Immanuel Kant - Science topic

Okay so how Transcendental Object is defined as Concept of an Object = x where x maybe any property and thus it can represent any object of realm of appearances. This object posits rules for the synthesis of the manifold. But there is also this assertion of Transcendental Object and Transcendental Subject ( whose job is the synthesis) make each other possible. In essence these both are in mind , and them both need object external given which could affect the faculty of sensibility. If this external object is thought to be same as the transcendental object X then it'll be the object of sensibility positing rules and thus we can't blame Kant of Dissertation for implying that concepts are applicable to things in themselves a priori.

I am looking at kant's whole transcedental aesthetic like a film roll and film , where outer sense objects are in a film roll that like in a roll they have all the scenes of a movie simultaneously but we cant see the film at once so it must be intuited in time spontaneously .

We contend that in the Kritik A70-76 (B95-101) Kant attempted to give what in modern terms would be a formal definition of the syntax of his logic (i.e. an inductive definition of judgment).

The question we wish to ask is, given such an analysis of Kant's logic, is the said logic sufficiently expressive (with regards to multiple generality) to formulate Kant's own analogies of experience ?

The original version of the second analogy in A was: for everything that happens there is something which succeeds it, according to a rule. Alles, was geschiet (anhebt zu sein) setzt etwas voraus, worauf es nach einer Regel folgt.

for all x. (if Happens(x) then there exists y such that Follows_by_a_rule(x,y))

We think this question might interest researchers who are interested in how multiple generality might have been dealt with in ancient and medieval logic.

Based on the epistemology of causality and formal (Aristotelian) logic, Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) declared that the objective reality (the noumena) is an unknowable thing-in-itself; so, there is no point in trying to know it. The only thing humanity can do, Kant posited, is to develop logical categories through thought and use those as tools to deal and “understand” the “phenomena” that man perceives through his senses.

The break down of causality with the recognition of the quantum phenomena (the Evil Quanta) at the turn of the 20th century, made the physicist Albert Einstein to adopt Kant’s subjective idealism in theoretical physics. Einstein’s aim was to know the ultimate, final, absolute etc., truth of the world (a theory of everything or TOE) by knowing the “Mind of God” through ideal mathematics and ‘thought experiments’.

Einstein could not achieve his goal in his life-time. What we see now in modern theoretical physics and cosmology is endless academic publications, century-long scholastic debates in scientific and public forums. Taking the cue from Albert Einstein’s aim to know the absolute truth of the world or the “Mind of God” through mathematics, ‘thought experiments’, and Kantian subjective idealism; every Tom, Dick, Mary and Harry around the world are involved in devising brain-cooked logical/mathematical categories that promise to achieve Einstein’s aim by improving or improvising his theories of relativity. Sensational, fantastic and fiery claims are being made both in the published journals and in public discourse; but only the officially recognized ones get any serious consideration. State funding, the Vatican blessing and the Nobel Awards etc., are showered to encourage “proof” and "discovery" of anything involving Einstein’s theories of relativity and of its officially approved improvisations; even through many of these “proofs” and “discoveries: seems contrived or not credible.

Zeno of Elea, Einstein, Kant

I was wondering whether in the Stoic theory of lekta (or 'sayables') there are some distinguished lekta which were considered more 'primitive' or basic than other lekta. Like primitive predicate symbols in first-order logic used to define others predicates or the primitive concepts or ideas found in the western philosophical tradition from Descartes to Leibniz to Kant to Russell. They are 'categories' in the sense of Kant rather than Aristotle. The so-called Stoic 'categories' seem to correspond to our modern notion of 'type'.

Did the Stoics have a theory of definition or a theory of decomposition of lekta into primitive lekta beyond the basic grammar-inspired framework expounded in the work of Bobzien and others ?

When someone is asked for his/her moral responsibility about an action, it should be called 'moral blame' or not?

Donald Davidson began his famous article, Truth Rehabilitated, by lowering the expectations of those who regard the concept of truth as a too venerable concept:

"Before it could come to seem worthwhile to debunk truth, it was necessary to represent truth as something greater than it is, or to endow it with powers it does not have" (2005, p. 4).

Something similar happened in Kant's answer to the skeptic about pure reason. The author coordinated his defense to a lowering of the dogmatist's expectations. For him, part of the problem would be to expect acrobatic - or dialectical - metaphysical performances from reason.

In this little discussion that I would like to start, I would like to put the question inside out. The question today is whether too much was lost, if the loss is not too great, when we accept to level pure reason down, so that it doesn't feel too much pressure.

Even among the heirs of transcendental philosophy there is a feeling that certain canonizations of the conceptual apparatus used for knowing and judging are unnecessary mystifications of something far less venerable. This less venerable something has been named in several descriptions of cultural and anthropological formation, but we can summarize it for economic purposes as the presence of man as a problem unto himself.

The inevitable conclusion-which we see confirmed by the essay-is that this skepticism about rational practice is indeed compatible with transcendental philosophy. Kant could not avoid it. The question can be divided into a set of sub-problems: How much can you give the skeptic without taking it all?

