#Synthetic a priori judgments

[blueheartbooks]

Delving into Kantian Philosophy: A Review of "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" stands as one of the most influential and enduring works in the history of philosophy, reshaping the landscape of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Published in 1781, this monumental treatise seeks to provide a comprehensive account of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge, offering profound insights into the nature of reality, the structure of the mind, and the conditions of possibility for knowledge.

At the heart of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's revolutionary concept of transcendental idealism, which posits that the mind plays an active role in shaping our experience of the world. Kant argues that the mind imposes certain fundamental concepts and categories—such as space, time, and causality—on our sensory perceptions, organizing them into a coherent and intelligible framework. Through his rigorous analysis, Kant seeks to uncover the a priori conditions that make experience possible, shedding light on the fundamental structures of human cognition.

One of the key themes of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, or appearances and things-in-themselves. Kant argues that while we can only know phenomena as they appear to us through the filter of our cognitive faculties, there exists a realm of noumena that lies beyond the reach of human knowledge. This distinction has profound implications for Kant's philosophy, shaping his views on the limits of human understanding and the nature of metaphysical inquiry.

Moreover, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is notable for its meticulous analysis of the nature of space, time, and causality, which Kant identifies as the fundamental categories of human thought. Kant argues that these categories are not derived from experience, but rather constitute the necessary framework through which we interpret our sensory perceptions. By elucidating the synthetic a priori nature of these categories, Kant lays the groundwork for his transcendental idealism and challenges traditional empiricist and rationalist accounts of knowledge.

In addition to its groundbreaking philosophical insights, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is also celebrated for its rigorous methodology and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry. Kant's meticulous argumentation, intricate terminology, and careful exposition of concepts make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a challenging but rewarding read for scholars and philosophers alike. Kant's influence extends far beyond the boundaries of philosophy, shaping the development of disciplines such as psychology, physics, and linguistics, and leaving an indelible mark on the intellectual landscape of the modern world.

In conclusion, "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant is a towering achievement in the history of philosophy, offering profound insights into the nature of human knowledge, the structure of the mind, and the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant's rigorous analysis, groundbreaking concepts, and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a timeless classic that continues to inspire and challenge readers with its depth, complexity, and intellectual rigor.

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" is available in Amazon in paperback 24.99$ and hardcover 31.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 516

Language: English

Rating: 10/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

[blueheartbookclub]

Delving into Kantian Philosophy: A Review of "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" stands as one of the most influential and enduring works in the history of philosophy, reshaping the landscape of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Published in 1781, this monumental treatise seeks to provide a comprehensive account of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge, offering profound insights into the nature of reality, the structure of the mind, and the conditions of possibility for knowledge.

At the heart of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's revolutionary concept of transcendental idealism, which posits that the mind plays an active role in shaping our experience of the world. Kant argues that the mind imposes certain fundamental concepts and categories—such as space, time, and causality—on our sensory perceptions, organizing them into a coherent and intelligible framework. Through his rigorous analysis, Kant seeks to uncover the a priori conditions that make experience possible, shedding light on the fundamental structures of human cognition.

One of the key themes of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, or appearances and things-in-themselves. Kant argues that while we can only know phenomena as they appear to us through the filter of our cognitive faculties, there exists a realm of noumena that lies beyond the reach of human knowledge. This distinction has profound implications for Kant's philosophy, shaping his views on the limits of human understanding and the nature of metaphysical inquiry.

Moreover, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is notable for its meticulous analysis of the nature of space, time, and causality, which Kant identifies as the fundamental categories of human thought. Kant argues that these categories are not derived from experience, but rather constitute the necessary framework through which we interpret our sensory perceptions. By elucidating the synthetic a priori nature of these categories, Kant lays the groundwork for his transcendental idealism and challenges traditional empiricist and rationalist accounts of knowledge.

In addition to its groundbreaking philosophical insights, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is also celebrated for its rigorous methodology and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry. Kant's meticulous argumentation, intricate terminology, and careful exposition of concepts make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a challenging but rewarding read for scholars and philosophers alike. Kant's influence extends far beyond the boundaries of philosophy, shaping the development of disciplines such as psychology, physics, and linguistics, and leaving an indelible mark on the intellectual landscape of the modern world.

In conclusion, "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant is a towering achievement in the history of philosophy, offering profound insights into the nature of human knowledge, the structure of the mind, and the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant's rigorous analysis, groundbreaking concepts, and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a timeless classic that continues to inspire and challenge readers with its depth, complexity, and intellectual rigor.

