Is Kant justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world?
In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant distinguished between the phenomenal world (the world as representation) and the noumenal world (the world as it is in itself). The former refers to the world as we experience it; the latter refers to the world as it exists independently of our experience. My question concerns whether Kant is justified in positing the existence of the noumenal world. I don't think that Kant's project can properly be appreciated without first considering the context within which he is writing, specifically, the sceptical challenge laid down by Hume and the advances in the natural sciences reached by Newton. As a caveat, I have not studied this topic formally but have instead relied on self-study and, as such, I apologise in advance if my explication of said topic is superficial.
Hume distinguished between relations of ideas and matters of fact, hence the term 'Hume's fork'. Hume's fork can be stated thus:
(1) Statements about ideas. These are analytic, necessary, and knowable a priori.
(2) Statements about the world. These are synthetic, contingent, and knowable a posteriori.
In Kantian terminology, members of (1) are known as analytic propositions and members of (2) are known as synthetic propositions.
Herein lies the crux of Hume's sceptical challenge. Hume points out that synthetic statements are not certain since it is logically possible that any given statement about the world is false. Moreover, analytic statements can only be used to prove other analytic statements, and mean nothing outside of the context of how they relate to each other, and therefore tell us nothing about the world.
In effect, Hume is stating that analytic statements are certain, but they tell us nothing about the world. Since they tell us nothing about the world, they cannot be used to prove synthetic statements. Hence, synthetic statements have no certainty. This meant that the Newtonian physics of Hume's day was uncertain. Now we turn to Kant.
Kant agrees with Hume that all knowledge begins with experience. However, Kant argues that it does not follow from this that all knowledge arises from experience. To quote Kenny:
Kant argues that Hume overlooked the existence of synthetic a priori statements. All metaphysical statements, Kant maintains, are of such a kind. We apply metaphysical concepts to the world in order to make experience possible at all. In other words, synthetic a priori metaphysical concepts are the pre-conditions of all experience. Hence, Kant distinguishes between the world as experience it (the world as it is experienced given the application of said concepts) and the world as it is independent of our experience.
It seems to me that Kant presupposes that there exists a world which, by virtue of its being independent of our experience, is unknowable, yet nevertheless is the cause of our experience. This presupposition seems to me unjustified. How does Kant know that such a world exists?
To quote Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols:
The problem, it seems to me, is that if we 'abolish' the noumenal/real world then our a priori metaphysical concepts are not applied to anything. Perhaps I am presupposing the validity of subject-predicate logic here? i.e. If there exists a predicate then there must exist a subject to which that predicate belongs; if there exist a priori metaphysical concepts then there must exist a world to which they are applied(?)
Thanks in advance.
Hume distinguished between relations of ideas and matters of fact, hence the term 'Hume's fork'. Hume's fork can be stated thus:
(1) Statements about ideas. These are analytic, necessary, and knowable a priori.
(2) Statements about the world. These are synthetic, contingent, and knowable a posteriori.
In Kantian terminology, members of (1) are known as analytic propositions and members of (2) are known as synthetic propositions.
Herein lies the crux of Hume's sceptical challenge. Hume points out that synthetic statements are not certain since it is logically possible that any given statement about the world is false. Moreover, analytic statements can only be used to prove other analytic statements, and mean nothing outside of the context of how they relate to each other, and therefore tell us nothing about the world.
In effect, Hume is stating that analytic statements are certain, but they tell us nothing about the world. Since they tell us nothing about the world, they cannot be used to prove synthetic statements. Hence, synthetic statements have no certainty. This meant that the Newtonian physics of Hume's day was uncertain. Now we turn to Kant.
Kant agrees with Hume that all knowledge begins with experience. However, Kant argues that it does not follow from this that all knowledge arises from experience. To quote Kenny:
[Kant] seeks to show that without the metaphysical concepts that Hume sought to dismantle, Hume's own basic items of experience, impressions, and ideas would themselves disintegrate(A New History of Western Philosophy)
Kant argues that Hume overlooked the existence of synthetic a priori statements. All metaphysical statements, Kant maintains, are of such a kind. We apply metaphysical concepts to the world in order to make experience possible at all. In other words, synthetic a priori metaphysical concepts are the pre-conditions of all experience. Hence, Kant distinguishes between the world as experience it (the world as it is experienced given the application of said concepts) and the world as it is independent of our experience.