... this demystification of immutable rationality, and its exchange for one linked to the historical and human problem, is an obstacle to a vision of strong rationality, which is above mere habit and bias?

The German and French traditions that emerged from the offshoot of Hegelianism led to the dismantling of the instruments of rationality typically associated with the stability of our political regimes. A post-Hegelian tradition that developed through Marx, the Frankfurt School, and later Foucault set out to change our sociological understanding to look less reverently at legal institutions and other great works of "logos" and to observe the microdramaturgies of power that underlie dominant narratives.This all led to frustration for a group of more traditional philosophers, both epistemologists and semanticists, who still saw logic as an independent and unconstructed (a-historical) form of expression of rationality. Even in American or Anglophone traditions this thought found support, as in Richard Rorty. Great thinkers like D.C. Stove attacked Hume, seeing him as perhaps the most dangerous among the founders of this reasoning. As you have noticed, this has led many, at the limit, to question the role of philosophical questions in general, and to raise the suspicion that what appears as "philosophy" at one time is just the superstructural surface of "Reason" legitimazing self-image, hiding a dramaturgy of more “humane”problems. Debate:

I have separated these brief sections from an article I am trying to write to assess the extent to which our plea for a strong conception of rationality is still possible in a perspective necessarily conditioned by the Kantian (postmetaphysical) conception of pure reason. I would be grateful if interested parties could set forth their own interpretation of this state of affairs and how they believe it is possible for reason to defend itself against skeptical attacks, either within a well-defined, unchanging conceptual zone of categories or outside of it, from a historical and changing perspective of rational parameters. I would also be grateful if you would point out to me the limits of the framework I am using for the discussion.

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) stated that we do not understand beauty by means of cognition, “but rather relate it by means of imagination (perhaps combined with understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Do you agree with that?

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Greetings of the Day!!!

We are planning a book in Springer. For this we need a foreign editor as requirement. Could you please help us in this regard?

Thanks and Best Regards Dr Rama Kant Baghel

Studies of identity and Otherness

Immanuel Kant is considered to be a deontological moral philosopher. According to him, a person becomes a moral being if he performs the action from good will in a sense of duty. In this realm, the agent must follow the moral law or the categorical imperative. There is no fixed moral law but the agent has to transform his subjective maxim into the objective or formal maxim. This maxim in the sense of duty obligates the person to perform that action. Kant advocates that this is universally and objectively applicable for all rational beings and this is how all rational beings become moral beings. To perform the action, the agent is only guided by reason. And reason only can motivate the person to take the moral decision.

In Kantian ethics, emotion cannot motivate a person to take the moral decision as Kant thinks that there can be a conflict between grounds of obligation, but there should not be any conflict regarding the role of obligation. When a person takes the moral decision, he should be guided by reason alone and in this way, he will have reverence for the universal moral law.

As a human being, we are a combination of reason and emotion. We cannot just exclude emotion completely and act morally only by reason. My concern is the role of emotion in moral decision making.

My question is :

How does Kant fit emotion in his moral framework?

Does he completely exclude emotion in his moral system? or Does he think that in taking moral decisions, emotion does not have any motivational power?

Kant believes that space and time are not empirical concepts derived from experience and that they make experience and our knowledge of objects possible. However, he believes that objects conform to our faculties and not the other way round. Therefore we provide the prior conditions to construct objects in the world but these objects can only be known as appearances and not as things in themselves. Is there any validation for these ideas by the science of cognitive neuroscience?

Just curious really, and also interested in the production of ideas. Einstein it is generally accepted stopped producing new ideas by middle-age, and Newton's achievements ended at the same point. (I welcome arguments against both these assertions). Aristotle, Plato and Euripides continued into old age producing interesting ideas.

Some, like Kant, grew senile.

Who did produce convincing, innovative arguments and what were they?

Kant advocated the idea of a priori knowledge. How is this different from Descartes's concept of the innate idea- apart from the fact that Descartes seems to rely on God for providing innate ideas?

Will be grateful for any help.

Hello everyone. As is well known, Heidegger's Kant and the problem of metaphysics provides a rather polemical presentation of Kant's thought, including a comparison between the three famous questions in the Critique of pure reason (What can I know?, What ought I to do? What may I hope?) and the addition of a fourth in the Logic (What is man?). Given the rather unorthodox and sometimes hasty approach taken by Heidegger, is there any other author that you may suggest that has analysed the specific problem of the relation between these two texts?

Thanks in advance

Claudio

How political should a University be in recent times? Do you believe that the University is (or can be) a neutral space without politics or do you believe that the University, as an institution of society, maybe even has to be political?

I think this question becomes even more crucial, when we think about different sources of funding for scientific research or specific interest groups, lobbying etc. Or in terms of certain Majors like Gender/Queer Studies, Cutlural Studies, Philosophy but also in sciences like physics or even mathematics.

We also can find this question about the University, about politics and the roles the various faculties can (und shall) play in the work of e.g. Immanuel Kant (Conflict of the Faculties). So maybe this seems to be an 'old' question, but it is still a current issue, too, since it affects our work (and self-concept) as scientists in my opinion.

