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Kant And the Transcendental Unity of Apperception

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Kant And the Transcendental Unity of Apperception

Utter Cunt
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Posted 06/08/05 - 01:09 AM:	#11
Apologies on misspelling the grundbegriff term. Tobias, admitedly, the boundary description does imply a one-sided boundary. Take the Mobius strip for example. It is just a long strip of paper that has one three dimensional twist that turns the two physical sides into a one-sidedness where one side continues into the other side without crossing an edge and contrariwise. Ergo, there's only one side of a boundary, and one that refers to the limits of its own definition. In the Kant Dictionary from the Blackwell Philosophical Dictionary series, the Thing-in-Itself entry reads as follows: ..Kant uses this term to denote a cluster of meanings which include those properly attributed to noumena and to transcendent ideas. The thing-in-itself shares with these the negative quality oflimiting the employment of the understanding and reason to what can be an object of intuition, and the positive quality of denoting a problematic space beyond these limits. Thus the thing-in-itself cannot be known since knowledge is limited to possible experience, but it can be thought, provided that it satisfies the condition of a possible thought which is not to be self-contradictory. In P Kant uses thing-in-themselves synonymously with noumena, namely in the applicaiton of pure concepts of the understanding 'beyond objects of experience' to 'things in themselves' (noumena) (P 29). Similarly in CPR he regards things in themselves as potential ideas of reason, and speaks of 'the unconditioned which reason, by necessity and by right demands in things in themselves.' "...Kant moves from the premise that 'nothing intuited in space is a thing in itself' to the conclusion that 'the thing in itself is not known, and cannot be known, through these representations [of our sensibility]; and in experience no question is ever asked in regard to it' (CPR A30/B 45). Yet Kant does not follow his own self-limiting ordinance here, since he assumes that there must be a correlate which can be thought, even if not known. On critical principles he can properly say no more than the thing in itself may be a correlate of sensibility. That he does not do so arises from his resistance to the 'absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears' (CPR B xxvi). " page 393
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Morrandir
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Posted 06/08/05 - 03:26 AM:	#12
Utter Cunt wrote: My two philosophical cents: once the concept of the thing in itself is read in a metaphysical fashion as opposed to an epistemological one (limit or boundary), it will invariably generate ontological brainfarts like those of the German Idealists. By the way, a certain Kenneth R. Westphal has published a book that tries to prove that methaphysical reading of Kant is both sensible and what Kant meant. Against the epistemological reading made popular by Henry Allison. I made an essay about his idea of noumenal causation in the metaphysical sense. It can be found in my homepage. I was instructed on this point by an astute kantian scholar when I let my attempt at criticizing the substance ontology of philosophers get the best of me. One must always remember, nonetheless, that the field is not united. Trusting someone because he knows Kant is not very productive, because many people "know" Kant, yet postulate very different things. But that said, I defend the epistemological reading of Kant - but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't give the chance for people like Westphal to prove me wrong. For Kant the grundbegriff is a limit of the 'sensible-faculty-of-knowledge' (Anschauungen). I suspect the english translators use the word "sensibility" for Anschauungen, which may lead to ambiguity or worse, misreadings that generate confusion or false representations. In fact, in English Anschaaung is translated as "intuition". That which is translated as sensibility is Sinnlichkeit. In the critical part of Kant's philosophy he was trying to do antimetaphysics. Not exactly. Anti-Wolffian-Metaphysics. Kant is trying to set a foundation for doing metaphysics and in that attacking Wolffian (or, basically, the whole of former metaphysics) way of doing metaphysics without foundations. That means it is a mistake to posit the thing-in-itself as a transcendental object that is fundamentally 'inaccessible' for all time. Instead of an "object" it is a border or a limit, for according to transcendental idealism, there is no such "object" independent of the Anschauungen, the sensible-faculty-of-knowledge, not even in the most vague or obliquely indirect sense. I don't think this is correct. Kant does state quite clearly that the thing in itself is beyond sensibility. The transcendental object is a rather confused concept - Kant used it in the A-version, but not in the B-version. Making the thing itself the border instead of a transcendent thing is to make Kant a Hegelian. That might not be such a bad thing, of course, but it is not what Kant himself thought. To even entertain the possibility of rectification is to seriously misunderstand transcendental idealism and gag on copious amount of philosophical straw. Not necessarily. Westphal's arguments aren't all that bad. Another way to look at it is kant's claim that the conditions of the sensible-faculty-of-understanding are necessary. Once they are mistaken as contingent, then the possibility of rectification follows. What is "sensible-faculty-of-understanding"? Understanding (Verstand) is a faculty of cognition (Erkenntnis) as is sensiblity (Sinnlichkeit) and reason (Vernunft). Tobi: I have not forgotten you. Just in too much of a hurry to take on a post that long. I will, one day, I promise ~M~
Philosophy is disciplined bewilderment. A mathematician is a person who thinks that if there are supposed to be three people in a room, but five come out, then two more must enter the room in order for it to be empty. http://www.beyondappearances.com

Maurice
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Posted 06/09/05 - 07:50 PM:	#13
I wonder if the contributors to this thread can write with less jargon. I don't want to sound disrespectful, but does everyone know what everyone else is talking about?