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" is available in Amazon in paperback 24.99$ and hardcover 31.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 516

Language: English

Rating: 10/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

[omegaphilosophia]

Analytic A Priori and the Nonexistence of Analytic A Posteriori

In epistemology and philosophy of language, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments intersects with the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Let’s break down the key concepts:

1. Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments:

Analytic Judgments: A statement is analytic if its truth depends solely on the meaning of the terms involved, and it is true by definition. In an analytic judgment, the predicate is contained within the subject.

Example: "All bachelors are unmarried." This is analytic because "unmarried" is part of the definition of a "bachelor."

Synthetic Judgments: A statement is synthetic if its truth depends on how the world is, and it is not true just by virtue of the meaning of the terms. In a synthetic judgment, the predicate adds something new to the subject.

Example: "The cat is on the mat." This is synthetic because the statement conveys information about the world that isn't derived from the definition of "cat" or "mat."

2. A Priori vs. A Posteriori Knowledge:

A Priori Knowledge: Knowledge that is gained independently of experience, often through reason alone.

A Posteriori Knowledge: Knowledge that is gained through sensory experience or empirical observation.

Analytic A Priori:

Definition: Analytic a priori judgments are those that are true by definition and do not require experience to be known. These statements are tautological, where the truth of the proposition is self-evident based on the meanings of the terms alone.

Examples:

"All bachelors are unmarried."

"A triangle has three sides." These truths are considered a priori because you do not need to observe the world to know them. They are also analytic because they are true by definition.

Philosophical Importance: Analytic a priori judgments are central to the tradition of logical positivism and rationalism, as they represent truths that are known independently of experience and based purely on the logical or linguistic structure of statements.

Analytic A Posteriori:

Philosophical Status: This category is generally considered impossible or nonexistent in classical philosophy. The reason is that if a statement is analytic (true by definition), it should not require any empirical observation or experience to verify it, meaning it cannot be a posteriori.

Why It’s Problematic: Analytic truths are supposed to be self-evident based on meanings, so there is no room for empirical confirmation or disconfirmation. If you need to check experience (which is required for a posteriori knowledge), the statement is no longer purely analytic but may be synthetic.

Hypothetical Example: Suppose someone argues that "All bachelors in this village are unmarried" is analytic a posteriori, meaning you’d know it’s true by definition but still need to verify it by checking the village. However, in practice, this doesn't fit the analytic definition since empirical verification is required.

Synthetic A Priori (Introduced by Kant):

Note: Immanuel Kant famously introduced the idea of synthetic a priori judgments, which are statements that are necessarily true and known independently of experience (a priori) but still add new information not contained in the definitions (synthetic). For example, "7 + 5 = 12" is synthetic a priori because it requires mental synthesis to arrive at 12, but it is also known independently of experience.

Synthetic A Posteriori:

Definition: These judgments are known through experience and add new information about the world. Most empirical knowledge falls into this category.

Examples:

"Water boils at 100°C at sea level."

"The Eiffel Tower is in Paris." These are synthetic because they convey new information, and they are a posteriori because they require empirical observation.

Analytic a priori: True by definition, known independently of experience (e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried").

Analytic a posteriori: Considered impossible, as an analytic statement should not require empirical verification.

Synthetic a priori: A key concept in Kant’s philosophy, where certain truths are known independently of experience but still add new knowledge (e.g., "7 + 5 = 12").

Synthetic a posteriori: Statements that convey new information and are known through experience (e.g., "Water boils at 100°C").

[feralprodigy]

“And we are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgments (which include synthetic judgments a priori) are the most indispensable to us, and that without ac- cepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the wholly invented world of the unconditioned and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world through numbers, people could not live – that a renunciation of false judgments would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. To acknowledge untruth as a condition of life: this clearly means resisting the usual value feelings in a dangerous manner; and a philosophy that risks such a thing would by that gesture alone place itself beyond good and evil.”

Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche

[sunilification]

From 2005 Archives:

Passages...

Busy preparing for yet another presentation and thought Ill share here few segments from the passages that I usually exploit as references to get across complex points on human consciousness.

The first is from Principles of New Evaluation- Fredrich Nietzsche, what my friend referred to as the incisive gem of human zenith.

[1]

''Knowledge is judgment!" But judgment is a belief that something is thus and thus! And not knowledge! "All knowledge consists of synthetic judgments" of universal validity (the case is thus and not otherwise in every case), of necessary validity (the opposite of the assertion can never occur).

