You’re absolutely correct; the structure of our brains and bodies does greatly determine our ways of looking at things. One of the important functions these structures serve is to act as limits on the desires and activities of consciousness. We can’t say the structures of the brain and body are simply due to how we chose to look at the world at any particular instant, otherwise human beings would exist in any number of shapes.

But what’s missing in this way of looking at things is that these currently existing structures also arose slowly in their own time frames through acts of volition, creative advances, and in some cases accidents. This becomes especially evident when we observe the increasingly man-made world we live in today. People seem to be living in their own worlds, through art, building, and various social conventions, many of which carry the weight of law.

My point is that very little of what is becoming common place in the world today, like computers, genetic engineering, nano technology, quantum engineering, etc. could have been determined by looking at the human body and brain 1,000 years ago. Despite the most adamant views of 19th century science the brain is not merely a mechanism but a living thing that follows different laws than inert things do. The brain is a living thing that also has the ability to change how it changes. But what’s significant here is that these things are now changing by human design.

I now realize the way I put it may have sounded cavalier but my intention was only to indicate Kant’s arguments have no compelling logical priority in consciousness. As I understand it one of Kant’s main goals was to restore the underpinnings of previously accepted human reasoning that Hume had knocked out so unexpectedly. The case here is that I fully recognize the reality of structure in human experience but I completely disagree with the slipshod way Kant went about explaining it.

In my view the material structures of the brain and body act as brakes to the endless activity of the mind. But while they slow down the mind they also offer a place to rest and vantage point to witness the effects of our individual and collective actions. One might imagine, if these occurred only in a consciousness ungrounded by a brain or body they would race beyond us so that we retained nothing. But even though I find this scaffolding to be incredibly important, it isn’t created in steel. I believe the brain and body to be much more plastic than previously acknowledged. These so-called ’structures’ are first living things and they are changing through human activity and at an ever increasing pace.

But your point is well taken. I agree with you when you state our ways of looking at things affect the structures of our bodies far less than the structures affect our views. Freedom doesn’t exist in completely open potentiality. Freedom arises on occasion through uniquely free decisions and actions. But however urgently freedom is desired it can only have true weight when free decisions stand up upon the ground of necessity.

Boris

“We share similar way of looking at things because we have similar features (bodies, brains, etc.) ” BUT NOT “We have similar features (bodies, brains, etc.) because we have similar ways of looking at things.”

There’s a causal relationship: the structure of our brains and bodies determine our ways of looking at things, but our ways of looking at things do not determine the structure of our brains and bodies (or if they do, it’s to a much lesser extent than the other way round).