Utter Cunt
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Posted 06/09/05 - 09:28 PM:	#14
Morrandir, thank you for your response. I am sure my colleague will claim i have misrepresented him. As for Westphal, are you talking about this? Maurice, I think I can grasp the meaning behind the posts on this thread, jargon-riddled or not. Just because you might not, doesn't mean nobody else can. If you actually have a specific question about certain jargon, please feel free to ask, and i'm sure someone will be more than happy to explain. You will just have to accept the fact that to talk philosophy you must learn the vocabulary first, which means the exact definition of the terminology. Since the common sense words are themselves ambiguous, that entails philosophical jargon. Not that you have no choice but to speak in jargonese, but that you must be able to explain what the philosopher said, what the terminology means, precisely, when using "common sense" words.
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Morrandir
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Posted 06/10/05 - 01:19 AM:	#15
Utter Cunt wrote: Morrandir, thank you for your response. I am sure my colleague will claim i have misrepresented him. As for Westphal, are you talking about this? Well, yes, but the actual book is a couple of hundreds of pages. That is a synopsis of sorts, but yes, that is it. The actual book can be found at least at Amazon.com Maurice, Yes, we do understand, and your complaints are comparable to someone going to a mathematics forum to rant about the use of "strange symbols". If we were to write without the professional terminology, the posts would be thrice as long and not only would you not understand it anyway, we would not then either! I agree with what Utter Cunt said, and must add that I find it very odd that a person would join a forum and make his first post a complaint about not understanding what other people are saying. Needless to say, we are not doing this for you. ~M~
Philosophy is disciplined bewilderment. A mathematician is a person who thinks that if there are supposed to be three people in a room, but five come out, then two more must enter the room in order for it to be empty. http://www.beyondappearances.com

Maurice
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Posted 06/12/05 - 12:35 AM:	#16
Utter Cunt thanks! Morrandir I can tell you have been offended. and I do not mean to offend you. so please forgive my ignorance. The reason I suggested people are not understanding one another is because I do not see alot of heated discussions. well, maybe you were entirely right. I have philosophy and just read the intro to Crique of pure reason. Could you be my guide? could you give me an example of "Transcendental Unity of Apperception"? and what do the categories of Kant mean? Your help, and indeed anyone else's would be greatly appreciated.

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Posted 06/12/05 - 04:59 PM:	#17
Maurice, I think you're looking for the first post of this thread. Morrandir does explain all of the jargon in that post. If you're looking for a philosophical dictionary, you can try this one.
