(no subject)

“By the word synthesis, in its most general signification, I understand the process of joining different representations to each other and of comprehending their diversity in one cognition. This synthesis is pure when the diversity is not given empirically but a priori (as that in space and time).”

“Synthesis, generally speaking, is, as we shall afterwards see, the mere operation of the imagination — a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no cognition whatever, but of the working of which we are seldom even conscious. ”

--- Immanuel Kant. “The Critique of Pure Reason.”

Mind is a distributed imagination machine. Also see, Why Information Grows.

(no subject)

“The principles of modality are, however, not objectively synthetical, for the predicates of possibility, reality, and necessity do not in the least augment the conception of that of which they are affirmed, inasmuch as they contribute nothing to the representation of the object. But as they are, nevertheless, always synthetical, they are so merely subjectively. That is to say, they have a reflective power, and apply to the conception of a thing, of which, in other respects, they affirm nothing, the faculty of cognition in which the conception originates and has its seat. So that if the conception merely agree with the formal conditions of experience, its object is called possible; if it is in connection with perception, and determined thereby, the object is real; if it is determined according to conceptions by means of the connection of perceptions, the object is called necessary.

The principles of modality therefore predicate of a conception nothing more than the procedure of the faculty of cognition which generated it. ” (emphasis mine).

--- Immanuel Kant, “The Critique of Pure Reason.”

== possible - impossible
== existing - non-existing
== necessary - contingent

The principles of modality need to be stated explicitly when making predictions, i.e. we have to specify methods and related potential failure of imagination, esp. wrt possibility.