In many ways, writing a novel, creating art, and scientific discovery seem to require different faculties, although clearly some attributes must be the same. In terms of intelligence (most IQ tests evaluate writers and artists lower than mathematicians and scientists), ability to integrate information, perception and application are they really actually comparable? Was Shakespeare the intellectual equal of Newton, Heidegger of Einstein, and Geothe of Kant? Were their cognitive capacities different in scale or application?

Enlightenment, the consciousness of knowing that reason is the right power of establishing fair relations within the human society, is considered to be the cause or basis of establishing a modern and civilized society of today. The root of the concept taught in texts and teaching materials, as a belief, is from European philosophers : Locke, Kant, Hume and Descartes. For instance the genesis of this modernity : "all men are created equal " put by Locke was actually coined with a more equalizer " intelligence" decades earlier by an Ethiopian philosopher named Zara Yacob "ዘረ ያቆብ " in his book of Hateta " ሓተታ " in Geez "ግእዝ" which literally means " analysis and enquiry" in Amharic. Zara Yacob wrote " All men are equal in the presence of God; and all are intelligent, since they are his creatures; he did not assign one people for life, another for death, one for mercy, another for judgment. Our reason teaches us that this sort of discrimination cannot exist " Zara Yacob said.

His argument describes his higher understanding of reason not only in describing relations among humans but the natural capabilities and innate intelligence of all human beings, men, women, poor or rich alike.

He also presents a critical question and answer on religion, and the contradictions of actions of followers of different religions and what religion is and what it should be. He wrote " Indeed each one says: ‘My faith is right, and those who believe in another faith believe in falsehood, and are the enemies of God.’ … As my own faith appears true to me, so does another one find his own faith true; but truth is one.

In Ethiopian tradition, there is a deep philosophical teaching and discourse called "ቅኔ " = " critical thinking" in Amharic or Geez and " ሰዋሰው "= " rhetoric ".

I will be very glad to read your esteemed participation and ideas whether the genesis of "reason" is universal among humans, or it is geographic dependent? What is the causes of such enlightenments ? Is it not a right thing and an " enlightenment " by itself to include in philosophical discourses and teaching texts, names of pioneers of such ideas so that the modern human society be "reasonable" to know the right things for the right thinking?

With kind regards.

Dejenie A. Lakew

https://aeon.co/essays/yacob-and-amo-africas-precursors-to-locke-hume-and-kant

My doctoral research is on Kant's view of dignity and its relation to biomedical research participations. part of what I will discuss would border on moral obligations and consents. If my contribution is needed for the project I will gladly contribute my ideas.

Do the two principles ever give conflicting advice? If so, which do you think is a better guide to our moral obligations?

I am Krishna Kant Gupta, doing PhD under Dr. R Krishna in Centre for Bioinformatics, Pondicherry University.

I am facing one problem regarding protein concentration. I have purified my protein of interest ( 50 kDa) and when i am running SDS PAGE, faint protein band is coming but when i am concentrating it using new Amicon centrifugal filters (3 kDa MWCO), then no band is coming. I made 20 ml to 1 ml. To my surprise no band is coming in SDS PAGE. How to troubleshoot this kind of problem?

Has there been a reading of Kant's transcendental aesthetic (particularly the trans. ideality of space) that makes use of our latest empirical findings on the matter? Anything from Visual Phototransduction to Relativity and everything in between.

While using empirical data to justify an argument from first principles seems incoherent, the debate screams for reconciliation.

More precisely, "what is the origin of the regularities in nature which are represented (or purported to be represented) in our various recognized or accepted laws and principles regarding nature and natural events?" (this is H.G. Callaway's formulation of the original question). Such a philosophical question should be of interest to all scientists. 

In classical philosophy, there are two ways of answering it:

a) Looking for an explanation outside nature. The concept of a transcendent God, the creator of nature and its order, explicitly appeared in Thomas Aquinae (the world comes from God and returns to God), Modern philosophers and scientists. It reappeared in the Contemporary epoch as a refusal of Darwinism, and/or related to some interpretations of Quantum Theory;

b) Looking for an explanation inside nature. Nature itself, being composed of both Form and Matter (Aristotle´s Hylomorphism) produces its order, in a process that has been currently called "self-organizing". In this view, God is not the creator of Nature, but - as in Aristotle´s concept of a First Mover - an ideal of perfection projected by natural beings.

It is clear that in spite of Aquinae´s affiliation with Aristotle, their philosophies are in opposite position in regard to the question about the origin of nature´s order. 

Spinoza tried to conciliate both approaches, by equating God and Nature. In this case, God is not conceived as a transcendent being who creates Nature from nothingness, but as a being who is somehow immanent to Nature.

Plato, before Aristotle, presented a combined solution, assuming both the autonomy of natural principles (Ideas) and a Demiurge who prompts the manifestation of the principles into the world of appearances.

