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Philosophy
Modern Historical Schools
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Because philosophy is filled with various 'isms', these debates will never have a conclusion. Of course, this refers to philosophy in the narrow sense; in the broad sense, philosophy includes all fundamental and applied sciences, which of course do not have a weakness at the present time. So, it’s not a weakness of philosophy, but rather that philosophy has already subdivided into many branches of fundamental and applied sciences."
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Horkheimer and Adorno and Foucault see progress as a kind of trap in which we ensnare ourselves. Can this have any relation to the modern contradiction/condition? And if so, what have the postmodernists said about it?
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Trap is an understatement. Postmodern see to be sponsored project of modernity as it makes sense to the modern and is not in a position to reach its constituency outside modernity, be it premodern or non-modern.
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Whitehead's "Process and Reality" dates from 1929.
In it, he argues – among many other things – that "It has been a defect in modern philosophies that they throw no light whatever on any scientific principle." (Pt.2, §IV, IV).
Does his own philosophy ("the philosophy of the organism") stand up to that requirement when confronted with contemporary scientific knowledge?
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I follow what you are saying. And what you are saying actually fits with some of the models of the big bang. For example, Stephen Hawking says that quantum models suggest that, in the very early stages of the big bang, there was no dimension of time, which is why even quantum theory cannot tell us what that state before time means.
As you say, such a state would be timeless. That is why quantum theory cannot tell us what that could mean.
However, one thing to remember here is that the term "spacetime" is not referring to time in the usual sense. Whitehead was aware of this.
More recently, a physicist and philosopher who has published a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, Ruth Kastner, describes spacetime as stitched together events created by exchanges of energy. This is very close to what Whitehead was describing.
I have also developed a model where time emerges from entangled relationships, and where space emerges from a different type of relationship. Then, spacetime, which is actually a physical state and is something different, emerges from exchanges of energy, as Kastner describes. I spoke with Kastner and she agreed that my model is consistent with hers, if both time and space were purely quantum states.
Here is how to picture the idea that time can emerge from relationships: If we have a personal relationship with another person, we can become so involved that we lose all sense of time outside of the relationship. However, relationships are never static, especially when they are truly alive. The experience of relationships changing clearly gives us a sense of time. However, that sense of time only belongs to the relationship. It doesn't apply to anything else. So, it isn't time in general, but really just what we might call relationship time.
In this case, we can talk about what exists before relationship time by simply saying that, before that specific relationship, relationship time did not exist.
So the type of time we are talking about matters.
Back to the point you were making. I agree that the idea of a state before "time" doesn't make sense. In this case "time" means the general idea of time itself. However, spacetime is not the same thing. Spacetime is a specific state of physical reality that does not represent all of time or all of space, but only specific events composed of transfers of energy.
For example, relationship time is not included in spacetime because relationship time is personal and only belongs to those who are involved in the relationship. Relationship time does not exist for outsiders.
This might all sound strange, but a recent experiment has verified that quantum entanglement is indeed a source for time that is shared only between entangled particles. That time does not exist to outside observers.
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Walter Kasper and Schelling
The interest of the young Kasper, who took as his basis of reference and discussion the philosophy of the second Schelling, follows by and large the path that was opened up by Drey. The latter had drawn the lines of a theology conceived as a positive science by adapting in an original manner a number of Schelling’s ideas on the methodological and encyclopaedic plane. It was ‘a topic tied to Tübingen’ where Kasper had learned ‘to reflect more deeply on Schelling’s thought’.
As he himself writes in the Preface to his The Absolute in History, ‘the impulse to theological research on German idealism occurred to me on the basis of my familiarity with the rich theological world of the Tübingen School of the nineteenth century, into which I was introduced in my studies by my esteemed teachers, Prof. Dr. J. R. Geiselmann and Prof. Dr. F. X. Arnold.’
