Kant's Categories

[@Jennypenny3467]

You are a great teacher, you make everything so clear, and you are truly noble to share your knowledge with all of us!

[@fencepanelist]

He's not a teacher - he's a tickler. You learned nothing and neither did anybody else.

[@Ahmed95haith]

​@@fencepanelistspeak for yourself.

[@cydonia2780]

Wow, I have to say. Ive seen plenty of explanations of Kant and few do as much justice as you do in explanation of the complexity of these ideas. it was simplified as to remove the unnecessary filler but doesn't over simplify and it leaves the viewer satisfied. and it gets straight to the core of these concepts. You also just make learning absolutely electrifying!

[@fencepanelist]

But people who don't understand will not learn from these people. They just explain their take on it to people who already have an understanding. They do more damage than they know. The idea is to simplify the philosophers idea in such a way a new person will understand within minutes a particular thought ... then the magic happens. These wannabe teachers pour cold water on that magic and the word doesn't spread - it dies.

[@Ahmed95haith]

Gonna cry? ​@@fencepanelist

[@firemuffin1501]

Much clearer than my professor, thank you!

[@raresmircea]

Experiments done with powerful magnetic stimulation over the visual cortex made the subject see black and white in one half of the visual field; deep brain stimulation made the subject feel immense "desire"; stimulating the hand’s motor area directly via implanted electrodes made the subject feel compelled to grab something, and when the current was increased he did moved his hand without him wanting to; direct stimulation of the cortex during brain surgery made the patient see everything she looked at to be hilarious-these kinds of results obtained in laboratory settings will slowly convince us that psychedelic trippers aren’t confabulating. "Normal" human experience is but a tiny patch of the possible space of experience. Also as scientific models start to pile up we can hint at possible explanations for the impossible. "Seeing all colors at once" or "it was an eagle and a bear in the same time" could be the result of the mechanism of ‘lateral inhibition’ crashing down. Our neural architecture is made in such a way that it’s essentially implementing "the law of excluded middle"-the neural substrates of experience A and experience B are anti-correlated in such a way that when one of them is on, automatically the other is inhibited. This evolved because we never had to deal with objects that were both round and cubical, hot and cold, dangerous and benign. But certain psychoactive substances (5-MEO DMT) look like they may be able to disrupt this ‘lateral inhibition’ and the subject is able to experience the impossible. I’m very curious what scientists 100 years in the future will think of Kant’s views. My bet is that they’ll have the same general view but diverging on various technical matters. One of them being that you can’t establish a clear set of parameters that describe the "projector", so you can’t presuppose the true extent of possible objects. Very likely both rationalists and empiricists would’ve benefited by psychedelics :)

[@DamonD_Absences]

This is really interesting. I liked your phrasing “‘Normal’ human experience is but a tiny patch of the space of possible experience”. This makes me think of the unconscious and/or subconscious because if you notice, all of our thoughts seem to emerge basically “ex nihilo” to our self-model. We cannot think a thought before it is thought-no matter how logical the strand of thinking is, how deeply we focus on it-the fact of the matter is that each and every thought pops in our awareness, without our self-model choosing it. People tend to find this terrifying, but if you examine it using your phrasing, it opens up the space for the thought of the immense possible space of thought being squandered by the self-model generated by the brain. Far from taking free will from us via the recognition that the self-model is a black mirror, your phrasing makes me think just how unfree this concept of freedom is. If “freedom of the Will” or whathaveyou is supposedly the product of the self, how small and limiting this freedom must be! It’s not freedom at all, it’s a prison. Perhaps transcendental philosophy, neuroscience, and technology can help us tap into that deep abyss of possibility we incorrectly deem as being the killer of freedom itself. It’s a tricky rope to balance upon, of course-control lurks around every corner-but I can’t help but see the positive possibilities here. Especially when you take into consideration the “crashing of lateral inhibition” (or the disintegration of the LEM in some circumstances). That’s a large part of what Hegel was about (funnily enough, he was an avid THC user! Though his writing style seems to have suffered from it, his ability to think contradiction certainly was aided).

[@adaptercrash]

That means they are undead, and they just bots? I had those electrode experiments probe my brain they couldn't believe I did what I did. We go back to humanism? Wouldn't that be nice. For he is saying we watching a movie and the eyes just absorb light like a reversed a projector as a camera obscura that projects objects through the medium of spacetime.

[@clivemakongo]

Thanks man this series is so dope

[@chenkraps9989]

I like how this guy Includes Indian and Islamic contributions to philosophy, both which I am proud of ❤️

[@reimannx33]

As proud as ending the sentence in a preposition? Stop being so proud - pride comes before the fall !