There is a possible third alternative, advanced by Kant in his cognitive approach to philosophical issues: to assume that laws and principles of nature are 'a priori' forms that the human mind imposes to sensory "matter". However, this alternative is actually reducible to the others. Cognitive forms should be natural or created by God (both possibilities are compatible in Spinoza's approach). For instance, the Piagetian version of Kantism assumes that these forms are biological, deriving from processes of interaction with the physical and social environment - therefore, he was committed to the self-organizing view.

Any suggestions on the distinction between teleological and ethical conduct? The first dates back to Aristotle, the second to Kant. Is it plausible that the two converge?

There are several meanings and philosophical systems of the term idealism. The most common is that - according to Wikipedia - equates life to a dream even if this statement is not intended to reduce confusion. Idealism, in fact stands in radical contrast with respect to common sense, that would not let us realize to live in a world of fiction; paradoxically, then, just common sense would be the real "sleeper" for the illusion about the existence of a real world outside us.

In making of the Idea, that is, of thought, or the subject, the principle ‘prime’ from which the reality arises and is deduced (the being or object), idealism is opposed in particular to:

dogmatism, that, contrary to idealism, the subject derives its existence from the object and not vice versa. However, it deals of two perspectives in short complementary, based on the same immediate unity of subject and object; to realism, according to which reality exists independently of the subject.

For the idealists, this view would be still at a stage of unawareness, unable to recognize that reality is a production of the human mind. Some idealists, however, did not want to destroy the scientific-ontological system of realism, to materialism, to mechanicism, and to all those theories that are based on a reductionist or utilitarian approach to reality; to them idealism contrasts the unconscious and interior dimension of the individual, emphasizing the dream, the fantasy, the imagination, the moral and artistic sentiment as the main ways that can lead to the truth.

Then there is the case of an empiricist idealism, headed by George Berkeley, that could be considered one of the most radical idealists: his empiricism is opposed to the rationalist conception that the ideas of reason had a basis in the objective reality.

Leibniz (1646-1716) used the term ‘idealism’ to indicate the philosophy of Plato. Although in the history of philosophy the term "idealism" usually indicates a period from the late eighteenth century to the early decades of the next century, the idealist philosophy has actually an extension historically much larger. While recognizing that the German idealism of Hegel, Fichte and Schelling perhaps represents its maximum theoretical consistency, this philosophical movement can not be confined only in this period, being an epistemological vision that runs across all the history of Western philosophical thought, albeit with different nuances.

If the above is now common ‘baggage’, it is still discussed Plato's position in favor of the reality of mathematical entities. In that part of Metaphysics dedicated to the Platonic doctrine of causes, Aristotle (384-322 BC) states, after having recalled among other things that it is both like and unlike the Pythagorean theory, that for Plato, "in addition to sensitive forms and real objects exist as something in between, mathematical entities, which differ from sensible things because they are eternal and differ from the ideal forms because there is a plurality of mathematical entities that are similar, while each ideal shape is in itself unique, individual, "(Metaphysics, I, 6, 987b). For Aristotle, then, Plato admits the existence of "archetypal ideas" of numbers from which, in a similar way to other ideas, derive mathematical numbers. Indeed, in various works of Plato, the Philebus, the Republic, the Letter VII, we find an allusion to the existence of ideal numbers that are archetypes of the numbers used by mathematicians.

In Plato one can therefore assume the existence of the numbers, but with caution to remember that he speaks only as archetypal ideas, a concept of the number very different from mathematical reality that results.

The absolute idealism developed even in a period still dominated by the thought of Kant, through a discussion of his criticism: the idealists, in fact, denied the existence of the noumenon (that was for Kant the reality outside the subject, located beyond its limits to knowledge), and affirmed the existence of the sole phenomenon (reality as we know it), drawing the consequence that there can be only what is in our conscience. This primacy of knowledge of conscience became one of the most significant elements of absolute idealism.

The problem of the Kantian noumenon was due to the fact that, if it is stated that it is unknowable, there is no logical reason to postulate its existence. Admitting the presence of the thing itself independently of the subject who knows it, for example, was for Fichte a dogmatic and irrational position, leading to an inconsistent dualism between subject and object, or between the noumenon and the so-called ‘I think’. Kant considered the ‘I think’ as the summit of critical conscience that was the formal condition without which we could not even think.

It has to be considered that in opposition to materialism, realism and similar ideas, idealism considers the matter as something ontologically secondary against the Idea, as somewhat derivative and with no independent reality, that only from the Idea - that is, the spiritual substance - receives its apparent and impoverished part of reality. Obviously, the sense of idealism is not univocal, but extremely complex because, in the history of thought, it is configured in different ways according to the concept of ideas or spiritual substance dominant in different periods and in different thinkers; a preliminary distinction is necessary between an epistemological idealism, which makes of the thinking subject, understood as a spiritual entity, the focus and starting point of philosophical thought - as in Descartes - without operating a resolution of the entire external reality to thought, and a metaphysical idealism, which on the contrary operates radically unlike that resolution, up to argue that the very act of thought is the act of the creation of the outside world, thus solving the reality of the latter in the activity of thinking, or identifying the absolutely ' being and thinking’, as in the classical German idealism.

Fichte recognized to Kant the merit of having approached the idealistic conception with the doctrine of '"I think," or "transcendental apperception", which remained, however, a formal principle of reality.

