How much money do you want to waste?

Viggen, I think we would, at this point, have to talk in person to carry out this conversation; the connection is breaking down because it would take too long in this medium to define what you mean by "metaphysical" vs "physical" vs. "super-real", "surrealist", "sight-seeing", etc.

I stand by my view of Kant, however; outlining a space/time interpretive matrix in the mind is the essense of a discourse on the subject-mind, or subject-ivity, regardless of its ultimate failure in displacing Hume and the progeny of British empiricism in Western culture.

Again, I don't know what you mean by "synthetic" structures in the mind. We, Homo sapiens, possess a space/time matice in our mind because life emerged into a reality of space/time dimension (or, more accurately, Newtonian reality is suseptible to a space/time embeddedness by a mind and our forebears adapted to that potentiality in reality, if you can follow that). This existential-orientating matrice is inherent in all minds, human and non-human. As such, I don't know how one could characterize it as "synthetic" in any way (unless you are saying that it is self-created delusion...but this is unclear. I haven't heard of anyone displacing Kantian space/time theory this century, but you never know...).

As for space/time reality projected by a stereo being "semantic[ally]", I don't know how that stereo recreation, in terms of the mind's subjective experience, is related to the construction of language.

On the breadmaker analogy, this is exactly what I've been talking about, namely, the assumption by objectivists that a subjectivist mind that creates a stereo from perspective of catalyzing the fading of objective thinking is delusional per se (assumably, you mean one who adopts this perspective exhibits dream-like irrationality by using the term "surrealist" [which, actually, is a school of aesthetics, i.e. Tanguy, Dali, etc. so, again, we are having trouble defining our terms to each other]). A mind that compares one experience to the next IS conducting an empiric experiment, the only difference being that the listening experiment can only be confirmed to himself. This does not imply delusion (or, fraud, as your King's clothes analogy implies). As for believing that a stereo piece comes before the mind's desire for the beauty of music - a position that claims that the intent to create a "technological" instrument is subsequent to the creation of technolgy - well, without the mind no piece of technology would exist. That I would think even a mind attached to the technology would have difficulty denying.

Anyway, we have tried people's patience enough (I can hear the rumble of the townpeople rising over the hill, pitchforks in hand. The what-cable-for-Kant comment has a point, and I LIKED IT!). Thank you for the FUN. At this point, we will have to agree to disagree. If you want to carry this farther, please feel free to contact me. Mark.

1. rationalism isn't the intermediary step between objectivism and subjectivism. It is the root of both. Without rationalism, where are objective and subjective notions from?

2. I have no idea what points you are making, and I read your post atleast 5 times already, ezmeralda.

Clueless, Kant studied to be a lawyer before Hume's writings inspired him to be a philosopher. Since he would probably claim there is no primary or a priori cause that a cable would improve the sound of a system, one would assume he'd go for the cheap radioshack stuff. But, I believe Kant to be an open minded person, or else he wouldn't have accepted the thought that people are born with innate ideas that are not derived from the real world. Thus, he'd still buy radioshack cables because Kant was a poor man.

Ok no more talk about philosophy. Fun while it lasted. But like all good things, it must come to an end. Why? Who knows. Just to answer some of your questions, Anton something, father of surrealism, coined the word surrealism, meaning super real, suggesting the subconscious contains a view or reality that is more real than real reality. Physical and metaphysical in the Aristotleian sense. Sight-seeing is what tourists do. Synthetic ideas is a concept created by kant: new ideas are created by combining older ideas. Anywho, bye!

No cable can improve the sound of your system. They all can degrade the signals coming from your source. Go find the one cable/s with construction and configurations to work best with your system. Once they work in good synergy, these new cables have become part of your good sounding system !

Hey Viggen, it looks like you've found a friend! :) On definitions, yes, I know, but the context of where words are placed changes their meaning, ie words are not things separate from their contextual ground...like objects are not separate from space, or sound is not separate from silence, or thoughts are not separate from the causal ground of silence in the mind from which they arise... somthing I think I've been talking about. Hmmm...

For example, if you place the word surreal-ism, indicating a school of thought, and place it in juxtaposition to a claim of dream-like irrationality, then one assumes that you are talking about something different than Kant's terms, which are mentioned, vaguley, obtusely, in the previous paragraph.

I sent you an e-mail if you care to continue. Cheers.

Incidentally, my question still remains outstanding. This is no "philosophy" here but a very simple inquiry that we all can have an opinion on because we all listen to music:

When I listen and begin to seep deeper into the music and my thoughts fade in their influence, and I stop listening with my thinking and instead listen with a mind without thoughts, am I still perceiving? Is the experience of listening that I am having a valid one, or irrational because it doesn't include thinking about music?