[@mohammedhanif6780]

​@@reimannx33 pedant

[@reimannx33]

@@mohammedhanif6780 I am sure modiji will empathize with your sentiments, right Mohammad?

[@fencepanelist]

Pride is idiotic. Grow up.

[@rachitaurora]

Thank you, professor!

[@Gentry.H.P.]

Amazing as always professor!

[@fencepanelist]

amazing my arse - people looking towards learning philosophy will watch this video and never come back. He killed philsophy - stone dead. Maybe you liked his facelight.

[@Ahmed95haith]

​It's not his fault that you're too S.T.U.P.I.D to understand Kant.

[@jamalan7417]

I appreciate your work .

[@franciskm4144]

Thanks 🙏Really names are categories. 🙏 Naming is most important in any scientific analysis 🙏 Naming is like making a cupboard. All names are boxes. When we sense anything we are keeping that in the box.🙏 Without names we cannot memorize.🙏

[@siyili1940]

Great Video! This really helps me on clearing some confusions

[@fencepanelist]

Oh well, as long as you are ok.

[@keylupveintisiete7552]

Keep on truckin'!

[@qyxev632]

PROFESSOR!!!!!!

[@cpnlsn88]

Always engaging and worth a listen

[@fencepanelist]

Not if you're new to philosophy, infact newcomers will turn it off and never return. Useless.

[@cpnlsn88]

@@fencepanelist I'm very sorry you feel like that. I guess there are other ways to approach philosophy if a beginner. Like some of Plato's dialogues for instance. Kant in essence is not that complicated but can be off putting if looking at it for the first time.

[@andysondur]

I'm addicted to your videos. Wonderful work!

[@fencepanelist]

I can understand your addiction but they shouldn't be listed in the place newcomers are hoping to learn about philosophy. He doesn't illustrate what he says and he will leave newcomers scratching their heads - while philosophy dies. It's because of people like him that philosophy has been declining over the centuries. Although they have a good grasp of the subjects, they don't know how to make teachings magical.

[@andysondur]

​@@fencepanelistOk, I didn't look at it from your pov. Anyway since you have a better idea, pls share the link to your videos where you explain these better, hopefully.

[@duardomon]

perfect video! thanks

[@fencepanelist]

New people wouldn't understand a word he said.

[@abdussalampakistan3694]

Thank you very much Sir

[@yogiafricankumarsanu3181]

Thank you Professor 🙏

[@douglynch8954]

My question is this: What kind of object is the "projector" itself along with its a priori concepts and laws of understanding? Since we can study them and know about them, then it seems that they are phenomena. But is there a problem with self-recursion? How does our mind project the very concepts that are responsible for projection in the first place?

[@boris3866]

I believe the short answer is that the mind and its structure are not phenomena, Kant does not gain knowledge of them through perpectual means. He argues that the structures of the mind which he identifies are the necessary preconditions for there being any perception / coherent experience at all. I believe he does this in the part of the critique named the transcendental deduction.

[@fatmaenisehikmel4370]

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@nadera1830]

Kant is genius, but he underestimated that every language has its own relative categories. Thats why when we think within different languages, synatx and morphology shape our thinking and sometimes give us new views and ideas of the world. Thank you professor.

[@gerhitchman]

Yep. Some tribal peoples *don't* actually some concepts that Kant things we (as humans) all have

[@childintime6453]

@@gerhitchman where can I read more about that? sounds interesting

[@adaptercrash]

We don't even need those ones they don't help and ancient spacetime this shrimp thing some Asian kid they were telling me about this protossian implantion shit knowledge formation on spacetime the plants evolutionary synthesis biblical structures

[@tobehonest7541]

yes, this is Durkheim's main critique

[@MashamaiteThuso]

I would seriously profit more from a critique of kant's philosophy than an outline, but this video has been profusely fruitful.

[@rysw19]

As a poor substitute for the professor’s criticisms, here are a few of mine: 1. It seems to me that the question of which “categories” are innate within people is an empirical question that should be sorted out in developmental neuroscience, and should not be postulated a priori, as Kant insists all metaphysics is. 2. I think his notion that space and time are only constructs of the mind is difficult to square with modern physics. Space and time themselves have structure that is independent of minds. Even if we find that they are emergent from something deeper, it seems they will retain an independent structure. 3. Regarding his objection to our ability to know things-in-themselves, I think exhibit A is our own experience. There are qualities of our own sensations and experience more broadly that you at least have to be open to us knowing in themselves. To be more specific, I’m thinking about a specific sensation, say the taste of pineapple. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that we know the quality of that sensation for what it is in itself. 4. Further, if you believe that there are orderly causes between these sensations, you could make a case that you can come to know some properties of the things-in-themselves, even if not all of them.