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Morrandir
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Posted 06/14/05 - 12:12 AM:	#18
Sorry for being more or less away for so long. I will now sit down to respond to all that is left to respond to. That is a lot, though, so let's see if I pass out. select wrote: I haven't had the balls to study Kant yet (or Hegel, for that matter) but I think Morrandir's initial post was exceptionally clear and to the point and it feels to me like secondary literature to reading Kant himself. Thank you . I think that underneath all that jargon Kant has very plausible and clear ideas. One might want to try Henry Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism. It is written so that it demands a lot of his reader, but not only do I think it is well worth the effort (and he is not vague, just indepth), I also think that you have what it takes. Doesn't the transcendental, then, violate the law of the excluded middle? Transcendentality is about the necessary conditions of our cognition. Therefore it is epistemological. That makes the logic it adheres to intensional, which has no law of excluded middle. This is the technical explanation, the understandable one is this: A: x knows that y B: x knows that ~y These are in contradiction with each other, but you see that there is a third option: C: x knows neither that y nor ~y. When we speak of knowledge, we have the third option (ruled out by the law of excluded middle), that is: we do not know. So therefore it can be said that nothing that has to do with what we know adheres to this law. Even if we take a metaphysical stance, it does not violate it. Something can be on a border. That is because the law of excluded middle only applies to complementary things, that is, to things that indeed exclude each other. Being on the other side of the fence is not complemented by being on the other side of the fence, because someone can be ON the fence. Another example: x > y is not complemented by x < y (that is, x < y is not the negation of x > y), but by x < y or x = y. The x = y part is the "being on the fence part". The situation in what Kant is looking at is divided in this way into three, and therefore is not by itself a subject of the law of excluded middle. Let me put it this way: if the transcendent is that which surpasses the limit of our cognitive capacities (IOW, we can't know or imagine anything transcendent) and the immanent is that which we can know or imagine, then can we know or imagine the transcendental which you say is on the fence? It seems like, being on the fence, that it must be both within and beyond our cognitive abilities which seems to be serious problem. The transcendental is what lies as the border, as is clear. By noting that I cannot imagine something perceptual that is neither in space nor time, I can say that whatever I perceive is either in space or time or both. This determines three things: 1. The immanent is that which is possible to exist in space and time. 2. The transcendent are those objects that do not appear in space nor in time. 3. That which divides these two sides is space and time. Does this answer to your question? Again, as Westphal put it: Kant is identifying some of our key cognitive capacities by identifying some or our key cognitive incapacities. The transcendentality is a fence is a bad analogy when taken too far (that is the problem of Kant: all analogies are bad when taken too far, such as that the cognitive necessary conditions are like pink sunglasses that show everything as pink, regardless of what colour it is at first). The fence is not an object here, it is a theoretical limit. We cannot, indeed, cognize such objects as space and time, because they are not objects. They are sort of concepts that we identify as those that divide the nonsensible from the sensible. We know them only through identifying what we cannot know and separating those from what we can know. Indeed, the time and space belong ultimately to the transcendental subject, of which we can know nothing of content - only how it affects. Okay, I'm going to say this just to make sure my understanding coheres with yours. This sounds to me a lot like when Nietzsche claims that properties are anthropomorphic. Actually, I think that when one gets a grip onto Kant's ideas, one notes that it is "a lot like" pretty much what every philosopher has to say. Therein lies the strength of Kant: after Kant, philosophy has simply not been the same. That is not to put down your analogy (I think identifying Kant in other philosophers since Kant is very useful - it sometimes make you put equations between such distinct philosophers as Wittgenstein and Heidegger through identifying similar basises), but just to note that it is not uncommon to see such analogies. That is, for example, when we say that "Stone is hard" in language we are trying to attribute hardness to the stone. But hardness is really a description of the object from our senses. If our hands were somehow made of a material several times harder, we could say "Stone is soft" and the proposition would still be true. And then there's the question of what "Bricks are red" means when you are color blind, or what anything means when you are a wasp or an eel. It's a tricky problem, but would I be correct in saying that Kant would say that we can't solve it because we are not a wasp or an eel? This is true to some