The legitimacy of belief in knowledge is always presupposed: just as the legitimacy of the feelings of conscience judgments is presupposed. Here moral ontology is the dominant prejudice.

The conclusion is therefore:

1. There are assertions that we consider universally valid and necessary;

2. Necessity and universal validity cannot be derived from experience;

3. Consequently they must be founded, not upon experience, but upon something else, and derive from another source of knowledge!

(Kant infers (1) there are assertions which are valid only under a certain condition; (2) this condition is that they derive, not from experience, but from pure reason.)

Therefore: the question is, whence do we derive our reasons for believing in the truth of such assertions?

No, how our belief is caused!

But the origin of a belief, of a strong conviction, is a psychological problem: and a very narrow and limited experience often produces such a belief! It already presupposes that there is not "data a posteriori" but also data a priori, "preceding experience."

Necessity and universal validity could never be given to us by experience: why does that mean that they are present without any experience at all?

There are no isolated judgments!

An isolated judgment is never "true," never knowledge; only in the connection and relation of many judgments is there any surety.

What distinguishes the true from the false belief? What is knowledge? He "knows" it, that is heavenly!

Necessity and universality can never be given by experience! Thus they are independent of experience, prior to all experience! That insight that occurs a priori, therefore independently of all experience, out of sheer reason, is "a pure form of knowledge"!

"The basic laws of logic, the law of identity and the law of contradiction,are forms of pure knowledge because they precede all experience.''--But these are not forms of knowledge at all!they are regulative articles of belief.

To establish the a priori character (the pure rationality) of the judgments of mathematics, space must be conceived as a form of pure reason.

Hume had declared: "There are no synthetic a priori judgments." Kant says: But there are! Those of mathematics! And if there are such judgments, perhaps there is also metaphysics, a knowledge of things by pure reason!

Mathematics is possible under conditions under which metaphysics is never possible. All human knowlege is either experience or mathematics.

A judgment is synthetic; i.e., it connects different ideas.

It is a priori; i.e., every connection is a universally valid and necessary one, which can never be given by sense perception but only through pure reason.

If there are to be synthetic a priori judgments, then reason must be in a position to make connections: connection is a form. Reason must possess the capacity of giving form.

(Cant help but worship)

+++

The second is Calvino's lovely ride through prose poetry and metaphysics.

[2]

POLO:… Perhaps the terraces of this garden overlook only the lake of our mind. . .

KUBLAI: . . . and however far our troubled enterprises as warriors and merchants may take us, we both harbor within ourselves this silent shade, this conversation of pauses, this evening that is always the same.

POLO: Unless the opposite hypothesis is correct: that those who strive in camps and ports exist only because we two think of them, here, enclosed among these bamboo hedges, motionless since time began.

KUBLAI: Unless toil, shouts, sores, stink do not exist; and only this azalea bush.

POLO: Unless porters, stonecutters, rubbish collectors, cooks cleaning the lights of chicken, washerwoman bent over stones, mothers stirring rice as they nurse their infants, exist only because we think of them.

KUBLAI: To tell the truth, I never think them.

POLO: Then they do not exist.

KUBLAI: To me this conjecture does not seem to suit our purposes. Without them we could never remain here swaying, cocooned in our hammocks.

POLO: Then the hypothesis must be rejected. So the other hypothesis is true: they exist and we do not.

KUBLAI: We have proved that if we were here, we would not be.

POLO: And here, in fact, we are.

+++

And there are those genius of passages from the one and only Doestoevesky. Notes from the Underground especially.

As I typed out the second am just pondering how it reflects so much on the Internet. Blogging in particular.

[the-chomsky-hash]

[D. Criticism of historical meaning - cont'd]

2. Philosophical reading shows that conscious activity is

a. Instinctive (

Beyond good and evil;

see the analysis of Kant's text on synthetic a priori judgments;

Le Gai Savoir on translation).

b. Interpretative: In Nietzsche - man only finds himself in things.

i. What he finds there is science; what he introduces is art.

There is a logic, [which] is an original interpretation.

Encrypted writing.

Postulates of logic: identity, analogy.

Find hidden postulates.

Logic is an abbreviation serving a certain form of will to power.

ii. Metaphysics is an interpretation. The sign must be read genealogically: show how a concept was produced (Sprachwissenschaft, linguistics?).

Interpretation: which allows reading points to be identified.

Genealogy: how an original interpretation develops historically.

Originality: seeing what has never been seen (Le Gai Savoir).

