formidable intellectual intuition; jp. Tell me what happens in this being's world. Tell me what the being perceives in this world. I didn't say I could do that. As I mentioned to Keda, all I mean is that I can hypothesize about such a scenario, and cannot see any reason why this hypothesis leads to a logical contradiction. That means, by extension, that there is no way that I can reasonably conclude that various mathematical properties of our world must obtain in order for it to be possible for a being to be able make use of sensory experience. Lack of imagination does not constitute proof that something is impossible. I don't claim to know exactly what criteria are and are not necessary for a world to be one in which conscious beings are capable of drawing inferences about the world from their senses. That's the whole point. I don't know, and therefore cannot claim a priori knowledge about this world on the basis of such knowledge. DM
Pseudoscience makes Baby Jesus cry.

keda
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Posted 07/26/09 - 05:48 AM:	#93
ragus wrote: keda wrote Numbers and quantity go together. Where does quality fit in? The only difference between quality and quantity is that the part has to be represented in the whole regarding quantity, but not quality. This is nothing specified in number. 180 Proof wrote: You're quite right. I meant "Transcendental Aesthetic" and have corrected that post. Thanks. I'm now fairly confident that apples are being compared to apples again. The Transcendental Aesthetic makes no empirical implications either.
All about making money Free Europe Now How to fix your country In thought, men distance themselves from nature in order thus imaginatively to present it to themselves--but only in order to determine how it is to be dominated - Adorno and Horkheimer

ragus
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Posted 07/26/09 - 06:28 AM:	#94
keda wrote The only difference between quality and quantity is that the part has to be represented in the whole regarding quantity, but not quality. This is nothing specified in number. Can you give me some examples of qualities of objects so that I can use them like you do?
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

keda
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Posted 07/26/09 - 07:13 AM:	#95
Death Monkey wrote: How do you mean? We don't even sense things like forces. So how can that be something that our senses all have in common? All sensation occurs through forces, especially repulsive forces. Without repulsive forces, matter would pass straight through our senses without making any impact, consequently we would never know this happened. A sense that isn't able to sense anything is useless, or not even a sense. I cannot make any sense out of this. What do you mean by "force" here? I don't understand what you are trying to say. Open up any physics text book. I know. It didn't make any sense to me then, either. Are there any specific words you don't understand? If not, then I don't know how I could even reformulate it. I didn't use the word "image", I used the word "imagine". If you prefer, use the term "conceive of" instead (I suppose then you will try to rope me into Kant's notion of "concept"?) Concieving and imaging are two different things, although I see why you may not see much of a difference, considering how unfamiliar you are with how cognition works. In order to concieve something we only require the absence of a contradiction in the meaning of the concept. This would be the case if the notion of space and time are intrinsically tied to the notion of sense, which I have suggested that they are. A) because we must be able to have different sequential internal states, as is implied in the notion of sensation and B) because we must be able to distinguish sensations, which are of external events as opposed to feelings which are of internal events. Without the former condition our senses cannot be affected, and without thet latter condition our sensation cannot be distinguished from illusion, which disables cognition. The former condition implies time, the latter space.
All about making money Free Europe Now How to fix your country In thought, men distance themselves from nature in order thus imaginatively to present it to themselves--but only in order to determine how it is to be dominated - Adorno and Horkheimer

keda
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Posted 07/26/09 - 07:20 AM:	#96
ragus wrote: keda wrote Can you give me some examples of qualities of objects so that I can use them like you do? I gave some examples before, like greenness and hardness. These are intensive magnitudes, in that we can say how green an object is or how hard it is with a number.
All about making money Free Europe Now How to fix your country In thought, men distance themselves from nature in order thus imaginatively to present it to themselves--but only in order to determine how it is to be dominated - Adorno and Horkheimer