Transcendental is the act by which the ego creates the world. This act can not be demonstrated by rational, but that assumption beginning with an intuitive-intellectual act in this transcendental sense: form and content, transcendent and immanent, before the creation of reality (self-consciousness) and simultaneously coincident with it.

In the system of transcendental idealism (Opera (1800) by Schelling the complete system of idealism is exposed, with the complement of the writings on Nature presents the first phase of the thought of Schelling. Philosophy itself and its parts are exposed to according to a gradual continuity within a unified design in which self-consciousness rises to the absolute, caught by an intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition is "the means of transcendental philosophy," which moves from consciousness to consciousness, by overcoming the conflict between 'nature' and 'I' without recourse to the Kantian 'thing in itself'. Nature in its various stages of development It is but the unconscious manifestation of the spirit (it is "consciousness petrified' ), which is composed, according to a polarity, with the conscious activity exemplified by the representative thought and the demonstrative sciences.

Understanding the unity of absolute knowledge is possible only by an act of intuition universally valid, which Schelling identified with the aesthetic intuition . Absolute is revealed gradually in history. Nature and consciousness progress along a parallel development and following a mutual involvement (though unconscious) described as 'polarity' in which the occurrence of ever higher and complex forms of consciousness matches the progress of nature, by dynamic developing, toward forms ever more complex. By the impulse that pervades it, nature it is revealed as the shape and organization that exceeds the need and reveals itself as freedom, i.e. as spirit. It represents "the odyssey of the spirit" that - while seeking - "escapes himself."

Descartes intends for ‘attribute’ the fundamental characteristics of the infinite substances. The only ones that we can actually get to know are: thinking and extension (res cogitans and res extensa). Material things derive from the attribute of extension and all non material things by the attribute of thought, or rather - as Spinoza says - things and ideas are respectively the ways of being of the attribute: extension and the ways of being of the attribute: thought.

In the text of the philosopher Vladimir Solov’ëv 'The Crisis of Western Philosophy' as a deepening of the thought of Descartes we have his admission of a real plurality of things or individual substances that have in ‘thought’ and in ‘extension’ their essential attributes; Descartes recognizes the authentic existence of a plurality of bodies and a plurality of spirits. But from what does this plurality come from? What is the difference of the various substances between them?

As for Descartes, all the content of an extended substance condenses in the extension, an extended substance can be distinguished from another only because of particular forms or modes. In fact, a material object stands out and is separated from another by a) its position in space, b) its size, c) its configuration, and d) for the coordination of its parts. Now, all this is nothing more than a series of particular ways of extension and has absolutely nothing to do with the substance itself as such.

The same must be said about the relationships that are established between two thinking substances, because the thought and its particular forms are to the thinking substance as the extension and its particular forms are to the extended substance. But, in this way, if all that determines the difference and the separation is condensed in the attributes and in their ways and has nothing to do with the substances themselves, and if the substances themselves, as substances, do not differ at all from each other but are absolutely identical, it is evident that several substances do not exist, and there is, instead, only one that has as its attributes and at the same title, both thought and extension.

But to what are reduced in this case the things and the single individual beings? In their uniqueness they can not be substances because the substance is only one; they may not even be its attributes because the attribute, by definition, is the common content of all things of the same nature. It only remains to consider individual things as particular ways of the attributes: a single material object will be a way of extension, a thinking individual, a spirit, will be a way of thought.

The Encyclopedia Sapere.it shows that in its broadest logical- grammarian meaning, attribute is each determination of a subject that is affirmed or denied. In this sense the term attribute coincides with the term ‘predicate’, the significance of which is now used almost exclusively. Strictly, attribute is opposed to accident and to the way, as a quality inherent and constitutive of substance.

In this sense the term is used by Descartes who intends for attributes the permanent qualities of the substance, finite. Is then used by Spinoza for whom - since there are no finite substances - the attributes are of God alone, the only infinite substance, and, infinite in the number, they shall express the eternal essence. However, of these infinite attributes of substance we can know only two: thought and extension. The term is involved in the discussions of English empiricism, which, through the analyses of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, leads to the denial of the reality of substance.

The English empiricism, first with John Locke and then more decisively with David Hume, reacts to the conception of the subject as substance, criticizing both his notion (Locke), then the same "subject" (Hume). But thus empiricism comes to skepticism, to the inability to place the correlation between subject and predicate on solid foundations having an impact on the possibility of scientific knowledge. Like Descartes, although starting from an opposite perspective, the empiricists come to a dualism, to a split between the subjective dimension of experience, and the objective one of external reality. This gap between reality and its subjective representations coming from experience will be radicalized by Kant as an opposition between phenomenon and ‘thing’ in itself.

In contrast to the old one, now it is the subject to prevail on the external object, until becoming a metaphysical independent entity (Descartes), generating as a reaction the denial of the substance (empiricism).

The issue must be addressed, I think, starting from 'criticism', i.e. from that philosophical school that aims to study and judge the problems of philosophical knowledge decomposing them into elementary components, to try and solve them.