Liebe [Love]: (The Gay Knowledge).

[The manuscript ends here. The rest of this passage has not been found.]

– Michel Foucault, Beginning, Origin, History, (Course given at the experimental university of Vincennes, 1969-1970: Annex 2), from Nietzsche: Cours, conférences et travaux, edited by Bernard E. Harcourt

[beingharsh]

By assembling modules, source elements, and elements for treating sound (oscillators, generators, and transformers), by arranging microintervals, the synthesizer makes audible the sound process itself, the production of that process, and puts us in contact with still other elements beyond sound matter. It unites disparate elements in the material, and transposes the parameters from one formula to another. The synthesizer, with its operation of consistency, has taken the place of the ground in a priori synthetic judgment: its synthesis is of the molecular and the cosmic, material and force, not form and matter, Ground and territory. Philosophy is no longer synthetic judgment; it is like a thought synthesizer functioning to make thought travel, make it mobile, make it a force of the Cosmos (in the same way as one makes sound travel).

"1837: Of the Refrain", Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

[philosophystudentorg]

What Is Synthetic A Priori? Groundbreaking Concept Explained | PhilosophyStudent.org #shorts

Explore Immanuel Kant’s concept of Synthetic A Priori, a type of judgment that’s necessary and independent of experience. Please Visit our Website to get more information: https://ift.tt/X0lpdJs #synthetica priori #kant #philosophy #kantianphilosophy #philosophyeducation #shorts from Philosophy Student https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckupEpPALtw

[perkwunos]

The diagram is a skeleton-like sketch of its object in terms of relations between its parts, but what makes it apt to reason with, to experiment on, respectively, is the fact that it is constructed from rational relations. In this requirement, Peirce explicitly continues a Kantian requirement of the foundations of science: the schematism. In Kant, the finitude of man entails that we have no access to ‘intellectual intuition’; we can not – as may the gods – intuit the object in itself; we may only approach the object in a pincer movement with two flanks: concepts and intuitions, respectively. Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind, as the well-known Kantian doctrine goes. The two may meet only in schemata, a priori as well as a posteriori, and the former constitute the condition of possibility for the famous synthetic a priori judgments. Kant’s central examples are mathematical: arithmetic is the schema rendering the concept of quantity intuitive, while the schema of the triangle is what permits an unlimited series of empirical triangles to be subsumed under the triangle concept. Peirce’s demand that the relations in the diagram be rational is inherited from Kant’s synthetic a priori judgment notion, just like his idea that rationality is tied to a generalized subject notion: rational relations are those known by ‘anybody who reasons’. As is evident, Kant’s ‘transcendental subject’ is pragmatized in this notion in Peirce, transcending any delimitation of reason to the human mind: the ‘anybody’ is operational and refers to anything which is able to undertake reasoning’s formal procedures. In the same way, Kant’s synthetic a priori notion is pragmatized in Peirce’s account:

Kant declares that the question of his great work is ‘How are synthetical judgments a priori possible?’ By a priori he means universal; by synthetical, experiential (i.e., relating to experience, not necessarily derived wholly from experience). The true question for him should have been, ‘How are universal propositions relating to experience to be justified?’ But let me not be understood to speak with anything less than profound and almost unparalleled admiration for that wonderful achievement, that indispensible stepping-stone of philosophy. (‘The Logic of Quantity’, Chap. 17 of ‘Grand Logic’, 1893, 4.92)

Synthetic a priori is interpreted as experiential and universal, or, to put it another way, observational and general – thus Peirce’s rationalism in demanding rational relations of the diagram is connected to his scholastic realism posing the existence of real universals. The relations which make up the diagram are observational and universal at one and the same time, and they constitute the condition of possibility for the diagram to exist as an icon (observationality) with respect to which it is possible to entertain generally valid experiments (universality).

Frederik Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology

[kla-motten]

Kant and tehom

As I work through the Critique of Pure Reason I’ve been making an effort to take note of Kant’s metaphorical language and its connection to some of the central impulses of his project. An important one is at the beginning of the third chapter of the Analytic of Principles on the phenomena/noumena distinction. He writes:

“This land [of pure reason], however, is an island, and enclosed in unalterable boundaries by nature itself. It is the land of truth (a charming name), surrounded by a broad and stormy ocean, the true seat of illusion, where many a fog bank and rapidly melting iceberg pretend to be new lands and, ceaselessly deceiving with empty hopes the voyager looking around for new discoveries, entwine him in adventures from which he can never escape and yet also never bring to an end.” [B 294-295, Guyer/Wood translation]

Truth here is represented as solid ground, something on which we firmly stand, in specific contrast to the shifting and unruly sea. This stands in complete agreement with Kant’s fixation on the synthetic a priori, which, though valid only for experience, derives its unshakable strength precisely from this connection. It is that which holds for all experience generally, and thus allows us to make judgments which will be good for all future events. What is most certainly and essentially true is what remains constant throughout all change in time. Whatever changes, whatever is new and not invariable, falls short of truth.

