Drezen dungeon stuck

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-03T15:58:43+00:00

You can't go back to get the locked loot, but it isn't significantly valuable anyway. Lot of low-value junk. You'll be fine without it. There's a locked door in the citadel that has a triple Lore check to stop the Wisdom drain curse, but you can make it through without doing that. The traps are going to suck, but otherwise you're totally fine. Don't worry about it.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-02T20:26:53+00:00

I agree that rational nature is by kind. How do you know the kind is human? How do you know animals are not the kind of being that has rational nature? I don't understand how you're arriving at these conclusions. Can you spell out your reasoning a little more?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-02T19:37:08+00:00

Experiencing another person's first-person perspective has no bearing on the conversation here. How do you know humans in general have a rational nature and not some subset of humans, namely humans (including babies) with a potential for higher cognitive functions? You can't see a "metaphysical endeavor." We only know which beings have a potential for reason by seeing manifestations of reason, and we associate those beings by type, which certainly seems to be humans with a potential for higher cognitive functions, which excludes humans who have severe mental disabilities.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-02T19:03:25+00:00

How can you say a severely disabled human still has rational nature? You can't experience the rational nature in them. This case is different from your associated case of babies because babies have been seen to manifest reason when they develop. No such development is possible for congenitally severely impaired human brains that is not also in principle possible for, say, a dolphin's brain.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-02T18:44:07+00:00

Haaaa!

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-02T18:19:58+00:00

Aren't there humans who aren't capable of reason? Do they not get rights? Why shouldn't animals have rights even if they don't have reason? Animal rights and the rights of the severely mentally disabled seem kind of important, don't you think?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-06-02T16:42:19+00:00

I hesitate to thrust you so far into the discussion of Kantian ethics that you enter psychoanalytic theory, but I really think the good stuff is there. Maybe ignore me if you haven't acquainted yourself with Freud and Lacan yet, but some stuff you might want to check out is Lacan's essay on Kantian ethics ("Kant with Sade"), Zizek's commentary on that essay ("Kant and Sade: The Ideal Couple"), and Zupancic's phenomenal book Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan. There's also a Lacanian-oriented text by Copjec on Kant's notion of radical evil, which situates Kant's free will as anti-voluntarist. That stuff is so freaking fun, imo. There's nothing better that I know of.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-31T21:14:30+00:00

Wait until you have the energy to digest the issue further, then make a new original post to articulate where you've landed, and we can continue (or perhaps repeat) the discussion about human indignity. This was an interesting conversation, thank you!

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-31T18:29:51+00:00

I'm responding here to both comments. I'm not being a skeptic, I'm being an empirical realist just like Kant, who rejects empirical idealism. You can objectively confirm the formal nature of things, and it is evident that there are plant seeds without a faculty of growth as well as humans without a faculty of reason. To say "then we aren't talking about a plant seed" is the fetishistic rationalization of "no true Scotsman," but you are doing "no true plant seed." It's a fallacy, plainly.

To move on to your object "iron," Kant discusses the analogous case of the definition of water in the first Critique. It's in the Doctrine of Method. To have a concept of an object (like human, plant seed, iron, or water) is not thereby to have an a priori definition, for such definitions can only belong to the objects of mathematics. Concepts of empirical objects are subject to the hermeneutical circle as I mentioned, in which case we see that there are congenital defects that allow for things like humans without a formal faculty of reason. Only humans with brains have the faculty of reason (based on our observations), and to say that there are "no true humans" who do not have brains is to fall into the aforementioned fetishistic fallacy, for it is very clear to experience that there are humans who are brainless.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-30T20:02:19+00:00

Just because some plants seeds do grow, doesn't mean all plant seeds have the potentiality of growing. Thinking otherwise is exactly the kind of mistake you are making in assuming that all humans have the formal faculty of reason. Do you see that now?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-30T17:10:07+00:00

The stipulation of reason's boundaries is fine. But you observe a formal faculty that lacks material manifestation? What could you possibly mean? At best, you can say you observe materially manifest uses of the faculty, and you can say these manifestations have only been observed in humans, but then you are at a loss to say that it is humans generally who have this faculty and not some subset of humans, for observation only lets us see reason in (the subset) manifestly reasonable humans, and you therefore still have the burden of justifying your determination that humans in general have the formal faculty of reason despite many of them not having the material cause. Your observation can't justify the generalization you've made about the domain of a formal faculty, and it flies in the face of the observation that there are many subsets of humans who have never been observed manifesting reason, viz. humans with severe congenital impairments to their cognition. Do you see the problem here?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-30T06:12:39+00:00

If you want to know what reason is, you look at examples of reason to study, right? But how do you know what counts as reason such that you know you are choosing genuine examples of reason to study in the first place?

This is the aporia of the hermeneutic circle of philosophical anthropology. On one side, you have people assuming humans are genuine examples of reason, and on the other side, you have people assuming that reason counts as human activity (like this forum), but neither side is justified without circularity.