Particularly, with Kant, criticism tries to reconcile two opposing and hitherto conflicting conceptions: rationalism and empiricism. Specifically: rationalism, whose greatest exponent was Descartes, the philosophical movement that sought to explain all reality through reason. It was using the only instrument of a priori knowledge, independent of experience such as – for example - mathematics and geometry.

The weakness of rationalism, however, was the inability to state with certainty that the thought corresponded to being and that the logical aspect matched the ontological level.

Empiricism, represented by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and David Hume, was the philosophical movement that asserted the exact opposite of rationalism: according to the empiricists the only way to know reality around us are the senses and our perceptions. That is, they were using exclusively ‘a posteriori’ knowledge, namely concerning all the knowledge based on the sensible data taken on through experience.

In this way, however, the ideas derived from it had no universal value, but only for that time and in that particular situation. Skepticism then followed together with the impossibility of knowing anything with certainty.

With criticism Kant shows that even reason can err. So, it exceeded also rationalism and empiricism, embedding them in part. Criticism, in a sense, judges reason as it proceeds.

In this regard, Kant wrote three important works: 1. "Critique of Pure Reason", that is, the theoretical reason, that gives us a scientific knowledge 2. "Critique of Practical Reason", that is within its practical, ethical, and it shows the path 3. "Critique of Judgement", which deals with the concept of beauty and purpose of nature, then with the judgment in science to reconcile man with nature.

Criticism states that reason can proceed scientifically, in a theoretical and correct way through the intellect. But the novelty consists in seeing that reason may also be dialectic, by which it is given to be scientific what it is not, as it makes mistakes in reasoning.

Kant is aware of the way thought acts. Differently from what his predecessors claimed, it is the object (the world) to turn around the subject (man). It gives up then figuring out the object in itself and try to understand its phenomena.

With this new concept, in sharp contrast with the previous idea of infallibility of reason, Kant makes a "Copernican revolution" whereby with criticism a new concept is inaugurated by which it is the sensible experience to be shaped by our mental structures. The type of knowledge that Kant creates becomes an agreement between the ‘a priori’ knowledge of the rationalists and the ‘a posteriori’ knowledge of the empiricists: it is a synthesis of ‘a priori’ elements already present in the mind of the subject (such as categories, or the concept of space and time), and ‘a posteriori’ elements coming from the outside, from the object to be known: the phenomenon.

Criticism on the one hand admits that knowledge does not come from experience, but on the other lives out that our reason could get to know what is beyond the experience itself. In an effort to investigate on which aspects of knowledge we could express with certainty, Kant puts some limits: beyond these limits there is the idea of God and other metaphysical notions. He inserts the concept of God as a postulate, because it would not be possible to explain it only with the tools of pure reason.

In particular, it would be impossible for Kant to prove the existence of God because, in an attempt to do so, reason inevitably gets into a series of antinomies, that is, in contradiction with itself.

Albeit in line with the approach of Kant, Fichte believed that Kant's position was not entirely critical; on the contrary it was still dogmatic: indeed, before investigating the conditions of validity of science and morality, it should have searched for the circumstances that legitimize itself and the results of its critical investigation. Kant, then, continues to take for granted the existence of a noumenon, of a metaphysical outside reality, which contradicts the impossibility of attributing anything real to what lies beyond sensible experience.

To remedy these impossibilities in order to give an answer, Fichte is forced to admit that the constitutive limit of man and of all our knowledge comes not from outside, but is a product of our own ‘I’, who decides to self-restraint unconsciously to respond to the need of a highly ethical nature.

i found that Kant's idea is the basic foundation of global system which now operate successfully in our modern world.

The categories are the attribution of a predicate to a subject. They are specifically supreme classes of every possible predicate, with which it is possible to order the whole reality.

For Aristotle, the categories are groups or primary genres which collect all the properties that may be the explanation of ‘being’. They are the predicaments of ‘being’, which refer to primary qualities (the immutable essences of objects), or secondary (the mishaps that may change).

The categories of Aristotle have an objective value, because they refer to concrete entities. Our judgments use them not only according to a relationship purely logical, typical of syllogism, but assembling them owing to the intuitive capacity to effectively grasp the relationship between the real objects. But beyond that, to each of the categories it relates a part of those semantic constructs of the discourse that have to do with the real world: for example, a name or a noun refers to the category of substance; the adjectives to quality, those indefinite to quantity, or to the relationship etc. It is therefore assumed that for Aristotle categories are a classification of the components which make a discourse.

Starting from the distinction between the objective level and the semantic one, that was not missed in Aristotle, who, however, would not know what to attribute to one and what to the other, Immanuel Kant admits that to judge, source of all objective discourse, is a 'multifaceted activity, which arises from the application of different categories or pure concepts, through which the intellect unifies multiple data from sensitive intuition.

These concepts, however, are transcendental, namely that they need starting data in order to activate, without which they would be empty: it's because of the sense organs that an object is "given,"  to us becoming a phenomenon; with categories then it is "thought".