The function of the sea in this metaphor is especially telling. In contrast to the solid ground of truth, it cannot be stood on, it shifts here and there, throws off balance, makes itself impervious to settlement. Kant’s use of the sea here reminds me of the tehom of Genesis, normally translated as “the Deep” but used there without an article, as a proper noun. Its origins, as many scholars have pointed out, are in the goddess Tiamat. The suppression of the feminine tehom, out of which the earth must be drawn, echoes throughout the ages all the way up to Kant. There is something primevally patriarchal about this conception of truth. Catherine Keller draws attention to the suppression of tehom in The Face of the Deep, in which she tries to revive the figure of tehom for theology.* I would add that to preserve the memory of tehom would also be to challenge the idea of truth as something standing above time, immune against all change. 

*I was first introduced to Keller’s work by my theology teacher in high school, who schooled me in everything heterodox. I dedicate this little post to her.

[onetwofeb]

Catherine Malabou – Hegel on synthetic a priori judgments

https://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/05/catherine-malabou-hegel-on-synthetic-a-priori-judgments/

[alfvy]

Epistemologi Kant

Catatan dari Critique of Pure Reason

Putusan analitis apriori: Analytical judgments are therefore those in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is cogitated through identity. ... For example “all bodies are extended,” this is analytical judgment. For I need not go beyond the conception of body in order to find extension connected with it, but merely analyze the conception. (Hlm. 7)

Putusan sintesis aposteriori: those in which this connection is cogitated without identity, are called synthetical judgments. ... When I say, “All bodies are heavy,” the predicate is something totally different from that which I think in the mere conception of a body. But the addition of such a predicate therefore, it comes a synthetical judgment. (Hlm. 7)

Putusan sintesis apriori: all events have a cause (Hlm. 8); 7+5=12; a straight line between two points is the shortest (Hlm. 10)

Intuisi atas fenomena: In whatsoever mode, or by whatsoever means, our knowledge may relate to objects, it is at least quite clear, that the only manner, in which it immediately relates to them, is by means of an intuition.

To this as the indispensable groundwork, all thought points. But an intuition can take place only in so far as the object is given to us. This, again, is only possible, to man at least, on condition that the object affect the mind in a certain manner. The capacity for receiving representation through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is called ‘sensibility’.

The effect of an abject upon the faculty of representation, so far we are affected by said object, is sensation. That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an ‘empirical intuition’. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition, is call’ phenomenon.

It is, then, the matter of all phenomena that is given to us a posteriori; the form must lie ready a priori for them in mind, and consequently can be regarded separately from all sensation.

From this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensuous intuition, as principles of knowledge a priori, namely, space and time. (Hlm. 21)

By means of external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space. Therein alone are their shape, dimensions, and relations to each other determined or determinable.

The internal sense, by means of which the mind contemplates itself or its internal state, gives, indeed, no intuition of the soul as an object; yet there is nevertheless a determinate form, under which alone the contemplation of out internal state is possible, so that all which relates to the inward determinations of the mind is represented in relations of time. (Hlm. 23)

Sintesis rasio dan empiri: Without the sensuous faculty no object would be given to us, and without the understanding no object would be thought. (Hlm. 45)

Kategori dalam rasio murni (verstand) yang membentuk pemahaman (understanding) terhadap objek yang dipikirkan (thought) terdiri dari 12 kategori:

A. Quantity

1. Universal

2. Particular

3. Singular

B. Quality:

4. Affirmation

5. Negation

6. Infinite

C. Relation:

7. Categorical

8. Hypothetical

9. Disjunctive

D. Modality

10. Problematical

11. Assertorical

12. Apodictical

Catatan Ismail Al 'Alam

Kelas Filsafat Barat Dasar

[srbachchan1]

Day 213

Chowdhury bari, Burdwan       Sept 21, 2021 Tue, 7:08 pm

I know I am late and this time 4 days (I think soo) .. but the reason is so important .. and that is esucation , yes , again exam ahead but don't worry if I get time then I will write for sure .. like now I am free ..

