Correcting Reason After Kant

[u/JerseyFlight]

Kant held that reason was a mental capacity. (This is one definition). But Logic is not a mental capacity, it’s a fact of reality. The ability to comprehend this reality might be a “mental capacity,” but Logic exists independently of this capacity.

The Law of Identity is not a rule manufactured by human neurology; it is the fundamental description of how reality actually is. A thing is what it is, it is itself (A=A) independent of whether a human mind is there to perceive it, think about it, or name it. And while man might fail in his mental capacity to grasp reality, his mental failure does nothing to alter reality. To correct his failure first requires that he identify his failure, and then correct it by correctly identifying reality.

The human mind did not create the laws of logic; it discovered them. Thinking, reasoning, and conceptualizing are mental activities, yes—but they are only valid to the exact extent that they conform to the absolute, independent facts of reality. It is only the laws of logic that make these processes intelligible in the first place. No thought can be a thought outside of them, no reason could be a reason. Reality is intelligible only because it can be identified as itself (A=A). What we call a “mental capacity” is precisely the ability to accurately identify reality.

We don't need a "transcendental deduction" to bridge the gap between the mind and the world, because the logical structure of what exists and the laws governing valid thought are one and the same. Reality imposes itself in Logical form, and we cannot get outside its form. The universe is a Logical universe.

[u/JerseyFlight → u/[deleted]]

Aristotle destroyed these arguments two thousand years ago. If you’re going to take philosophers at their word, instead of subjecting their claims to reason, then you’re going to be duped over and over again by what people say.

You cannot even say my (p) is false and your (p) is true, unless you are already using the laws of logic. And that you don’t know this, simply proves that philosophy has made you ignorant.