Then, unlike Aristotle, for whom categories belonged to the ontological reality of ‘being’, the Kantian categories fit in to the intellect; that is, they become the ‘a priori’ functions, or  means of working of our thought that frame reality according to its own preconceived scheme. They do not apply to reality in itself, but only to the phenomenon.

As in Aristotle the categories needed judgment to be used, then in Kant they require a supreme activity, of a thought in the process of being created, to exercise their unifying function of the manifold. The categories are the multiple facets of a prism which is called thought; they are unifying acts, but not yet active, only potentially activated.

This opens the question of the deduction of the categories, that is, how to justify the use we make of them: for example, is it legitimate to assign different categories to the same object?

This is the problem faced by Kant in the Transcendental Deduction of Critique of Pure Reason, to unify categories, finding a principle from which they can all derive. This principle will be found in the ‘I think’ or transcendental apperception.

Kant will be accused of having locked himself up in a subjectivism with no way out, given that his categories do not serve to know the reality as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us.

With Fichte they assume a different role: while Kant had intended to unify the multiple, for Fichte they assume the inverse aim of multiplying the uniqueness of the ‘I’, bringing it to divide and produce unconsciously the ‘non-I’. Thus the categories of the intellect have also a real or ontological value, albeit unconscious. The ‘thinking’ is to create, but only at the level of intellectual intuition.

In Hegel, instead, it is the same logic that becomes creative. The cognitive categories of Kant, which were merely "formal", become together "form and content": they are logical-ontological categories, determinations of the Idea as it proceeds dialectically. An object exists to the extent that it is rational, that is, only if it falls within a logical category.

For Nietzsche, finally, categories become the result of the evolution of the breed: their effectiveness would be given not by the ability to reflect what is true, but by the utility in aiding survival. Concepts taken and endorsed by ethological-philosophical studies of Konrad Lorenz, who defined the categories the 'apparatus image of the world. "

It could be argued that the most unappealing feature of Kant's epistemology is the ding an sich. Much of Kant's effort at revising his second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason dealt with parts of the text where this idea is under discussion, e.g. the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena. Must contemporary epistemology reject this idea? Is there still motivation to defend it?

The need to find a unifying principle for all knowledge, an original synthesis meant as an ‘a priori’ representation of all a man knows and as such precedes the consciousness itself of multiplicity, leads Kant to elaborate the doctrine of '' I think ', which is one of the most debated and significant point of his whole philosophy.

The different representations of my intellect are unified in the horizon of what I thought, because they are accompanied by the awareness that I think about them. The ‘ I think’ is therefore the supreme principle of all synthesis, i.e. the horizon which the synthesis made by the categories connect in a unified manner, and as well the principle of every knowledge whereby the mind is conscious of the created unification. The principle makes it possible a real unitary knowledge of reality and at the same time it takes root in the awareness of the constitutive human finitude: it is worth noting that, in this sense, the ‘ I think’ is an organizing principle, a transcendental structure that "must accompany" the representations of the subject, and not the principle from which the whole reality depends, as it will be understood later by idealist thinkers .

Fichte, for example, in a letter of 1793, would say of  Kant, "this unique thinker becomes to me increasingly marvelous: I think he has a genius that shows him the truth, but without revealing the fundamentals." However, on his part, Kant is much careful to point out how the ‘I think’ is the structure of thinking of each empirical subject, and then as it does not coincide nor - in the wake of Descartes - with an ‘individual I’ object of immediate self-consciousness, nor - as suggested by Spinoza and taken by idealists - with the ‘absolute I’ that is the foundation of all finite consciousness.

Specifically, the problem that Kant sought to resolve, which he addressed in the transcendental deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason, was as follows: why nature seems to follow necessary laws by conforming to those of our intellect? By what right do the latter can say to know scientifically the nature, "establishing" the laws in one way rather than another?

According to Kant, such a right is justified because the foundation of our knowledge is not in the nature but in the activity itself of the subject.

Naturalistic fallacy is an expression found for the first time in Principia Ethica, a work published in 1903 by the English philosopher George Edward Moore. According to it, the concept of good which is at the basis of moral discourse is a simple concept and can not be further defined.

When you claim to identify it with some natural property, such as useful or pleasant, it falls into the naturalistic fallacy, which includes both the naturalistic ethical theories and the ethical metaphysical theories. The choice of a solution can not entirely exclude the other ones.

It is possible to escape this contradiction by adopting the intuitionistic solution by Moore for which the good is sensed as the yellow color: in this way, you will know what it is and there are no alternative solutions. Moore soon realized that his solution, by virtue of intuitionism, could lead to subjectivist drifts: he pleaded this risk by focusing on the fact that the good is absolute, it expresses an intrinsic and universal value.

In this way, any possible subjectivism is reset at the start. However, a new problem showed up: given that the good is universal, absolute and independent, which is its nature? Certainly, it cannot have an empirical nature, because if it did it would fall into the naturalistic fallacy; but neither can it be metaphysical, because otherwise you would re-awaken the metaphysical fallacy. The solution is then advanced  by Moore in recognizing that ‘good’ has an ontological status equal to that of Platonic ideas and numbers, which are absolute and objective without being either empirical or metaphysical: in this sense, the ‘good’ is just as number four.