The commitment and the goal that Kasper set for himself were exceptional, since the literature on Schelling’s Philosophy of Revelation and on his system of positive philosophy in general were, and are still, ‘the object of contradictory judgments, mostly unfavourable’. Schelling himself, after all, in his lectures on the philosophy of revelation (Berlin 1841/42) quickly disappointed the expectations and hopes of those, above all theologians, who expected in his programme a synthesis of philosophy and religion. ‘The success of curiosity continued for some time. But the malicious campaigns of his opponents, […] the growing exhaustion among the students, the anachronism of a philosophy that went against the currents of the time […] put an end to this late glory.
For all this difficulty, the young Kasper took the task seriously and dedicated to the philosophy of the second Schelling ‘a well-researched work leading to the recognition not only of his theological value but also of his contemporary perspective.’ In particular, the thesis for his habilitation intends to respond to a dual task: 1) to offer a robust and close reconstruction of the text in the sense of historiographical faithfulness, but at the same time 2) elucidate the impulses, the stimuli, and the orientations which theology received in the Catholic Tübingen School from Schelling’s philosophy and which it can appropriate today for a renewal of theological method no longer content with the repetition of the traditional formulations of so-called baroque Scholasticism. In this way, the second Schelling came to be seen as a forerunner of the positive theology of our own time. In fact, Kasper approaches Schelling convinced that ‘problems and systems are open to each other. The question we must ask ourselves is whether the particular presentation and the form of Schelling’s thought can facilitate categories for the elucidation of aspects of Christianity which in the tradition expressed in a more scholastic manner have remained mostly obscured. This applies above all to the historicity of Christianity on which Schelling constantly insists. On this point, the possibility of an encounter with a biblically oriented theology could be greater than is generally admitted.’
The extent to which Kasper accentuates common aspects that were dear to the Tübingen School can already be seen from the title of his work: The Absolute in History according to Schelling’s late philosophy. It deals with a topic which ‘accompanies Schelling’s reflections throughout practically the entire arc of his development; it is essentially tied to the religious problematic with which the philosopher from Leonberg wrestled, in various ways, in all phases of his research. […] A profound metaphysical thinker such as Schelling, entirely captivated by the problem of the relationship between the infinite and the finite, between Absolute being and becoming in human consciousness, could not avoid being constantly confronted with the topic of history, specifically history in metaphysical perspective (first) and (subsequently) in that of positive theology.’
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Faith Bays many thanks for your reply. What I posted is only a succint statement that will be published soon on the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology.
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John Dewey (1917) writes in his article "The need for recovery of philosophy" - in the book "Creative intellegence: Essays in the pragmatic attitude") that philosophy is useless unless it is about real problems of men. He writes: "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."
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While I agree to some extent with Dewey, I also feel that the question you asked is grounded in a false assumption: philosophy does not require any form of recovery since it is not in any true danger.
One century ago, with the rise of social sciences, philosophy was endangered and was frequently relegated to the periphery of several issues. But eventually re-established itself as the go-to stop of most serious debates.
Diplomacy, political science and international relations rely on philosophical thoughts and approaches quite often, as do most subjects that related in any form to ethical or moral matters.
Another form where ethics and axiology have proven themselves is bioethics. From animal rights, to ecology, environmentalism and more medical issues, like assisted suicide, abortion, genetic research, etc.
Epistemology is the basis of science itself and I own much of what I know and can do to the works of epistemology written by the likes of Bachelard, Kuhn, Polanyi, Popper or Bhaskar. The new approaches to social sciences that rose in the 70s were greatly influenced by philosophy, especially phenomenology and post-structuralism and post-modernism.
Aesthetics have become more important and discussed than ever before. From writing to film and even videogames and new forms of media. Image, message, story-telling and the perception of beauty and how the notion of beauty itself exists is something that permeates our everyday live.
Finally, logic, well, it never went out of fashion, although formal logic is becoming more prevalent in politics and communication.
In sum, all the major fields of philosophy are alive and well, with new subfields emerging and shaping themselves to follow new technologies and scientific approaches. We sometimes might not realize that philosophy is present and many courses phased out philosophy chairs for more practical oriented ones. But philosophy is in everything we do and everything we know.