[@MashamaiteThuso]

@@rysw19 i am indebted to you for engaging me and providing a critique as I had requested, it was indeed thought-provoking and mentally enriching.

[@fencepanelist]

I agree, with examples rather than labels. How is a newcomer going to understand what he means by "The" without an example. What a foolish person thinking he is a teacher. Very annoying.

[@islaymmm]

In Kant's philosophy, the justification for the categories is transcendental, and therefore it's not an empirical question. He's pretty explicit about this and distinguishes between the _quid facti_ and the _quid juris._ The former is concerned with facts; which facts allow one to say something is true, whereas the latter is concerned with justification, what justifies (in this case) the categories. Space and time are a priori forms of intuition, in other words they're necessary conditions of experience. Kant doesn't go beyond this claim. He's agnostic as to whether the noumenal world is spatiotemporal. An appearance is never a thing in itself. A thing in itself is an entity stripped of all experiential/phenomenal components, and therefore the taste of a pineapple is simply not a thing in itself. Whenever you come into contact with something it's always presented to the mind as a chunk of sensations, and by its very nature the thing in itself cannot be an object of experience. It has to be posited as an object of pure reason, and we all know what Kant thinks of earlier metaphysics. To put the thing in itself within the purview of knowledge some post-Kantian critics sought recourse to the fusion of sensation and understanding.

[@michaelmacisaac7742]

Question: does the explication of the internal features of our consciousness presuppose a rational actor inherent in the process. Is the deduction ,reduction circular ?

[@enfomy]

Kant is funny. How can we know no thing can present itself to the mind as itself if we know nothing about things-in-themselves?

[@enfomy]

@Truth Discerning yes and it’s odd to reason about things one has no data on.

[@enfomy]

@Truth Discerning Complete data?

[@enfomy]

@Truth Discerning ?!! Complete data is irrelevant in reference to the truth? So partial data is sufficient for complete truth?

[@enfomy]

@Truth Discerning Who is us and we? Humans?

[@adaptercrash]

You should just know that lol and don't even need someone to ask you that and you probably would in our movie unless he rushed you.. that's not that difficult... master slave synthesis my program had no teachers like this emergent education. My math teacher fucked with my head with that dominant 7th and I could learn all myself.

[@romanbrasoveanu6035]

Good video

[@zubariakhan2696]

Awesome. Thanks

[@jwu1950]

The objects of experience, the projections, the phenomena, are not external of our brain/mine. The cause, however is real, objective, as it is external of our brain/mine. It is very simple, actually. What we see if not real. What is real we cannot see. We can see an apple by its shape, colour, texture, smell, and taste, but we cannot see the DNA, the molecules, the life in the apple that made it a real apple and not just an image of an apple. May the love and the peace of Jesus be with us.

[@waqaskhanmomand7103]

"The Professor"

[@linguaphile9415]

This is reminiscent of Universal Grammar with its principles and parameters as proposed by Noam Chomsky.

[@grantbartley483]

I think Kant beat him to it. And Freud and Jung too.

[@JavierBonillaC]

Why wouldn’t the ability to distinguish bright from dark be categories? Big and small. Close and far, far and further. ? Up and down?

[@nikhil518]

These ideas arise out of comparisons. They require a sensory experience to formulate. Whereas the categories are innate. Think of it this way, the categories are the codes and formulas through which the senses (input hardware) transform the things-in-themselves (raw input data in form of zeroes and ones) into the phenomenon we experience (the pictures and videos you see on monitor). Whereas, big small, Up down are the patterns you observe in this world after your categories have made sense of the stuff.

[@JuiceDrank]

cool

[@brucekern7083]

I wonder if Carl Jung took the work of Immanuel Kant, and gave it cultural universality?

[@Mal1234567]

I will never see the categories as innate. Kant didn’t. It’s the wrong way to look at deconstructing experience in general. When you deconstruct experience you find a priori concepts. A priori does not mean innate. It means they are necessary for experience to be possible at all for us. It doesn’t mean “before” in the temporal sense, as if the categories existed in the brain of an infant before its first experience. That would be an empirical notion. A priori for Kant is intended in the transcendental sense. It’s very common for non-German professors to get this wrong because of the emphasis of the empirical over all else in their training.

[@islaymmm]

I agree wholeheartedly with this take, but I've always been bothered by the question (which as far as I know Kant didn't ask and is probably a very tangential one at best and wrong at worst) about the provenance of the categories and especially the a priori intuitions (because surely, it has to come from somewhere, right?). Can you give me any pointers?