Death Monkey
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Posted 07/26/09 - 07:45 AM:	#97
keda, How do you mean? We don't even sense things like forces. So how can that be something that our senses all have in common? All sensation occurs through forces, especially repulsive forces. Without repulsive forces, matter would pass straight through our senses without making any impact, consequently we would never know this happened. This is how our senses work, but again, we only know this through analysis of our sensory input. It is a posteriori knowledge. There is no way for us to determine any of this in an a priori way. I cannot make any sense out of this. What do you mean by "force" here? I don't understand what you are trying to say. Open up any physics text book. I am a physicist. What you wrote did not make any sense given the definitions of the terms used that I am familiar with. If it makes sense to you, then you have not successfully communicated what you meant. I know. It didn't make any sense to me then, either. Are there any specific words you don't understand? If not, then I don't know how I could even reformulate it. I understand what all the words mean. What I don't understand is what you are trying to convey with them. I didn't use the word "image", I used the word "imagine". If you prefer, use the term "conceive of" instead (I suppose then you will try to rope me into Kant's notion of "concept"?) Concieving and imaging are two different things, although I see why you may not see much of a difference, considering how unfamiliar you are with how cognition works. This is not an issue of understanding cognition. It is an issue of semantics. I have clarified what I meant, in spite of the fact that it was quite clear from the context, and that your objection was nothing more than avoiding the point. In order to concieve something we only require the absence of a contradiction in the meaning of the concept. This would be the case if the notion of space and time are intrinsically tied to the notion of sense, which I have suggested that they are. A) because we must be able to have different sequential internal states, as is implied in the notion of sensation and B) because we must be able to distinguish sensations, which are of external events as opposed to feelings which are of internal events. Without the former condition our senses cannot be affected, and without thet latter condition our sensation cannot be distinguished from illusion, which disables cognition. The former condition implies time, the latter space. Yes, our senses require all of those things to work the way they do. And again, we only know this because we have sensory experiences, and memories of those sensory experiences, to draw conclusions from. A being which never had any sensory experiences would not have any way to conclude the world can be described in terms of space and time. At best, it could conclude that events happen temporally from introspection of its own thoughts, but this would be a conclusion about its own mind, not about some world external to its mind. DM
Pseudoscience makes Baby Jesus cry.

keda
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Posted 07/26/09 - 08:48 AM:	#98
Death Monkey wrote: This is how our senses work, but again, we only know this through analysis of our sensory input. It is a posteriori knowledge. There is no way for us to determine any of this in an a priori way. Sure there is. Assume the opposite, and we derive an absurdity with regard to the notion of cognition through sense. I just demonstrated this without making a reference to any sense data. If there are no repulsive forces, we would have no sensations. I am a physicist. What you wrote did not make any sense given the definitions of the terms used that I am familiar with. If it makes sense to you, then you have not successfully communicated what you meant. If you are a physicist, you should know what a repulsive force is and why senses would be without input without such. Maybe it is one of the other terms that you don't grasp? I understand what all the words mean. What I don't understand is what you are trying to convey with them. It should be possible to decode if one knows the english grammar as well as the meaning of the individual words. If you notice any grammatical problems with what i said, I'd appreciate it if you could point it out because I cannot find such. Yes, our senses require all of those things to work the way they do. And again, we only know this because we have sensory experiences, and memories of those sensory experiences, to draw conclusions from. I thought we have gone through this already. You need sensory experience to learn how to reason, but once you've done that the reasoning itself is not a posteriori. For the same reason, once you've concieved of cognition through senses, something which you must have sensations to learn this about, you can easily conclude a priori synthetic truths about these on the principle that negating these would render cognition through them impossible.
All about making money Free Europe Now How to fix your country In thought, men distance themselves from nature in order thus imaginatively to present it to themselves--but only in order to determine how it is to be dominated - Adorno and Horkheimer

jtoma
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Posted 07/26/09 - 09:31 AM:	#99
180 proof wrote: jtoma wrote: You are right that Kant went too far with his results from the first antimony, but aren't you going to far with your results from non-euclidean geometry? This may be so only if non-Euclidean geometry (vis-a-vis General Relativity) is consistent with Kant's "idealization of space and time", which, as far I can tell, it is not. Thanks proof. Perhaps you could show the feebleminded what this has to do with analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori. Respectively, we take these as metaphysical and epistemological distinctions. And could you explain exactly what feature of the science of non-euclidean geometry is inconsistent, as far as you can tell, with Kant's conception of metaphysics or epistemology ? For example, though I know next to nothing about either kant or einstein, but i think the truth of non-euclidean geometry is compatible with the sense perception of a human occurring inside the context of space and time--though that context may need to be augmented by some type of union of those concepts in certain circumstances--according to the theory of course. Edited by jtoma on 07/27/09 - 01:11 AM

ragus
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Posted 07/26/09 - 09:49 AM:	#100
keda wrote I gave some examples before, like greenness and hardness. These are intensive magnitudes, in that we can say how green an object is or how hard it is with a number. So you use magnitudes (which are intensive) to talk about qualities . What do you mean by intensive?
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

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