Thus we can say that philosophy did reinvent itself, so much that many are not even aware that they know something about philosophy. They just call it other name.
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to highlight that postmodernism is an implosion of rationality and modernism philosophy
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Post-Modernism breaks with enlightenment ideas. Post-Modernism challenges or subverts The Enlightenment, much to our present detriment, perhaps. Of interest in examining this issue might be "The Dialectic of Enlightenment" by Horkheimer and Adorno. A nice synopsis of the contrast between The Enlightenment and Post-Modernism can be found in "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Rick Tarnas.
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Often we use the term alterity and its connotation seems to refer to empathy and vice versa. It remains to understand what foundations each term expresses within the scope of modern philosophy.
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Hi Tiago, 
According to the theoritical frame of empathy in psychology (e.g., from Decety or De Waal), empathy is expressed by operating a distinction between the Self and the others, so in alterity. Therefore, to my opinion, alterity is a needed element for basic to complex forms of empathy. This, if you employ alterity as a synonym of "otherness". 
For alterity, you recognize someone as another person than you:  it is a complex distinction step. Then, for empathy, you recognize an Other, but also, you share her/his affect, you take her/his perspective in order to understand his/her thoughts or feelings, and you need to be motivate to concern about his/her wellness (according to Decety's definition). So, you're a step further in the cognitive processes involved (to my understanding).
Here is some references :
  • Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases (Preston and De Waal, 2002).
  • Decety J. Composants, mécanismes, développement et fonctions de l'empathie. EMC Psyc. 2016;13(1):1-8. (it is in French but i think you can find easily other works of Decety in English)
Hope that will help,
Julian
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Euthanasia is one existential question. Can we use Heidegger's existential analytics for clarify this?
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I do not trust Heidegger, not only on this kind of topics, but more in general...
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The average man in our time has an underground, unconscious vision of the world, which absorbs from the media, the family and school. The concept of material, with which a sense of reality is based, has been modified over time and today emerges as a vague concept, evanescent and virtual, nourished by the suggestions of computer science. Epistemological awareness is necessary to understand and unmask representations "swallowed" unconsciously , which have become a priori the categories with which we interpret the world. Such awareness is a decisive step toward the conquest of freedom and needs a profound look on the origins of concepts and representations used by science: concepts that in our time dominate the visions of the world that the individual deceives himself as having created autonomously  and freely.
The materialism of West has no more to do with the philosophy and ideologies. It has to do with the loss of the pathos of image of the world that has origin from ignorance, i.e. from non-truth. And the loss of the concept of form was for centuries after the Renaissance the first sign of this poverty, since the form represents the supreme manifestation of being. Heidegger had tried to give an answer to the question of the poet Hölderlin located in the elegy Brot und Wein: "which is the task of the poet in time of poverty?". No time has suffered from poverty as our present time.
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Dear Daniele, J.Brodsky is everywhere! 
For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey. Joseph Brodsky
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WHAT are the main distinctions between Modern thought and ancient Greek traditions of philosophy.  What is our progress based on?  How different is our modern tradition compared to ancient assertions in argumantative form.  What are the main schools of thinking that have emerged either as a result of ancient Greek thinking or as a result of other cultural influences?  IE Sumarian Philosophy, Jewish Philosophical traditions, Chinese Philosophical traditions etc. etc.
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There is no difference between classical philosophy and modern philosophy. The process of thinking is on. The basic issue of philosophy is to solve the riddle of existence - the cycle of birth and death and ,according to some, rebirth. As civilization advanced, the issue of religion was added to philosophy. Until the 17th century, philosophy included all branches of education, and it is still there, e.g. Ph.D. denotes Doctor of Philosophy. Modern philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Marx, J.S. Mill have thought over the role of  'pure reason', ' humanism', dialectics, historical materialism, dialectical materialism, 'idealism' with its root in Pythagoras, globalism being the latest addition. All branches of positive sciences and normative sciences, including physics, chemistry, mathematics and even economics come within the scope of philosophy. This is a post in brief. 