[@Mal1234567]

@@islaymmm “On the Difference between Pure and Empirical Cognition” in the CPR gives us a clue. As infants, usually, our cognitive faculty lying dormant within us is awakened into activity by the very first sights and sounds that impress themselves upon our senses. We’re obviously not thinking at this point, but something in us is already trying to make sense of it all purely by instinct. I’m assuming that our brains are already developed enough to attempt an elementary form of understanding. Perhaps it occurs later. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that experience in us is a product of material passively received by the senses and then actively worked into an ongoing experience by the understanding. Whereas John Locke, by contrast, believed that experience is itself passively received experience and not generated, so that all we have to do, in his opinion, is just passively receive the world in order to view the world like a sponge absorbing water.

[@islaymmm]

@@Mal1234567 Thanks I'll read the section a bit more closely. But that's pretty much my understanding as well. Still though, it seems the a priori intuition of space has to be there in the infant insofar as they can represent objects as being outside their mind. Does this mean then that the moment they sense something outside, their receptivity is activated and they immediately get the intuition and hence the representation of space?

[@DontSee-lw2jv]

6:28

[@stonkez8452]

@3:00 - 'What are the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience' ? Presumably, if the word 'experience' in that context were to be replaced by the word 'awareness', or even 'self awareness', it wouldn't radically alter the meaning of the question. Don't such epistemological / metaphysical queries border on the eternal search for the 'force that drives the🌾flowers🌾' ? (the holy grail of biology).

[@jwu1950]

One of the conditions is life. Do we know what life is ? No. We don't know what God is, what gravity is, or what life is. May the love and the peace of Jesus be with us.

[@stonkez8452]

@@jwu1950 Well, we may not be able to adequately explain what 'life' is, but we are at least capable of identifying the absence of it. The 'Turing Test' for example and placing mirrors under the noses of animals that appear to be asleep to see if condensation accumulates... Our knowledge of the force of gravity is also limited but, like life, comprehension of anything always is, at least to some extent. There is, after all, only so many layers of an onion that can be peeled away. Iterations of the question 'why' inevitably result in a brick wall of understanding eventually...

[@jwu1950]

@@stonkez8452 Condensations are the effects caused by being still alive, but not what life is. Newton admitted he did not know what gravity is. Einstein believed gravity either does not exist or is a fictitious force. He modelled gravity as space/time curvatures, but that is bullshit because no one knows what time is or what space is, let alone if time and/or space is straight or curved. Quantum physicists believe gravity are caused by graviton, but they can't find any graviton after spending many, many millions of taxpayer's money. Truth is, life, God, gravity, time, and space are metaphysical, unobservable, and unknowable by humans. No human knows what God is, what gravity is, what life is, what time is, or what space is, not even Jesus because Jesus is a human. May the love and the peace of Jesus be with us.

[@stonkez8452]

@@jwu1950 In practical terms, you're right, the force of gravity will probably remain a mystery to scientists during the course of our lifetimes. But that aspect of reality is not entirely unknowable.

[@jwu1950]

@@stonkez8452 No human knows or can know gravity, God, life, space, or time. Period. Not now and not in the future. May the love and the peace of Jesus be with us

[@rafaeljhoni7405]

Thanks professor!!!. I am brazilian and here all philosophy mainstream is about Karl Marx and socialism, ZzzzZzz, very boring.

[@andysondur]

No just in Brazil. That's the sad truth in many countries.

[@Aman-qr6wi]

Marxism is heavily built on hegel which is itself built on kant. I came here to understand Hegel's Science of logic in which he talks about categories and criticizes kant.

[@malikialgeriankabyleswag4200]

The properties of something "existing in space and time" and "The projector exists" are no different.. What made Kant think you can posit the existence of anything, or even begin to posit anything at all, without also tagging along the existence of space and time.. This duality between thought and reality is silly I dont understand why it's in all these philosophies.. Like the realm of thought is seperable from reality.. Thought itself predicts space and time and the objective world, and the world from its inception in the big bang predicted conscious beings that would understand it.. And theres a proverb from Islamic traditions that God said "I was a hidden treasure, I created the world that I may know Myself"

[@malikialgeriankabyleswag4200]

@philosophy and PA The majority of those who talk about God are silly. And they're not ever talking about God, they're talking about themselves. Just like the Sufis say. It's all just a reflection of themselves for the majority of people.

[@SumanSourav66]

Philosophers just vomit their ideas .... good teachers makes that tasty...

[@arthurgreene4567]

The fact that you have such a complete and clear understanding of so much of western philosophy combined with the fact that you are a Trump supporter confirm my suspicion that the western philosophical tradition is a dead end, games with words and definitions, huge structures that avoid clarifying the basic questions, pointless and unhelpful.