Sohere is some philosophy for you .. what is now wandering and hopping in my brain .. I LOVE PHILOSOPHY 😝 ..

It seems to me that there is everywhere an attempt at present to divert attention from the actual influence which KANT exercised on German philosophy and especially to ignore prudently the value which he set upon himself ..

KANT was first and foremost proud of his Table of Categories .. with it in his hand he said, ‘This is the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics' ..

Let us only understand this ‘could be’! .. he was proud of having DISCOVERED a new faculty in man .. the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori ..

Granting that he deceived himself in this matter .. the development and rapid flourishing of German philosophy depended nevertheless on his pride and on the eager rivalry of the younger generation to discover if possible something at all events ‘new faculties’—of which to be still prouder! .. but let us reflect for a moment .. it is high time to do so ..

That's all Sayonara ..

[castlehead]

/NOTATIONS KANT/

a measurement is the judgment of a form, but is not form; likewise, force has only the power to act on an object of mass, and create kinetic energy from potential energy. But is force, considered from the standpoint of pure reason, an act in itself, i.e. Can one consider force an object which is acting, as opposed to merely something acting on an object?

could one call the utilization or harnessing of force an act involving force, in other words a force-like choice, which being a choice is an act, in possessing some strange willful character, equally able to decide if it is or not able to decide- something, anything-

the decision being, to harness a force,-

one might also call the understanding of a measurement an understanding of the form it measures, yet though these share the same silly behaviors of logic, the former is somewhat more concrete a standard, and the latter more an outline, since at the end of the day we do not know what the form really is.

because the unity of mass and acceleration, qua force, has no identifying traits, it is not so make assumptions more completely about its essence of this or that. but this is fallacious: the only reason we judge one more real than the other is based on empirical standards of visible assessment of form and its presence in space, or next to something smaller or bigger.

empirical reality is the bug, then, the canker unto pure synthetically judgments a priori, to borrow a principle from among Kant's Organon, a scaffolding or catalogue of every exampleof pure reason untarnished by a posteriori judgments. Or at least, so he says.

A priori judgments will never be done well by judgments of empirical reality, which assumes a reality as staunch as the one of the sensuous world must be applied to the principles of metaphysics, but this is dogmatic pishposh. And misleading.

[queernuck]

Affluenza

The release of the so-called “Affluenza teen” (who, despite his bald spot, is only 20 years old) after a relatively short prison sentence, along with the general structure of outrage at his release, is an important look at the norms and overarching ideology that structure the postmodern prison, where all at once private and suspended sentences and acts of indefinite detention can exist without apparent tension, the creation of the prison as industry, the apparent removal of the industry from prison, and the turns of schizophrenic resignification that have allowed private prisons to transfigure themselves, to use resignifying-acts to make themselves into suitable apparatuses of state control, suitable projectors of panoptic power.

Occasionally, when comparing prisons, pictures of prisons in Nordic nations will be contrasted with those of American prisons, or likened to conditions of everyday living, comparisons drawn between average American apartments and Norwegian prisons in a fashion that implies not that the standard of an American apartment should be higher, but that the Norwegian prison should be lower. The ideology at hand, effectively, uses the notion of morality as the basis for law as an a priori foundation, and develops from there the body of the prisoner, the imagined-prisoner standing in their cell, called upon at will and malleable in order to shape the specific way in which the prisoner will be understood. The notion of a “white-collar criminal” is one that is specifically racialized, that is taken as a kind of acceptable transgression, as compared to the means by which other sorts of crime are understood. The directness of an act such as robbery, burglary, carjacking is contrasted with the impersonal and wider-scale violence of “crime” practiced in financial deception, despite the way that these financial transactions often vary only superficially from entirely legal ones. So long as there is a communication, or lack thereof, that passes certain standards the fraudulent can become clever investment, the outcome of an intentionally deceptive practice can be simple risk-taking buried in fine print. In a direct fashion, these crimes are less violent, simply being crimes of commodity, targeting a sort of financial Body without Organs that is undetermined, imagined, that disappears the same as the imagined criminal at hand. However, given the means by which fraud is understood, the separation of white collar criminals often relies on that abstraction to hide how foundational the violence they partake in is to financial exchange under late capitalism. Credit card fraud on a small scale, used to drum up some petty cash, would be a criminal offense, while specifically profiting off of choosing to allow a certain degree of fraud to go unpunished, allowing a kind of transgression within one’s system of exchange due to looser standards of “fraud” or looser monitoring thereof is simply a decision that consumers must take into account. The individual is conceived of in bourgeoisie terms, and crime of the proletariat is far less punishable than crime of the bourgeoisie. 