Sibaprasad Dutta
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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.
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Jonathan,
I think Kant's big idea, whether one thinks it's a good one or not, is the idea of a form of sensibility, and thus a form of intuition. (The former is a capacity; the latter is the aspect of presentational content it produces.)  So if we speak in terms of content, not only is it the case (in perceptual contexts) that not all content is conceptual, but the remainder is not mere qualia (or Humean impressions). Intuition itself has form and content: spatiotemporal form (for us) and magnitudes of qualitative content--saturation of color, intensity of pressure. He calls the latter the "matter" of perceptual content. Famously, intuitions are different in kind from conceptual content and cannot be reduced to it. Intuitions are how the matter of experience is given. 
But this idea of the form of intuition, analyzed in the Aesthetic, remains consequential throughout the entire work of the Critique. The categories, to be "deduced", must be shown to be meaningful in terms of space and time. In the Dialectic, metaphysics, as he understands it, (claims about the world-whole, God and self that are made independently of experience), fails precisely because no spatiotemporal interpretation can be given to key aspects of its claims. (This is, in fact, the critique of reason proper, i.e. his critique of metaphysics. And in so far as metaphysics takes on its task using the resources of reasons alone--pure reason--independently of the conditions of sensibility, it ventures into "transcendental illusion." 
(The analysis of the idea of the thing in itself actually gets a treatment similar to these ideas of reason, but there are important disanalogies.)
If we don't generate our own objects (as God might), then we must sense them to some extent, in some manner, in order to be cognitively related to them. In order to distinguish something from oneself, and from something else, he argues, the sensing must have an order. What is sensed must be arrayed in a way adequate to make these distinctions. This is a condition on any finite intellect. (In fact, Kant can be read as saying that this is quite a separate claim from the claim that ourforms of intuition are space and time. The latter may simply be a de facto specification.)  The means to order cannot follow, but must precede, making these distinctions. The means implies its own, sensible, content. The array part. The form. Arguably, this was Kant's big idea.
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Rationalism, beginning with Descartes, underlined the ‘concealing’ character of feeling; empiricism has instead emphasized the revelatory one. Based on this observation, it also presents the opportunity to penetrate more deeply the meaning of some clichés on these two forms of philosophical thought. It is usually said that rationalism based knowledge on reason, and that instead empiricism founded learning on experience. First of all, what does it mean here "know"? The "knowledge" is just knowing that was problematized by modern philosophy. It needs a "base" or "foundation" - and the "reason" and '"experience" are intended to be just such a foundation that is - precisely - the knowledge of external reality
Knowledge can not be reduced to the simple certainty of our ideas, but captures the authentic structure of the external reality, the reality in itself. The "knowledge" is therefore what goes beyond our representations; Also: it is the set of our representations as it is able to grasp the reality outside.
What does it mean to say that rationalism base of knowledge is the "right"? You can answer this question using the distinction between function revealing and concealing function of human sensitivity.
Rationalism is conscious of the concealing character of sensitivity: to know what is beyond our sensitive representations - this is the specific viewpoint of rationalism - we can not and we will never have to rely on our sensible representations. To know what is beyond the experience we can and we should never rely on the experience
The construction of "knowledge" will then be based on principles not drawn from experience. As such, the principles are called "a priori" or "innate". It is the path opened by Descartes, where the knowledge of external reality of bodies is based on the idea of innate God and proof that this idea corresponds to a real content; and such demonstration is in turn based on a principle - "nothing does not produce anything" - which is not drawn from experience, that is valid in itself, independently of it.
Contrary to what may seem, the knowledge "a priori" knowledge is not that you turn your back to reality and it is closed in on itself to develop its own content. In contrast, for the rationalism knowledge "a priori" (or "innate") is the "bridge" that bypasses the experience and leads in contact with the external reality.