It seems to me that Kant presupposes that there exists a world which, by virtue of its being independent of our experience, is unknowable, yet nevertheless is the cause of our experience. This presupposition seems to me unjustified. How does Kant know that such a world exists?
To quote Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols:
The real world, unattainable, undemonstrable...And if unattained also unknown...The 'real world' - an idea no longer of any use...an idea grown useless, superfluous, consequently a refuted idea: let us abolish it!...We have abolished the real world: what world is left? the apparent world perhaps?...But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!'
The problem, it seems to me, is that if we 'abolish' the noumenal/real world then our a priori metaphysical concepts are not applied to anything. Perhaps I am presupposing the validity of subject-predicate logic here? i.e. If there exists a predicate then there must exist a subject to which that predicate belongs; if there exist a priori metaphysical concepts then there must exist a world to which they are applied(?)
Thanks in advance.
Comments (266)
I think once you accept Kant's premise of a phenomenal world (the world as representation), the noumenal world inexorably follows. It's Plato's Cave redux. Deny the world as it is in itself and you are left with shadows or representations. But shadows or representations of what? Nothing?
But if there is nothing, then Kant's premise is false. There is no world as representation. Instead it is the world as it is in itself that we are experiencing.
CPR is a theory of knowledge, and as such, positing the existence of noumena is of course justified, because it conforms to the tenets of the theory. Positing the existence of the noumenal world is not justified because there is no such thing, Kant never suggested a “noumenal world” as such, and while there is some conflict in his use of thing-in-itself, one must remain very aware of the two distinct contexts within which he uses the term interchangeably.
In short, a proper understanding of phenomena is absolutely required before an understanding of noumena is possible, and both from a strictly transcendental philosophy point of view, as it was intended, and this juxtaposition of relation is the crux of matter between Hume and Kant.
Your account suggested something I found amusing--namely, feeling that Hume's comment that we can have no certainty about the external world should be taken seriously, and that it's troubling to take it seriously, and then "solving" it by concluding that we can't know anything about the real world at all, forget certainty.
At any rate, I don't think it's justifiable to posit something that one can't know anything about.
Kant admits this, and also that reality exists. Therefore, reality proper is beyond our experience, all of it, and that´s noumenos.
But if there is nothing, then Kant's premise is false. There is no world as representation. Instead it is the world as it is in itself that we are experiencing.[/b] I kant understand what you mean by this. Perhaps you want to state that the phenomenal world is also real? I agree with you; but then what noumenos means for Kant is what we now call "fundamental" or primary.
Then it wouldn't be correct to say it's something you can't know anything about.
It seems to me that Kant could only have been self-consistent if noumena in the literal sense was meant as an empty figure of speech, but with which Kant conveyed metaphorically the notion of there being bounds of meaningful discourse in terms of the ordinary empirical notion of a visual boundary.
Because knowing is representing, and objective knowledge is shared representations, the thing in itself is beyond knowledge entirely. It´s like being born blind, and know for certain that, if aliens ever land a spacecraft in your roof, they will be invisible. It´s not something you say about the aliens, it´s about your own capacities.
Quoting DiegoT
Well, I was making the point that "representation" is a relational term. If noumena does not exist, then neither does phenomena (as representation), as the the Nietzsche quote in the OP suggests. It is more intelligible to say there is a single world that presents to us in experience (and that we represent in language). That is, what you see and know about is primary.
Justified? Isn't it an axiom?
I guess it's a question of degrees. Radical skepticism undermines all philosophy but if one is to ignore it many things become reasonable, if not justified.
What reason do we have to doubt our experience and their cause(s) apart from, what some may discourage as, over-thinking.
This presupposition is indeed unjustified, insofar as a world independent of our knowledge cannot be the cause of our experience. It follows necessarily that Kant generated a complete paradigm-shifting epistemological theory on a self-contradiction, or, he never presupposed the existence of an unknowable world independent of our experience in the first place. That a thing is proven to be necessary under one set of conditions does not thereby presuppose an existence under some other possible conditions.
Do you happen to know why deer hunters wear orange clothing of some kind? If so, do you see how that relates to what Kant has shown?
I meant that the entire “This presupposition appears to me to be unjustified” from the OP, is indeed unjustified, because 1.) Kant never presupposed any such thing, as far as I know, and 2.) such presupposition, as stated, is certainly self-contradictory, which would toss all 600 pages right square in the crapper, and anything so susceptible for crapperization is hardly likely to be talked about scholastically 250-odd years later.