One of the best examples of this comes from the way in which companies ignored the massive overproduction of opiate painkillers compared to populations they were prescribed for, working within perfectly legal channels in order to persuade doctors to change their prescribing habits to specifically match new product lines, and knowing that insurance companies would pay plenty so long as the premiums kept rolling in, while patients without insurance would willingly foot the bill given the eventual markup that the pills would fetch at retail. This is not to claim uselessness or an inherent defectiveness in the painkillers at hand: the way in which objects are conceived of as neutral before a certain character is imparted to them is certainly inadequate, but to deny utility to an object on the same grounds is just as ill-founded. When perfectly capable medications had expiring patents, an encouragement to switch to OxyContin, a large-dose medication with an easily evaded time release mechanism, restructured the painkiller market entirely. Much in the way that the post-Assault Weapons Ban commodification of the AR-15 as a pattern of firearm lead to further specialization, where companies used the general design to create numerous specific sorts of firearm to the point where any kind of ban will be a mere stop-gap measure, an inadequate understanding of what sorts of objects these firearms are, the challenge of breaking into a saturated market lead to numerous preparations of painkillers that were all understood as a kind of panacea, gaining ubiquitous status before an inevitable scandal about their abusability and overprescription. Doctors would go down, dealers would be imprisoned, and the company would take a hit until it announced its latest mechanism for preventing abuse, often renewing their patent in the process. By pushing for the ubiquity of these new, less easily abused forms of a previously easily-available drug, the company could retain their share over the same market while also pushing for legislation against their own previous product. The reterritorialization of markets in this fashion has been seen with OxyContin, Opana, fentanyl patches and fentanyl lollipops, formulations and reformulations that rarely seem to decrease abuse, but frequently lead to more harmful methods of it. A dealer who sells a handful of pills at a dollar per milligram is going to face far, far more consequences than the factory owner pumping out thousands of grams of the same.

In turn, then, what to think of a factory owner in China, producing massive quantities of fentanyl in order to fill the gap produced by the collapse of the prescription opiate market, and the ensuing demand for fentanyl as a potent synthetic opiate which can be easily substituted for or combined with heroin? Or a dealer who sells a product they know contains that same fentanyl? The distance afforded is far less that given to the executive in question, specifically because the law as it stands recognizes the corporate structure as an individual in a way it does not recognize the dealer, the grey-market manufacturer, those more likely to face enforcement as an individual rather than as part of a corporate class, as a representative of bourgeoisie interest. Just as gun manufacturers are aware of (and even mockingly acknowledge, at times) the way in which an underground arms trade directs the flow of their weapons, an acceptance of illegal usage is paramount to the manufacturing of controlled substances. But if this is acknowledged, in turn, if the use of substances for recreational purposes or even for medical purposes that do not stand up to specific structures of interrogation, then it becomes a manifestation of the individual rather than the company, industry, the collective acceptances fostered by the industry at hand. So long as it is never publicly acknowledged, so long as there is a subtlety to the means by which police repression as part of the enforcement of these companies’ interests, it is accepted as within bourgeoisie standards of expression. 

In this way, there is a meaningful sort of claim to the “affluenza” defense in that, by isolating this single individual from the bourgeoisie moral affectation he has been raised within, the way in which he specifically is structurally unable to consider his actions, and arbitrarily choosing him to single out due to the consequences of his actions rather than indicting the entire structure by which he was able to justify such actions to himself, is an unfair concentration of bourgeoisie judgments on one of their own, a betrayal of the foundational structure of class. The structure of laws at hand is, in part, intended not to punish these individuals, but rather to prevent their recognition as such in relation to the law except as part of a measuring of subjectivities, singular expressions of legal violence that are visited upon those outside of the protected class. These same structures lead to the means by which one finds the arguing of horrible, heinous claims as necessary to avoid a mistrial and a malpractice lawsuit: in a case where a defendant is accused of sexual assault, and a defense attorney is tasked with providing the best possible defense, doubting whether or not the assault in question took place is rarely the best course of action. Rather, reframing the actions at hand, making it such that the creep of “reasonable doubt” can eventually reclaim the actions, can become part of what justifies it as acceptable conduct, as the sort of conduct women can expect should they express themselves as women in the wrong fashion, is not only far more effective as a defense, but a far more effective mechanism of control.

