On Sep 10, 4:08 am, Scott H <zinites_p...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Everyone is free to debate about this, but I won't discuss it with
> Michael Gordge if he chooses to use personal attacks.
>
> Kant gives us an example in an attempt to illustrate how we cannot
> know things in themselves.
>
> >From Critique of Pure Reason (A 48/B 65):
>
> "Take the proposition that three straight lines permit construction of
> a figure, and try ... to derive it from these mere concepts ... Now
> suppose that there did not lie within you a power to intuit a
> priori ... and that the object (the triangle) were something in
> itself ... If that were so, how could you say that what necessarily
> lies in [or belongs to] your subjective conditions for constructing a
> triangle must also belong necessarily to the triangle itself? For,
> after all, you could not add to your concepts (of three lines)
> anything new (the figure) that would therefore have to be met with
> necessarily in the object, since this object would be given prior to
> your cognition rather than through it. Hence you could not
> synthetically a priori establish anything whatsoever about external
> objects ..."
>
> The mathematical form of the statement is,
>
> (El)(Em)(En)(Line(l) & Line(m) & Line(n) & EnclosesATriangle(l, m,
> n)),
>
> stated in Euclidean geometry, where (Ex) means, "there exists an x
> such that ..."
>
> First of all, I consider three lines to be objects, not concepts.
> Second, it's not clear to me what he means when he says that "this
> object would be given prior to my cognition rather than through it."
That you have cognition means that all objects are perceived as
concepts. You do not perceive an object but a concept in which your
experience of the "thing-in-itself" resides.
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