On Limitations to Conceptual Knowledge in Kantian Categories and Postmodernist Philosophy

1. Introduction

Qualifying such terms as “human knowledge” has too often been presented in the context of the “dasein” (Heidegger, 2008) or “experiential”, developmental (accumulated) knowledge – explicitly, what they cover is a “patterned” extrapolation from the original, single impetus that the “dasein”, among other such interpretations, describes. Each repetition is therefore formative of a larger and eventually complete human faculty. This, however, does not address intelligence in terms of specified boundaries.

Chalmers (Chalmers, 2014) interprets much of the same, the capacity for knowledge is made from known origins, where scrutability forms the potential, whole knowledge for a being. As such, in deriving that scrutable knowledge from the object is to remove – such a trap as Locke falls into where the falseness of “innate principles” (Locke, 1690) are described with respect to objects of thought, rather than Categorical inclusions of components.

First Thesis: that the difference, although, in accordance with Derrida’s remarks (“there cannot be science of difference itself in its operation”), is compounded with the claim for absolutism, “as it is impossible to have a science of the origin of presence itself,”. However, this is true only for the immediate object(s), otherwise the entire knowledge base effectively converges among similarities because of these differences where the finite number of Categories must limit the expression of objects. Interestingly, as opposed to a more standard phenomenology1, we therefore assume a limit to information.

As such, what Postmodernism (Sweetman, 1999) is individually capable of relative to a more traditional phenomenology is its point of dimensionality; in such a scope as sensibility, one may assume each object to, on account of its innately different location, to express a “continuous plane” of objects. Further, the most significant exploratory use of the difference is Deconstruction. With convergence in mind, we alter the plane to have an effective limit, a limit made by human sensibility and capacity for thought (such a capacity as is assumed in Kant’s Categories).

Unfortunately, Derrida and much of the postmodernist movement is limited by how it chooses to infer its case for phenomena: in theoretical pursuits, we are limited to such ideas as the Hyperreality or a formalisation of hermeneutics.

Second Thesis: because the difference is (almost explicitly) limited to human sensibility, an entirely different mode of philosophical reasoning is required to properly understand the range and plane of human thought.

Therefore, this text introduces the conceptual identity of the “qualifying factors” and the more theoretical “knowledge base” respectively to address the needs of human capacity for thought and the expectation of what knowledge unbounded by such qualifying factors should produce. Explicitly, the qualifying factors (of which are applicable simultaneously to sensibility and human thought; an effective unity2) are the limitation of human thought to one focal point3 of information (relative to multiple focal points4), the uniform objectification of thought (which is shown in Lowe’s ontological categories), and the formation of higher-order constructions of knowledge that remain as uniform objects – these qualifying factors introduce, to assert the position of E.J. Lowe (Lowe, 2005), “what kind of things can exist and coexist”, and it is henceforth argued that the qualifying factors introduce the categories5. Do note, however, that the qualifying factors are also constructive for human intelligence as well as limiting – that one’s apprehension is limited equally by what constructs it is, hence, the absolute Duality of Being.

Further, the relationship between the qualifying factors and the Categories requires that the qualifying factors are generative of the Categories. Fortunately, the human qualitative factors are single-faceted (which is to assume that they are only physicalist6) with the exception of the focal point.

As a note, the idea of the Categories themselves have been subject to multiple interpretations, with such an aim as to pursue an “exhaustive” categorisation of human thoughtfulness. Often, however, this is not assumedly achieved (as addressed in this article), although relative approximations are diffuse to such an extent – between ontological categories such as Lowe’s (Lowe, 2005) and an Aristotelian/Kantian inquiry – that their efficacy can be distinguished. For the purposes of this study, the Aristotelian/Kantian method is used for its relevance towards conceivability.

Third Thesis: the categorisation that we produce for human thought (Aristotelian/Kantian) does not entirely “mirror” phenomenological reality; likewise, as observed in the Categories, human thought adopts a meta-relation such that we can appropriate ontological objects in thoughtful contexts where they become “quantities”, “qualities”, and “attributes”7. However, where we consider “quantities”, et cetera, they are objects – our treatment of categorical thought also ends here; we cannot explicate beyond that immediate meta reality.

The “knowledge base” is the expression of an unrestricted frame of concept. Granted that human limitations strictly remove the capacity for violations of the set Categories, the controlling qualifying factors must be set in an effective superposition in a theoretically, maximally expanded qualifying factors that construct, yet do not limit conceptual frames.

What the author intends to persuade with a discussion of the limits of the conceptual nature is the inability to construct like modes of thought: for instance, we cannot have a second, wholly distinct Communism that achieves the same dictum on materialism and social product – just as we cannot have a higher modum of science (we may modify such ideas as the scientific method or import/export biases, but the modum is the same) – as a postulate, levelled understandings based on the upwards accumulation of knowledge are impossible by all scales of concept (driven by the qualifying factors) because all are simply one, individual state of being).

2.1. Orientable Categories

Knowledge, in accordance with the Categories, must be oriented in the favour of some dominating Category. This is true because of the simple significance of the Ontological Categories (Westerhoff, 2002) over the bare irreducibility of Categories – this is understood as a bearing towards the object, further that modality, although it is irreducible, must be predicated on an object that allows for the modality’s existence.

In assuming an orientable Consciousness, the Category of modality particularly cannot exclusively be reckoned in producing a (conjectural) conceptual world because it is derivative on the ontological (quantity, quality) form of the object. As such, we orient our own conceptual knowledge against modality and towards quantity, quality.

2.2. Developments on á Priorí Knowledge

Given that we restrict á priorí knowledge to what is specifically available to human minds, then a different set of qualifying factors then produces a different capacity of á priorí knowledge. With this information, we reach a problem of observation: what should the á priorí be recognisable as between different minds (evidently, with their different qualifying factors)?

Á priorí thought is recognisable (Kant, 2003) when it is formed by other humans whose minds are not the same as our own (as such, of the same qualifying factors and mind), and as such where an á priorí thought is not recognisable where another mind would recognise it allows us to show a different set of qualifying factors.

3. Conclusion and Significance

This article introduces two central ideas, the latter as a corollary. The first is that knowledge is explicitly limited to its conceptual Categories in accordance with the differential in Derrida’s worn; the second is the disjunction between the limit (shown in stationary thought) and performative thought: that “meta” constructions are disjoint from our basic thought and interpretation of ideas is exclusively generative of thoughtful reality.

It achieves a model for conceptual intelligence that hitherto has not been introduced. The brevity of this piece serves as an introductory work to the topics in this article. It also – as a note of conjecture – excludes Consciousness from being assumed as a productive entity for conceptual knowledge.