These direct, apparent realizations, embodiments of the judgments passed down through the legal system, the ways in which it creates a morality based on neither intent nor action, but rather a means through which taboos are created and violated, are effectively made such that they can serve as the blueprint for a course of exceptions, justifications, turns by which bourgeoisie power can realize the exact sorts of violence named in its prohibitions, is the basis for the legal system at hand. To return to the earlier discussion of prison conditions, there are a growing handful of prisons which, with proper arrangement and payment, will take a prisoner out of state hands and into their own, providing a far higher standard of living than any other American prison, a sort of culture where one is able to come and go in a freer fashion, where one is not marked in the same sort of judgment as in a county jail. The differentiation at hand lies in how structures of carceral justice are imparted and realized: there are certain sorts of subjects that, even in violation of law, even in transgressing outside that recognized by structures of morality, are able to retain the trappings of their status within a certain class and eventually return to it. Conversely, while the complete privatization of prisons has become a distasteful apparent-memory for most, the privatization at hand has simply been restructured so that the state has its name on the exact same process of producing-production, relates to the shareholders and contractors at hand just as before, only resignified into a tacitly accepted relationship of state power. When the extension of the state into corporate bodies was made clear, it was distasteful, but so long as the nominal control in question remains with the state, it is simply finding the most efficient way to use taxpayer money to control these prison populations. 

There is no interest in reformation, in reconciliation in restoration. In fact, in many cases, there is a vested interest in teaching only skills that can be applied in alienated labor, a sort of repetition of industrial revolution within postmodern, schizophrenic processes of production. By teaching no sort of skill except that which can be applied in mass-production, by teaching for jobs that no longer exist outside of prison populations, that are only present in jobs occupied by inmates, there is a push toward recidivism, which in turn retains the work force in a pattern that does not merely mirror slavery, but in fact repeats it.

To take this as a defense, as an excuse, is to take the wrong assessment away from that which is implied by the release and acceptance-of-release at hand. The current system of carceral justice has been applied and demonstrated perfectly in constructing the concept of “affluenza” because it has itself mockingly named its own condition, the means by which it fundamentally is unable to recognize its own origins in retaining bourgeoisie control over property and its exchange. “Criminal” stands as a moral judgment, as a mark of immorality, specifically because it represents transgression in an objective sense, a marked and codified act that can be understood as a singular action, a singular event, beyond repetition. This is useful specifically in that it requires not the critique of counterrevolutionary thought, a meaningful process of creating new structures of affinity, of thought, of action that can eventually undo the wrong at hand. Rather, they create the criminal body as a certain sort of entity that cannot be part of bourgeoisie society, that is inherently and permanently  outside of bourgeoisie suitability. This is why police, soldiers, judges, lawyers of this bourgeoisie system cannot be retained, are viewed as at least potential agents of counterrevolutionary violence: specifically because they rely upon a system of morals that judges morality through legality, that uses a system of structural judgments in order to create spaces of morality rather than allowing for the complex interfacing of morals and morality to create the means of rendering judgment, of making for meaningful processes of restoration.

[agnesmai]

The Miracle of Life - Ernst Haeckel

Purely speculative metaphysics, which were further developed from theories of apriorism established by Kant and which found its most radical advocate in Hegel, ultimately led to the utter rejection of empiricism and claimed that all knowledge is in fact acquired through pure reason, independent of all experience. Kant’s great mistake, which had such serious consequences for all philosophy that followed, largely lies in the fact that his critical “Theory of Cognition” did not take into account physiological and phylogenetic principles which were only acquired sixty years after his death through Darwin’s reform of the theory of evolution and through the discoveries of the physiology of the brain. He regarded the human soul with its inborn characteristics of reason as a ready-made being and did not inquire into its historical origins... he did not consider that this soul could have developed phylogenetically from the most closely related mammals. However, the wonderful ability to make a priori judgments has arisen through the inheritance of cerebral structures, which the vertebrate ancestors of humans acquired slowly and in stages (through adaptation and synthetic association of a posteriori experiences and perceptions). Moreover, the firmly established perceptions of mathematics and physics, which Kant explained as synthetic a priori judgments, originated by means of the phyletic development of the faculty of judgment and may be traced back to continually recurring a posteriori experiences and conclusions based thereupon. The ‘necessity’, which Kant ascribed to a particular characteristic of these a priori judgments, would be applicable to all other judgments were theses phenomena and their conditions fully known.

Art Forms in Nature - Ernst Haeckel