The rationalist metaphysics is precisely this bridge, the overcoming of our sensible representations, which, precisely because it is able to cross them, is not derived from them. In pre-modern philosophy, the "metaphysics" is a move "beyond" of "physical things." Physical things are bodies ‘becoming’. Metaphysics goes beyond them, in the sense that, first, it asks whether there are other bodies in addition to those ‘becoming’, and then demonstrates the existence of the immutable beyond entity, ‘becoming’.
If the problem of modern philosophy is "how to go beyond our representations," and because, in them, the appearance is sensitive to rationalism concealing element (that is responsible for the difference between representations and external reality), it follows that the overcoming of the situation in which our performances are so certain, but not yet true - will only happen as they do not take as sources of truth our sensible representations.
The history of rationalism is the story of attempts to build the metaphysical parable that is able to conduct from our representations to the outside world. While in the pre-modern philosophy metaphysics determines the truth that we believe is originally owned by the thought, in the history of rationalism metaphysics has the task of leading to that unification of certainty and truth, which is the point of departure of the traditional way of philosophizing . The starting point thus becomes the point of arrival: metaphysics becomes, in rationalism, the instrument by which the problem of the value of knowledge is resolved. The solution of the problem is the metaphysical foundation of the solution of the problem of knowledge.
At this point, reconnecting us to the foregoing (reason, Popper, falsification, scientific theory, etc.), we conclude citing the ‘critical rationalism’ that is an expression coined by Popper and indicating the belief that reason, in the field of empirical knowledge, can not have a function strictly demonstrative, but only a critical task.
Reason does not legitimate, in fact, the truth of a theory, but it should be used to criticize the theory itself. Based on the principle of falsifiability, which states that a theory is scientific only if amenable to control possibly able to falsify it (by deduction of facts of experience from basic assertions), Popper assigns to reason the task of identifying the possible errors that lie in the theory under consideration. If the basic statements do not conflict with experience, that is, if the attempts of falsification coordinated by reason have no outcome, the theory is considered "supported", but never "verified", being verified only provisionally, given that other basic claims, in the future, may falsify the theory.
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With rationalism, believing in innate ideas means to have ideas before we are born.-for example, through reincarnation. Plato best explains this through his theory of the forms,which is the place where everyone goes and attains knowledge before they are taken back to the “visible world”. Innate ideas can explain why some people are just naturally betterat some things than other people are- even if they have had the same experiences Believing that reason is the main source of knowledge is another clear distinction of rationalism. Rationalists believe that the 5 senses only give you opinions, not reasons. For example, in Descartes’ wax argument, he explains how a candle has one shape to begin with- but once the candle is lit, it begins to melt, lose its fragrance, and take on a completely different shape than it had started with. This argument proves that our senses can be deceiving and that they should not be trusted.
Deduction is a characteristic of rationalism, which is to prove something       with certainty rather than reason. For example, Descartes attempted to prove the existence of God through deductive reasoning in his third meditation. It went something like this: “ I have an idea of a perfect substance, but I am not a perfect substance, so there is no way I could not be the cause of this idea, so there must be some formal reality which is a perfect substance- like God. Because only perfection can create perfection, and though it can also create imperfection- nothing that is imperfect can create something that is perfect.
On the other bank lies empiricism  unlike rationalists, empiricists believe that sense perception is the main source of knowledge. John Locke explained this by dividing ideas into 2 parts: 1) simple, and 2) complex. Simple ideas are based only on perception, like color, size, shape, etc. Complex ideas are formed when simple ideas are combined.Another belief of empiricists is that ideas are only acquired through experience, and not through innate ideas. Empiricists reject the concept of innate knowledge because, in ex., if children had this knowledge, why do they not show it? Like why does a baby need to learn to walk or talk, why does he or she not have this knowledge at birth? Lock believed that only with experiences could one form simple ideas, which could then be combined into complex ideas.
Induction is the final characteristic of empiricists. It is the belief that very few things, if any, can be proven conclusively. For example, we know of things by using our sense perception. We know that the color of the chalkboard is green and that the color of the dry erase board is white, but we cannot without a doubt conclude that those perceptions agree with the objects themselves. There is no way to conclusively prove that the chalk  board stays green once we leave the room and stop perceiving it. There is no way to conclusively prove that the chalkboard even exists once we stop perceiving it. 