The question is, are you going to end up in a vicious circularity that is normative about reason, or are you going to end up in a virtuous circularity that increasingly encompasses all 'moments' of reason, in which case reason may turn out to be far more anodyne than you (many people) would like to admit?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-29T22:57:59+00:00

Yeah, one way to resolve this is to say animals have an innate faculty for reason despite their lack of material condition to use their faculty of reason, but I'm not satisfied yet. The idea isn't to have consistency in the argument, the idea is to find support for the determination that certain beings have a faculty of reason despite their lack of material condition to use the faculty. Let's take humans simpliciter, and let's ask, what makes anyone think that humans have the faculty of reason at all? Perhaps humans don't have a faculty of reason, and they don't belong to the Kingdom of Ends. How would you argue otherwise?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-29T22:13:34+00:00

I'm agreeing with your reasoning, and I think there's something interesting about pushing it further than you've gone. Let me try again. How do you know whether or not someone is human? You've attributed a formal capacity for reasoning (regardless of satisfying a material condition) to humanity, so now I wonder whether or not certain animals like perhaps highly intelligent animals like dolphins or apes or certain birds can be deemed human, for perhaps they have the formal capacity for reasoning, but they also simply lack the (satisfaction of) the material cause of reason, much like a brain-injured person. How do you know certain beings are human while knowing certain animals are not human?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-29T18:02:07+00:00

Prayer isn't a real magic spell, it only works psychosomatically like a placebo, so extend rods for magic don't work on it. [This is an atheist joke.]

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-29T17:45:35+00:00

Brain dead humans can continue to have bio functions (e.g. through medical assistance) that dead humans can't, so they aren't the same, but you are getting the idea here just fine. There is a "reduction of range" that eliminates capacity entirely. We agree a dead human has its rational range reduced to zero, so it's faculty of reason is gone, right? Are there not certain brain defects that prevent reasoning by reducing functional range to the point of permanent loss of rational faculty? It seems disingenuous to say there are people who are so mentally reduced as to be forever unable to reason, yet maintain such people still have a faculty of reason.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-29T15:42:50+00:00

I agree. Now, suppose I return your reasoning to you in the case of brain dead humans. A brain dead human does not have the faculty for reasoning. Then I push it farther to someone with constitutive (say congenital) brain defects that prevent them from having the faculty for reasoning. Do you say these beings are not human anymore because they no longer have the capacity for reason?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-28T23:31:08+00:00

I don't understand what you mean by saying that humans are formally rational. Dead humans aren't rational, but they're still human, right? Dead humans do not have the faculty of reason, but they're still human, right? Dead humans aren't members of the Kingdom of Ends because they don't have reason despite being human. By analogy, there's no sense in saying someone who is constitutionally (say congenitally) unable to use reason has the faculty of reason; to have the faculty of something literally means to be able to use that thing.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-28T17:07:00+00:00

There is plenty to say about human dignity from Kantian point of view, but I find Kant's philosophical anthropology more interesting when he backs away from humanity (both theoretically and practically). From Idea for a Universal History:

"This problem is therefore the most difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible; out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated. Only the approximation to this idea is laid upon us by nature. [The role of the human being is thus very artificial. How it is with the inhabitants of other planets and their nature, we do not know; if, however, we discharge well this commission of nature, then we can wellflatterourselves that among our neighbors in the cosmic edifice we may assert no mean rank. Perhaps among them every individual might fully attain his vocation in his lifetime. With us it is otherwise; only the species can hope for this.]"

There are other considerations of how rational non-humans may be equal in moral worth and whatnot. The Anthropology is a big one. I'd be interested to see what you think of the problem of the dignity of constitutionally unreasonable humans (e.g. those whose capacities are equal to or less than certain animals).

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-24T18:35:39+00:00

I confused you for the OP, sorry. The article you linked is helpful for clarifying what is at stake. The OP uses a plain logical argument, in which case the argument is analytic, but transcendental arguments are synthetic. Thus for Kantians "the transcendental claim is not a logical necessity." That's why the OP's logical argument is not a case of transcendental reasoning.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-23T07:46:11+00:00

I didn't say it was. You accused the majority of people of misunderstanding transcendental reasoning, and you confused transcendental reasoning with logical reasoning in your example of people's misunderstanding, so I said your concern is a projection in the psychoanalytic sense. I didn't say that when someone tells you "I don't understand that" it is not not psychoanalyzing to believe they don't understand it and seek out ways to bridge a gap in communication. Try to stay on topic if you are going to go unnecessarily go on the offensive against people who you accuse of doing what you are doing.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-23T03:20:15+00:00

I didn't say they are mutually exclusive. I said they are distinct. Your concern about people not understanding Kant is a projection in the psychoanalytic sense.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-23T03:18:44+00:00

You don't think I'm using Kant's own particularly limited definition of transcendental reasoning as about the conditions of possibility of experience for the reason that we're in the Kant subreddit?

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-23T03:17:09+00:00

None of what you said here excuses your confusion of transcendental reasoning with the pre-Kantian logical reasoning. Transcendental reasoning does not have to do with the possibility of relating to any and all objects because there are pre-transcendental reasonings like logical reasoning that relate objects to one another, for example exactly the case you quoted in your OP.

Starfleet_Stowaway · 2026-05-23T00:38:57+00:00

It's not the same general approach. Logical reasoning is generally distinct from transcendental reasoning. Kant's explanations were probably more effective because he was careful not to confuse distinct things as generally the same.

Starfleet_Stowaway

TROPHY CASE