extent, but Kant's idea is more fundamental. It is not about subjectivity in the sense hardness is. For example, it is impossible to think what would make us say that the stone is not in space, even though we can imagine how it can be soft like a pillow. What you are picturing is something many can agree to without agreeing to what Kant is saying. Therefore, it is correct, but does not in a sense capture Kant's idea in its fullest. But yes, we cannot solve what it is like to be a wasp or an eel. That, again, is not something that necessitates Kant's system, however. Moreover, we can still say what a red brick is like even though we are colour blind by identifying the wavelengths of light (but we cannot say what it is like to experience redness, of course), but we cannot do that to the nonspatial brick. ~M~
Philosophy is disciplined bewilderment. A mathematician is a person who thinks that if there are supposed to be three people in a room, but five come out, then two more must enter the room in order for it to be empty. http://www.beyondappearances.com

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Posted 06/14/05 - 01:15 AM:	#19
Oh dear. This will take a while.. Tobias wrote: I will do that by pointing towards problems in Kant arising out of in Morrandir's explication. Lets begin with the beginning of experience in Kan: intuition. Good. I find the arguments against Kant as given by Hegel exceptionally interesting. Kant deduces the presence of intuitions through logic, Morrandir is right. So that should take care of the counter argument that we experience something non experiential. I don't think it does though. But according to Kant, there is a difference between thinking and knowing Kant here created some category of things unexperiencable, but still having some effect. It is debatable whether we even should "experience experiences", because we already experience them. That is, if intuitions are parts of experiences, why should we experience them as such, when they are necessary conditions of experience? I wonder if I could explicate this in some intelligible manner. Now, if Kant is identifying (through logic) what must be for an experience to occur. First we must have the material (basically that which is the objective part of the experience - that of which the experience is about), and second we must have the subject that experiences, the form as Kant speaks of it. Now Kant is using logic to get these, not experience (although he certainly has experience of which these parts are abstracted), so there is no contradiction here as such. What you are asking for of Kant is that he should experience that-which-constitutes-the-matter-of-experience. But according to Kant this is impossible. But what follows? As well it could follow that you ask for something that is impossible to fulfil. That you ask for something that has nothing to do with Kant. Is this so? Let's consider the steps what Kant makes: 1. We have experience. 2. Experience is of something (object) and for someone (subject). 3. The necessary conditions of having experience is that it is of something and for someone, i.e. it has an object and a subject. From this it follows that there is something that is the object and something that is the subject. It would take us too far to consider the nature of these more, but we know that the intuitions are the objects (appearances). I do not, honestly, think that there is anything contradictory in this, because for Kant all experience is synthesis, and you are asking for experience of the parts of the synthesis that constitutes the experience itself. In a sense, I could answer: you do experience the intuition - but never by itself, because it is you that experiences it. Just like you always experience objects such as rocks in space - it is not so that you do not experience the rock, but it is true that you cannot experience the rock as independent of the space it takes. And asking for such an experience has nothing to do with Kant. But than he should tell us what that effect is and what the difference is of that effect and experience. Intuition implies something is intuited, hence experienced as intuition. Kant though remains silent and tells us we can not know anything of such what 'experiences?' what else can I call them. Kant tells us that there are things, an object, that cannot itself be grasped as an object. But by saying thishe already grasped this as an object. What Kant I think mistreats is this sense of immediate awareness. He posits this, it is a logical category which he reasons into existence but experiencing its existence lies beyond us. Kant ontologises the products of reflection, something wich he on his own terms is not allowed to do. Hegel also uses immediate awareness, but here he remains cosnscious of the fact that this is only a state comprehendable by thought, but not in this world. Kant forgets that. I think this account, as sharp-sightes as it is, ignores Kant's transcendental method of reflection. Kant does have experience of these objects - all our experience is of those objects. He is analysing the experience, not producing it. You cannot grasp an object as a pure object, because then it would not be you that would grasp it. Can the experience it self be seperated from the object of experience? No, and Kant is not purporting to do that either. Consider a vase. You cannot have a vase without the space in the vase (void