Through his Meditations and wax theory, Descartes clearly illustrates that he is a 0rationalist In his wax theory, Descartes explains how one cannot rely on ones sense perceptions using the example of a candle. When the candle is in its original state, it has a unique shape. Once the candle is burned down and melted, it clearly has a completely different shape as well as many other different characteristics.
In his Meditations, Descartes attempts to prove that both himself and God exist. When proving that he himself exists, he claims that because he is thinking, he exists. Because thinking requires thought, and in order to have thoughts you must exist. When proving God exists, Descartes concludes that you cannot think of God without thinking of existence, and because existence is a relationship and not a characteristic, God must exist.-
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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 .
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The precondition of learning what is good and what is not has caused a lot of problems within human reasoning. When we are born, there is no knowledge of "good" and "evil." Such concepts are learned and can apply to both truthful knowledge and untruthful knowledge. That is to say, anybody can be convinced that something harmful to them is good, at least until they experience the consequences.
Morality is an absolute when it is properly understood, and it has nothing to do with good and evil. Good and evil are judgments of the intellect, but morality is a condition of the body.
Morality is those actions and behaviors that lead to the good health and well-being of individuals and communities. Morality is also applicable to any species of life, and to any group of species.
Morality is the condition required so that life may flourish. Morality is the source of health and happiness, which is required for the living to continue to want to live and to be able to live. Without the condition of morality, life becomes unhealthy, unhappy, and eventually ceases. 
Humans are presently in an incredibly immature state of understanding and consider morality to be judgment. The mere passing of a law to say what is good and bad, acceptable and non-acceptable, is widely considered to be the establishment of morality. However, morality has no dependency on human laws and it has nothing to do with human judgment. Morality is simply those actions and behaviors that lead to the good health and well-being of individuals and communities. Morality exists exactly as the condition for life.
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Doing some background reading in Einstein, I came across the following quotation which inspired this question:
Fundamental ideas play the most essential role in forming a physical theory. Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory. The ideas must later take the mathematical form of quantitative theory, to make possible the comparison with experiment. --Einstein and Infield, 1938, The Evolution of Physics, p. 277. 
Are "thought and ideas" central and essential and the mathematics secondary and more important for experimental results? 
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Ideas and imagination are fundamental in navigating the unbounded space of truth  of nature and developing  physical theories. Ideas are also reasons of developing abstract mathematical theories as well.  To extrapolate an existing theory (mathematical ) to a larger one, first an idea has to be developed within in.
The Newtonian laws of physics were painstakingly developed via learnt  ideas and observing nature.  Einstein used to say how uncomfortable in the mathematics he was using but strong in  imagination and ideas of different breeds to see space time as curved and developed his mathematical theories to describe and materialize his observation. The equations were written based on his ideas of space time, not the converse that space time was found curved from the equations. 
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Hume stated that the main principle of Modern science and philosophy “is the opinion concerning colors, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold; which it asserts to be nothing but impressions of the mind, derived from the operation of external objects, and without a resemblance to the qualities of the objects”. In this formulation, the mind appears as being a non-physical system that adds subjective “secondary” qualities (impressions) to external objects in the process of perception.
This kind of formulation had led to the famous Cartesian mind-body dualism (the theory that the conscious being is composed of two independent substances, the body and the thinking mind) and the related mind-body problem (how could an immaterial soul interact with the material body?), for which an acceptable solution (Descartes’ appeal to the pineal gland not withstanding) was not found yet and will probably never be, because of the way the issue was formulated.
