On 7/31/2021 at 8:59 AM, Boydstun said:
Physical Existence, contra Kant, contra Rand
I had stated above in this thread, in the post Primacies of Existence:
Primacy of existence runs also against Kant when he writes that “apperception, and with it thought, precedes all possible determinate arrangement of presentations” (KrV A289 B345). Against Kant also, and in step with Aristotle, Rand writes: “‘Things as they are’ are things as perceived by your mind” (AS 1036). . . .
Rand spoke in that passage against Kant of “things as they are” and not of “things in themselves.” She was right to avoid the latter phrase because of the well-known shading of it. That latter phrase, down from Kant, intimates a systematic inaccessibility of mind-independent Existence with its Identities by our cognitive faculties. In the same vein, rightly she would reject talk of the transcendental object or talk of noumena and their comprehensive contrast to phenomena, . . .
Talk of “things in themselves” meaning things free of any situation is talk of nothing. “Things in themselves,” meaning merely all that they are, is a sound sense of the phrase and not Kant’s sense when he is contrasting things in themselves with those same things as they are in their external relations such as in their relation to human consciousness. Things in all that they are are what we know part of and know that our known is only part of the all there to be known. Further, existence of a thing is nothing more than—indeed, it is identically the same as—existence of all that a thing is.
Join with this extract from my paper “Existence, We” (83-84 )
If, on the other hand, the space coeternal with the conjectured God is conceived as an immaterial thing, as Platonist Henry More had conceived it, then that conception of space is wrong; physical space having some synthetic geometry or other is required for any apprehension of space(s) and for any intelligence. The conception of an immaterial cosmic intelligence alone with immaterial space is ruled out by need of mind-independent existence for any consciousness; ruled out, I say, provided Existence is most fundamentally physical existence, metaphysically and epistemologically at bottom physical existence.
Then space and time exist with the very necessity that Existence exists and vice versa. Contra Kant, space and time are existents not fundamentally dependent upon our experience or our intelligent existence (nor dependent upon the existence of any other intelligence). Space and time are belongings of Existence. The necessities of space and time are necessities-that, which we ourselves occasion and recognize. Physical necessities of space and time are commonplace; we are cognizant of them, for example, in design, manufacture, and performance of an internal combustion engine. Cognizance of formalities of the surface plane of still coffee in the mug is the stuff of Euclidean plane geometry, as articulated by Euclid or by Hilbert. Formalities of the physical are physical realities, even though formalities as formalities cannot be comprehended without recognition of their independence from indices of particular time and space, essential in physical existence. Formalities of the physical are the antidote to Kant’s transcendental doctrines of space and time.
. . .
Existence is most fundamentally physical existence, and although she declined that conception on occasion, Rand tacitly relied on it in her fundamental metaphysics and conception of consciousness (Rand in Binswanger and Peikoff 1990, 245–47, contra 157 . . . ). To Leibniz, Rand should join me in stressing his own dicta that truth is mentation; specifically, it is a recognition of reality. Eternal facts are logically prior to recognition of those realities. However, that is insufficient assertion of the primacy of existence over consciousness. Most fundamentally, metaphysically and epistemically, Herr Leibniz and Miss Rand, reality is physical existence (contra, for example, Leibniz 1702, 188–89). Rand wrongly held that one’s concept of the physical world is more advanced than one’s concept of existence in general. * To the contrary, I maintain that notion or concept of physical existence does not wait on either genetic or logical development out of a generalized existence that subsumes _physical existence _and its complement mental existence. We begin with physical existence. World, self, and other are the one and only sort of existence then grasped: physical existence. . . . Physical existence is our fundamental ontology, beginning to end.
And with this extract from EW (85 )
In one’s conscious and subconscious existence is resonance with existence in general, resonance with of-existence in general, and special of the latter, resonance with other person.
_Existence exists _implies existents existing among other existents. Further, the act of grasping the statement _Existence exists _implies performance of and grasp of acts, not only acts of consciousness, but acts of living body. There are no acts of and grasps of consciousness without acts of and intentional grasps with one’s living body . . . . There is no grasp of the externality of existence to subject without grasps of externality to one’s body. If one observes one’s consciousness, one is acquainted with one’s living body and one’s actions with it.
* Rand in Binswanger and Peikoff 1990, 245–47. Leonard Peikoff (1991) repeats this error: “The concept [existence] does not specify that a physical world exists” (5). Yes, it does. Rand should have treated growth of the concept of physical world in individual development as she treated growth of the concept man (1966–67, 43–45). A parallel error is found in Aquinas in his view that the first object of the intellect, the proper object of the intellect, is being in general and not primarily physical being, even though knowing physical being is chronologically first (_Summa Theologica _I.5.2, 84.7, in Aquinas [ca. 1265–73] 1911, 1997, 44, 808–9).