of objects or not). But you can consider the borders of the vase, the form of it, and you can consider those things within the vase. The borders of the vase are independent of what objects are in the vase, but the objects that are in the vase are not independent of the borders of the vase. The vase is dependent only there being something in the vase (at least the space), but not specifically on what that something is. When in the transcendental level, Kant is not assuming that he is speaking of experience as totally independent of any objects of experience. Instead, and in fact, he is clearly saying that a necessary condition for there being experience is that there are objects of experience. Exactly what you argue that Kant does not take into account! He is indeed abstracting experience from the objects of experience, trying to identify what is the form of experience through trying to identify in what form the experiences cannot occur. The separation is not without its connections, and is not intended as such. It seems to me to be the same thing. we experience an object, we don't experience empty experience. What you fail to take into account here is that there is still a difference between two types of considerations of this object: we can at least consider it as an object, or we can consider it as appearing in a certain way. The former is the empirical level of consideration, the latter the transcendental. Kant is not speaking of an empty experience, but of an experience in general, more or less. What is common to all these experiences - and not only that, but what must be common for all experiences. This ties in with Hegels objection that Kant's deduction is too formal. It detaches things which cannot be detached. Here the object of experience from experience. I agree that it is too formal. But not in the way you here explain. I don't think Kant makes any error here (unless we count the fact that he is so horribly vague on what he is trying to do that it is nigh impossible to see that he is actually not doing the error he seems to ). But I do agree that his deduction is too formal. That is because it purports to be too formal. However, this applies to the actual way the deduction is made. Two important things follow: 1. Just because Kant can't prove his Categories with Deduction, it does not mean that it cannot be done. 2. Kant tries to do that also through other, more contentful ways: he himself seems to see the fact that the Deduction doesn't work as such - transcendental idealism is needed (note that the Deduction is not idealistic per se). This seems problematic. Why is my computer just an appearance? What else is it besides a computer? What do you mean? Surely it is, for example, a machine. It is also a group of particles. A concentration of energy. A process. But this is way beside the point. What I mean is that it always appears as something. Not as it is in itself - in fact, Kant's system does not seem to exclude that it appears exactly as it is, but simply that we could not know either way, becase we cannot distinguish between the computer appearing as a computer or as it is. The computer seems to me to be a computer in itself too. Only if you mean something totally different than what Kant means. What value has saying 'well it is only an apearance it could be something else' if we don2t have any access to that something else? I think you are too keen on my word "just". It should not be that, because it simply is an appearance, not just an appearance. There is nothing wrong in being an appearance. Moreover, I am not saying what you quote: it cannot be anything else for us. It is always important to understand that the thing in itself is necessarily something that we cannot know, and what we know is necessarily an appearance. Those are analytic truths, because they are definitions. You are barking up the wrong tree here, because you are changing the definitions as you go. What you should instead be doing is consider whether the things these concepts denote actually exist or not. You cannot debate against "x is such that y", but you can argue that such x does not exist for which y. If we cannot know it is something else, how can it be somethimng else? Kant in effect creates a different world behind this one, but it leads to an infinite regress. No, he does not. First: at least I am here advocating the view that Kant's transcendental idealism is an epistemological stance - it has nothing to do with "creating worlds". Moreover, there is no infinite regress in it even if it was metaphysical - just a discontinuity that he cannot seem to overcome. If trhis is only an appearance, why is not the noumenon only an appearance to? The noumenon is not something. The object of noumenon, the referent of this concept is totally unintelligible. If I say "there are no 'square circles'", I am not saying something unintilligible. I am merely saying: there is nothing that the square circle refers to. I am not speaking of an object 'square circle' and then giving it a property of non-existence. The noumenon is a name for that which does not appear - so it cannot appear. It is a mere analytic truth dependent on how 'noumenon' is defined. Kant himself divides between positive and negative noumenon. The latter is the concept of noumenon, basically. The former is the object of such a concept, and Kant himself says that it is totally unintelligible. He is saying nothing