A recent study (Buyse, 2013) has shown that Galileo, considered to be the original author of the distinction of primary and secondary qualities in Modern times, was not a mind-body dualist and possibly made a formulation of the problem that is different from Descartes and Hume, one that may inspire contemporary researchers to find a solution. Buyse writes: "The sky is not blue and roses are not fragrant. I just experience them to be so, or they appear to me – affect me – as being like that. The real, objective world is therefore the world of the primary properties, while the realm of subjective secondary qualities is the domain of animals and human beings", and quotes Galileo:" ‘I think that if one takes away ears, tongues, and roses, there indeed remain the shapes, numbers, and motions, but not the odors, tastes, or sounds; outside the living animal these are nothing but names’" (Buyse, 2013).
Buyse also discovered a frequent mistake in the translation of Galileo’s Italian originals: "In most cases, Galileo’s text is translated as meaning that secondary qualities exist only in the (immaterial) conscious mind of the observer, however: In the original text, Galileo nowhere writes that secondary qualities and emotions reside ‘in consciousness’. On the contrary, he writes that "they reside ‘in the sensible body’ [nel corpo sensitivo], or in other words, in the body of the perceiver, whether it be a human body or an animal body" (Buyse, 2013).
As far as secondary qualities are instantiated in the body of animals, and living systems are considered to be physical systems, there must be a physics of the conscious mind. Galileo would probably agree with this challenge.
Reference: 
Buyse F. (2013) The Distinction between Primary Properties and Secondary Qualities in Galileo Galilei’s Natural Philosophy. Talk given in September 28, 2012, at the Quebec Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy and in April 8, 2013, at the History of Science Collections in Bizell Libraries at the University of Oklahoma. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/6652802/The_distinction_between_Primary_Properties_and_Secondary_Qualities_in_Galileo_Galileis_Natural_Philosophy
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My very first essay as an undergraduate (on which I got an 'A') was "Are Colours, Sounds, Tastes, and Smells Part of the Real World?"  That doesn't make me an expert, but it's nice to see so much interest in this topic. I agreed with the classical philosophers on this distinction in my first year of university. Clearly there is some kind of distinction between them, and not just that psychologists and social workers are more interested in secondary qualities and scientists are more interested in primary qualities.  Now I tnink this is a misnomer; what makes one primary and one secondary? As a philosopher and social worker, I object. Maybe the distinction that although "secondary" qualities are not generally thought to exist in the object because they are more about our perception, "primary"qualities are thought to be more represent the actual qualities of the objects themselves more directly. Although this is interesting to consider, both kinds of qualities are phenomenal. There is some relation between objects as they stand in the absence of a perceiver and the perceived experience, but we can only theorize about it. Some people have fun doing this (like me). Other approach things differently. What is the real world?  Are "primary" qualities more closely connected to the "real world?"
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Covenants without the sword are but words (Hobbes' Leviathan).
Is the euro the sword to protect the Leviathan (here represented by the EU)?
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Dear Guido,
So the EU is the leviathan with the power of the sword, i.e., the euro, to back up the Commission's regulations.  That makes sense.  We don't have much to go on with regard to supra-national entities, such as the EU.  It's got more central authority than a confederation, but the member states retain sovereignty.  Hobbes claimed that the relation between states was the same as between individual persons in his state of nature; a "war of all against all".  He did not anticipate the possibility that states could achieve some level of peace and security vis a vis other states.  Thank you for following this line of thought and inquiry.                         David
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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.
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Stephen,
I think the sorts of things you mention are not what Kant has in mind when he speaks of noumena. For one thing, for Kant, noumena cannot be sensed; they have no sensible properties. The things you mention have temporal extension, which for Kant, along with spatial extension, is the very form of sensibility.
We are able to think of things independently of their sensible properties, according to Kant. Something may appear in space and time, but it may also be considered, independently of this appearing and the sensible conditions of this appearing, as the thing which is the source of the appearance. We can only know it (cognize it) as it appears in space and time, says Kant, but we can think of it independently of these conditions, as the thing in itself.
Some writers have taken pains not to equate the thing in itself with the noumenon, despite the fact that neither can be sensed. Part of the reason for this, I think, has to do with the role the notion of a noumenon plays in Kant's theory of freedom. For more on the distinction between the thing in itself and the noumenon see ch. 3 of Henry Allison's "Kant's Transcendental Idealism."