16 Sep 2013

20 minutes with pain and difficulty first thing at 6 AM after what was a good night sleep: my goal was 300 lowrise steps, had to stop for a breather after 220, and then resumed. Then, very tired, slept until 10:30 AM save for breakfast.

Chemotherapy after-effect?

COPR Challenge Question 2: Is Kant a nominalist and a realist? Is that even possible?

Look at Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding #18 (B140): “one person combines the representation of a certain word with one thing, another with something else; and the unity of consciousness in that which is empirical is not, with regard to that which is given, necessarily and universally valid.”

Comments: It is possible (logically consistent) to be an epistemological nominalist (regarding it, as Kant regards it above, an “empirical” matter, a local agreement as it were, that two people agree on the referent of a word) and an ontological realist, regarding the ultimate fabric of the world as does Wittgenstein of the Tractatus “Independent of the will” (“the world is independent of my will”, Tractatus 6.373).

But: is “independent of my will” a definition of ontological realism?

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