else than that 'square circle' has no referent so its referent as a referent is unintelligible. In fact, I think 'square circle' IS a noumenon - that is, a thing that can only be thought, not experienced. (And thinking does not mean conceiving, that cannot be done, but thinking in that we can give it properties (or predicates, whatever )). What guarantees that this noumenon world is the real one? We have no guarantee, we have no access. Why than not just stick with what we have? If the noumenon odesn't explain the sensible world, what use is it? It does explain the sensible world. It is the objects considered as objects. Just like the transcendental subject is the subject considered as a subject. I do not understand your criticism here. Kant wouldn't speak of "The real world" or some such shit. It is latter misunderstandings of Kant that make us consider Kant as saying that. I am sure Kant would say that the world of appearances is more real to us than the world of things in themselves. Even if it doesn't lead to an infinite regress, it explains nothing. Sure it does. It explains what it is that we experience. The connection between objective and subjective is severed, how can there be cognition possible at all? A good question, Tobi. As you identify this, I too agree that this is the biggest problem of Kant (and apparently these sort of problems are the reason why Heidegger considers Kant to be too attached to the former philosophy of his predecessors). I am quite certain that Kant himself does not really answer to this problem, but that does not mean that it cannot be answered in the Kantian framework. Let me tug this question aside for a while. I will just note that Kant does start from the case in which the subject and the object are interconnected, together. His transcendental subject and object are just logical consequences of what he considers important. The subject and object are not totally severed, but can be thought as such. (Just like if we assume that aRb - a in relation R to b - is the fundamental building block of the world, we can think of a, R and b detached from each other, even though they can never be detached). But in this another problem arises: if the transcendental subject and object can only be thought, what determines that they do indeed exist? This takes Kantian philosophy on another level, and I must concentrate on it more fully than I do now. Nonetheless, the question is great and to the point. I am too hungry now. I will return to the rest of the post later * * * Okay, back to the business Is not also the division subject and object a matter of experience? In fact, I think the division is one of his Categories. It is a way for man to consider things, yes. Can it not be that the transcendental unity, the absolute itself creates these oppositions within itself? Kant presupposes the subject object dychotomy but never proves its necessity. Yes, the argument that the world is consisting of relations is forceful against Kant. Kant is still attached to the dichotomy, and does not seem to think that perhaps relations is all there is - that is, what if the unity of subject and object is indeed fundamental? This is analogical to my aRb: we can most definately think that a, R and b are individual things, but are they? This is something I would return to later. I must hide Kant in the closet first so that he doesn't see me going against him publicly Here Hegel inverts Kant's transcendental subject and makes it the source of the subject object distinction itself. Credit where credit is due: Fichte did this. I don't feel that I have much to add to the rest of your post. Being totally ignorant of Hegel, and all. ~M~ Edited by Morrandir on 06/14/05 - 02:05 AM
Philosophy is disciplined bewilderment. A mathematician is a person who thinks that if there are supposed to be three people in a room, but five come out, then two more must enter the room in order for it to be empty. http://www.beyondappearances.com

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Posted 06/14/05 - 09:45 AM:	#20
select wrote: Doesn't the transcendental, then, violate the law of the excluded middle? Let me put it this way: if the transcendent is that which surpasses the limit of our cognitive capacities (IOW, we can't know or imagine anything transcendent) and the immanent is that which we can know or imagine, then can we know or imagine the transcendental which you say is on the fence? It seems like, being on the fence, that it must be both within and beyond our cognitive abilities which seems to be serious problem. One topic very related to this is Kant's discussions of Antinomies of Reason. Antinomies are, more or less, simply paradoxes. They arise, basically, in epistemologically undecideable propositions (and hence, technically belong strictly to the realm of linguistics, philosophy of language, etc.). Propositions which make truth-claims, but which do not have enough concrete evidence to strictly decide them one way or the other, often (but not always) lead to Antinomies of Reason, in which two polar opposite conclusions may be (ostensibly validly, or at least permissibly) drawn. For Kant, the question of Free Will vs. Determinism, for example, is just such an Antinomy. Later on, Popper would argue for the Principle of Falsifiability, which, according to friesian.com, is philosophically indebted to Kant's theory of Antinomies & the heightened awareness of