The World as it is In Itself

[@Tom-rg2ex]

It's wild how much people thinking about meaning, and pursuit of absorbing those hundreds of years of thoughts, can drive you to wondering what meaning even means, in a meaningful way I mean. But if it gets you to think, I guess it means something. You know what I mean? I still think it means a lot more than the TV shows and movies we're supposed to take meaning from, although I mean I guess that depends on what one means by meaning. Different people's meanings mean more than other meanings mean. I don't mean that in specific relationship to this particular lecture, but in how many different meanings this eclectic variety of ideas expressed in the different videos this channel posts.

[@militaryandemergencyservic3286]

what an interesting talk.

[@perkinscurry8665]

Always a fan of Brit philosophers who criticize Kant but never bother to learn how to pronounce his name correctly. I had one professor who rationalized this by saying that actually Kant was born in an area of Germany that used the hard 'a'. It's like listening to Lena Lamont in "Singin' in the Rain" trying to learn how to correctly enunciate "I can't stand him." At least this guy owned up at the beginning to not really understanding Kant.

[@smkh2890]

Aussie Germane Greer insisted on pronouncing it 'Kunt' .

[@deponensvogel7261]

@@smkh2890 Well, apart from some miniscule differences in stressing consonants, the German pronunciation of 'Kant' _is_ a phonetical twin of 'cunt'. Pronouncing it 'can't' [British] or 'can't' [American] is equally wrong, if your goal is to faithfully reproduce German pronunciation; which, by the way, isn't something any language does when integrating foreign names (at least, not in a thorough manner, convincing to native speakers).

[@smkh2890]

@@deponensvogel7261 I'm sure Prof Greer was doing it deliberately !

[@exalted_kitharode]

I couldn't quite understand the supposed clever solution to the puzzle. He allegedly rejects the notion of representation, but how so if in the end he wants so that we'll be able to grasp the nature of the world? In which other way other than through representation? Does he present disjunctivism? Could someone explain to me what's his main move and why Kantians and anti-realists won't be able to defuse it?

[@le2380]

His main move seems to be the claim that we only assume the possibillity of a representation distinct from the world as it is because we imagine it would be possible to view the world without representation (directly, seeing it as it is). He claims that it is impossible, even for God, to view the world without representation (because perception requires representation per definition) in order to criticize another perception requiring representation like for example sight. As such all perceptions are "equal", and human sight is just as good as Gods perception. The result of this is that everything, even the view of God, is representation as it was defined, and if everything is representation then the representation is the thing in itself, and as such there is no such thing as representation, and everything we percieve is the thing in itself. As a reader of Schopenhauer, but not Kant yet, i can say this is obviously wrong since one way of percieving even in a single human can prove the representations of another way of perceiving to be wrong. You can for example see things, like a pile of shit, that you are convinced is a pile of shit (a certain representation), but which your sense of smell proves isn't (your representation did not fit with objective reality), because then it would smell more. My take is this: Mistakes prove that there is an objective reality beyond our perception, although we can attempt to improve our perception in order to make less mistakes. Is it possible to arrive at a state were mistakes are never made, because our perception is completely aligned with the real world? And would that alignment be just a matter of chance, or a proof that we finally percieve the world as it actually is? Alot of interesting questions there.

[@michaelwu7678]

@@le2380 not sure if you've gotten around to Kant yet, but God does not perceive the world. God intuits the world intellectually

[@ruskiny280]

Bottom line of all "philosophysing" "it is stranger than we can think". JBS Haldane.

[@militaryandemergencyservic3286]

However, I would agree rather with Wittgenstein's point 1:1 from his Tractatus - that the world is the totality of facts not of things (which indeed seems to be what the speaker in this video is saying at the start of this video - unless I am mistaken)

[@jeffhirshberg5171]

As Heidegger said, "Language is the house of being."@@FroggyTheGroggy

[@AlbertAlbertB.]

@@FroggyTheGroggy bloody nonsense

[@shafikmestry3728]

That is a position of logical atomism but the Hegelian monism rises upon it as the logical atomist thinkw that facts can be studied individually and the interaction between those facts become itself facts that can be studied. Nevertheless, everything is in constant interaction as the world is universal then one but plural as the human body can contain a mind whose indecisive about a choice. Everything that seems opposed, only seems as all concepts are one. So the world is one.

[@shafikmestry3728]

​@@FroggyTheGroggyLanguage is action. The thought is only the reflection of work.

[@militaryandemergencyservic3286]

@@shafikmestry3728 I note that CS Lewis in his book Christian Reflections does not agree with the Hegelian model (his historicism, anyway)

[@azsx299]

Talk about brutalism

[@connectingupthedots]

How to solve the problem of access to the world in itself? Change the definition of the world I guess? This dude falls into the typical idealist trap of confusing 'the world' for 'one's world' or 'the world of human culture/meaning' etc. None of that exists in the world in itself in a recognizable form, it would just appear as some arrangement of stuff. His postulation that not having access to the world in itself would prevent us from conceptualizing the idea of the world in and of itself is idiotic.

[@shafikmestry3728]

As the world in itself doesn't exist as it's only a tool for humanity to conceptualise a perspective out of the human's world, it should be surpassed and one must accept that there's no such thing. All that we can know, is what exists; what doesn't is what we cannot know. But the process of knowing the world of human perspective has his foundation in humanity hence the subject, the collective human subject, is the source of knowledge of the only world there's, itself. Everything that surrounds us, causes our reactions; so by studying our environment, we study ourselves. The object is the subject; henceforth the subject, here humanity in its collectivity, is the substance of the world; of the WHOLE world. The world in itself is humanity.

[@le2380]

Good catch. He does what every pseudo-philosopher these days do, they define the world of representation as objective reality.

[@genesises]

@@le2380 he adresses people like you in the first 3 minutes

[@StatelessLiberty]

The problem is that if we had no contact whatsoever with the "world in itself" then it couldn't possibly be the subject of language. If a "thing in itself" is, by assumption, necessarily unperceivable then you have no idea what you're talking about. You couldn't possibly conceptualise the kind of objects that inhabit the "world in itself." This is what Morris means when he says that the conclusion of the idealist argument is actually that the "world in itself" is a meaningless concept, i.e. the idealist argument begins with a distinction between the "world in itself" and "appearances" but concludes by showing that the distinction is meaningless.

[@genesises]

@@StatelessLiberty i think the 'world in itself' meaning/idea being argued here is from a physics/factual science perspective and these people have a need for absoluteness - which is kind of contrary to the point of the topic in question. at least that's the impression i get and i relate it a bit to the "god is dead" idea and modern cultures obsession with measuring / absolute truths / facts..... if that makes any sense 8)