In later writings, Moore would soften his position, by arguing that the good depends on the intrinsic nature of things; in this way, he will approach Aristotelianism from Platonism... ".

In the explanation of the onset of the 'naturalistic fallacy', one moves from 'having to be' which is the term used by Kant to indicate what is required by the moral law, regardless of any condition of fact and the entire order of nature. The moral law is an expression of reason in its practical use, that is, determining the will. The duty to provide what the law says to man, be reasonable but finite, exposed then to the empirical influences of  subjective motives and subjective inclinations, is expressed in the imperative form.

Therefore, the ‘need to be' indicates "the relationship between the objective laws of the will in general and the subjective imperfection of the will."

Then, since the moral imperative is not subject to any end, nor is placed by the faculty of desire, it addresses people in categorical terms, that is unconditioned, and then it is intended: "because you have to."

It is by virtue of this duty that the possibility of action properly human is deducted: not the physical possibility to act, which belongs - as Kant says – to the order of causes and effects, but it is the moral possibility to fullfil the moral law or not, that qualifies man as a moral entity. Between the world of being - that is, of what is the way it is, according to the laws of nature - and the world of 'having to be'- that is of what is required by the moral law - an absolute hiatus opens up, the same as Hume had pointed out, denouncing the naturalistic fallacy which is to take prescriptive propositions, that is related to having to be, from descriptive propositions, related to what it is .

Philosophers and psychologists often use the term phenomenology as an umbrella term to cover all the items that inhabit our conscious experience. In the eighteenth century, Kant distinguished "phenomena," things as they appear, from "noumena," things as they are in themselves, and during the development of the natural or physical sciences in the nineteenth century, the term phenomenology came to refer to the merely descriptive study of any subject matter, neutrally or pretheoretically. In Kantian understanding of phenomenological issues, there was also a distinct category called "noemata" which referred to an investigative state of mind in which the phenomenologist was supposed to become acquainted with the pure objects of conscious experience, untainted by the usual distortions and amendments of theory and practice.

How can Quantum Mechanics explain the connection between matter, antimatter and gravitation, while being respectful of the (phoronomic) rules of general relativity? How can the connection between 'continuum' and 'discrete' be explained according to the epistemological model of a 'classical' theory?

There are two pillars of consciousness, that of intentionality, which includes thoughts, ideas, desires, motives and goals. The other side of consciousness is that of phenomena, which includes sensations, perceptions and feelings. These are troublesome for philosophy of mind philosophers because things such as color vision, the redness of red is not physical but is mental; the experience of a red rose is different from the physics of it all, this is related to the "Mary Problem" and what Goethe was pointing out, which is that Newtonian vision theory gives us everything about the theory of light but what we actually see and also perceive as beauty. Another example would be pain. One can pinch another and watch the physics and the biology of it all, but never will that observer 'feel' that other person's pain. The C Fibers can be watched and the damaged tissue, and the signals to the brain but one can't feel the pain of another. Also, ideas and other intentionalities aren't like tables and chairs that you can poke, prod and measure. They seem mental. like perceptions of color and feelings. Furthermore, reasons seem different than physical causes in that if you take a brain, blow it up to the size of a building and walk in what one would see is fat, protein and water, which translates into mostly dendrites, axons and synapses. No where do we "see" and idea. I don't want to debate my metaphysics or my epistemology though please.

However, what I want to know is if these two categories, that of intentionality and phenomena, as described above, fit into what Kant would call the noumenal realm.

Thank you ever so much for any help you may give.

I find myself going in a paradoxical loop when I think about the distinctions. Insofar that it seems that the two need each other instead of one being valid over another.

For example, let us begin by accepting Kant's refutation of t.realism. T. idealism allows us to demarcate between noumena and phenomena. The phenomena is of an empirical idealist existence. Yet my question is, does not the intersubjectivity constituted out of empirical idealism create a type of transcendental realism? As soon as he puts the thought to paper, and write a symbol to be interpreted by another, does he not instantiate an existence that he previously refuted?

Awareness of morality for Kant, it seems to come on the basis of instinctive human ability, not knowing where the source comes instinctively

The problem of time can be solved, I think, only making clear the relationship between concepts and individual objects in the process of thinking, i.e. between logos and phenomenon. Time and thoughts stand between concepts and individuals.Time is the way from ideas to the things.

I think that psychology and neuroscience would find a scientific answer to the question of time.

Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault appealed to Kant's latest writings in order to ground their idea of modernity as an attitude as well as the human possibility of thinking without universal patterns that ordered judgments about human events. The Aufklarung is meant to be at Kant's writings" What is Auflarung" and "Crirtique of Judgement" the beginning of a particular political thought which was discontinued during XiX th. and half of XX th century

Did Kantian pacifism (see “Zum ewigen Frieden”) - in which both Kelsen and Bobbio found an instrument to realize the so-called “Peace through Law” - complete fail?

What do you think about the Kant's idea of Perpetual Peace?

Do you think that the Idea of Perpetual Peace is a solution between West and East?