the fact that only certain propositions or types of propositions can be assessed for their literal truth-value; other propositions which are more antinomous in character will, yes indeed, appear to violate the Law of Non-Contradiction & the Excluded Middle. Basically, such propositions are non-falsifiable & technically non-decideable. Anyway, I believe the Antinomies arise primarily as a result of the transcendentality of much knowledge. [E=mc^2] is showing how the amount of matter produced is equal to the amount of energy produced, it doesn't claim that matter and energy are the same thing, nor does it claim that a thing is both matter and energy at the same time. However, if I recall correctly, there is other physics that tries to demonstrate this. I remember in AP Chemistry class how we were given example problems on how to calculate the wave-frequency of a baseball to show how the equation worked as well on tangible objects as on sub-atomic particles. But you have a lot more convincing to do before I'll be willing to admit that "being" is "becoming". In my ontology, they aren't compatible. No, technically, "ontologically," matter & energy are the same. As you said, the baseball in your AP Chemistry class has a certain wave-function associated with it, the same way an electron has a wave-function associated with it. (Please look back at my statements on the DeBroglie equation. All matter has wave-functions associated with. The more massive a particle or collection of particles is, the less relative "wave-ness" the object has. But all material objects nonetheless have wave-ness. And, by the same token, all energy waves exhibit some degree, albeit extremely tiny, of "particle-ness" to them. That's one main reason why electrons & photons behave both as particles (e.g. Einstein's photoelectric effect) and as waves when diffracted through tiny-enough slits. Theoretically, baseballs & other massive objects could also be diffracted through slits, too -- but because massive objects are so incredibly energetic, the slits would have to be extremely tiny, perhaps smaller than the Planck Length if I remember correctly, thus, pragmatically impossible to diffract.) (Remember, to diffract a wave, the slit must be narrower than the wave's length. Visible light waves have wavelengths which are actually visibly large. Have you ever refracted laser light through a slit? The slit is wide enough to see through. But for much more energetic waves, the wavelengths get extremely tiny. The more energetic a wave is, the tinier the slit must be in order to diffract the wave. X-rays are extremely energetic, orders of magnitude smaller wavelengths than visible light; this is why X-ray diffraction is an extremely technical, difficult process to achieve. Matter, particles of matter, are even far more energetic than cosmic rays or X-rays. The [u]wavelengths[/i] of matter particles are so tiny that diffraction of matter requires extremely small slits -- so tiny as to be impracticable. But, in theory, the entire universe of matter could be diffracted. This definitely means that matter is energy. Besides, if I recall, particles of matter have already been diffracted -- protons, perhaps single tiny molecules. This has already been actually achieved in labs & particle colliders. This proves, scientifically, that matter & energy are the same.) (Then again, what exactly do you mean by "the same, at the same time?" Aren't you aware of the seeming paradoxes that currently vex physicists as to why, if you observe light in one way, it's "wave-like," but if you observe it differently, it's "particulate?") But both you & Morrandir have a very valid point: I stated my position too strongly, in seeming to try to assert that "there is only becoming, no being." That is not exactly what I meant. If anything, I feel guilty of roaming out epistemic territory & staking out ontic certainty, a Kantian no-no. I actually did intend to merely draw out the point that energy & matter, being & becoming, process & state, are the same -- with neither one "actually" (or, better, epistemologically) superior or more fundamental to the other. The way I understand Morrandir's post, I think what you are doing is flawed. I think you're going back to Cartesian subjectivism when you try to treat the subject as an object. I think Kant is trying to say that the transcendental subject isn't an object and any attempt to treat it as an object would mean trying to speak of something that we have no right to speak of. The same problem, incidentally, I think exists with the thing-in-itself if it is at the same time claimed that the thing-in-itself is transcendent. I see your point, and it seems very similar to Morrandir's response. You're probably right, in that I did, in the previous post, probably state the argument too positively, too "ontologically" instead of epistemically, and that made it seem as if I was trying to reduce subject (or object) into the other. Edited by NoSoul on 06/14/05 - 09:58 AM
Firmly tie the mind, resembling a mad elephant, to the strong pillar of its perceptual content, with the rope of contemplative inspection, and gradually tame it with the hook of discrimination. -- Buddhist Handbook, Salamander Press To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and hallowed, all experiences profitable, all days holy, all men divine. - Nietzsche/Emerson

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