I take the blame if I wrote something that made it appear I thought there could be no world independent of my knowledge. Even so, I wouldn’t hesitate at all to claim there is no knowledge whatsoever of a world independent of my possible experience.
Do you have a favorite go-to translator for CPR?
Yeah, I used first person architecture for that very reason: any knowledge and experience belongs to subjects individually. Because it was stated as my claim, perhaps I should have said *my* knowledge along with my possible experience. Is that what you mean?
And yeah, it would take time and trouble to define terms, but it would be both worthwhile and necessary should some question about them arise. I’d do my best if anyone has some issue.
With respect to knowledge and experience I prefer what Kant has to say, I guess I am driving towards it. Or him, as you say. Subjectivity reigns supreme is my mantra, which makes explicit all knowledge, (“....whereby a conception conforms to its object...”) and experience (“....convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience...”) is given by reason, which obviously belongs to individual subjects.
I may well declare that subjectivity reigns supreme, but that doesn’t mean there is no objective world. Simply put, if there was no objective world, it would be impossible to explain myself as a body in space and time. It is abundantly clear I can explain how it is I occupy a particular space and time, therefore an objective world is necessary.
The sum of subjective experiences can paint a general picture of empirical reality, but if all but one rational agents vanish, the world remains as far as the lone survivor is concerned. And if he should follow his kind into oblivion, there would be no subject left to experience the world, no subject left to know anything.
Hunter orange relates to perception, and the determinations that follow necesarily from the differences in them. In this case, the world is the same even if seen two ways, but Kant claims the world may be very different for different kinds of rational agents. The point being, just because a thing is seen one way doesn’t mean it cannot be seen some other way. Hence, the thing in itself on the one hand, and the implications for the meaning of phenomena on the other.
And Kripke showed that these two categories were insufficient, given a decent grammar of modality.
That is, there are necessary a posteriori facts.
See Naming and Necessity.
Which kinda fucks up Kant's neat symmetry.
plus one )
I don’t know what that means.
As Bertrand Russell pointed out in "Problems of philosophy", the induction principle is an example of synthetic knowledge a priori.
How should I consider Berkeley with respect to the Kantian noumena of the OP?
Quoting tim wood
That water is H?O is something we discovered - it is a posteriori, and synthetic.
Kripke shows that, that water is H?O is true in all possible situations; that is, if we discover or stipulate a substance that is phenomenologically the same as water, but with some alternate chemical structure, it is not water.
Since it water is H?O is true in all possible situations, it is necessary.
So, that water is H?O is a necessary, a posteriori fact. Necessary but synthetic.
Hence, not all necessary facts are synthetic.
OK - is, that H?O is water, a priori? I wouldn't have thought so. Analytic, necessary - but a posteriori.
Happy for you to correct me.
Not too sure what you are saying. That water is H?O is surely not a priori?
Wouldn’t Herr Kant freak if he was around about the time they broke water down into its constituent parts? (Vion, 1869) Actually, no, probably not. Being an astrophysicist and a professor of math and physical science, he’d hardy be amazed. Hell, he probably could have done it himself.
Kripke or no, modern science or no, because water is a real object “All water is H2O” is an empirical judgement, hence synthetic, and from the proposition, the predicates of hydrogen and of oxygen absolutely cannot be derived from merely the subject “water”, hence, still synthetic.
“....But now I extend my knowledge, and looking back on experience from which I had derived this conception of body (water), I find weight (H2O) at all times connected with the above characteristics, and therefore I synthetically add to my conceptions this as a predicate, and say, "All bodies (water) are (is) heavy (H20)”. Thus it is experience upon which rests the possibility of the synthesis of the predicate of weight (H20) with the conception of body (water), because both conceptions, although the one is not contained in the other, still belong to one another, only contingently**, however, as parts of a whole, namely, of experience, which is itself a synthesis of intuitions....”
**contingently, re: heavy water. The concept of water in and of itself is not altered by the additional mass of a neutron in the nucleus of one atom.
Parentheses are mine, obviously, because I didn’t want to delete or subvert what ws actually said in the quote, but to show the particulars are pretty much identical.
Supposed the nebula theory for galaxy creation, actually. Along with tidal forces making the moon’s orbit decrease, the prediction that stars were uncountable, the abolishment of Newtonian absolute time, the requirement for a constant velocity related to the motion of matter. Course, it was all metaphysical theory with no math or experiment, and Newton ruled the scientific roost, so.......
Then along comes GR, and the synthetic a priori judgement of all geometric properties goes right square.....well, you know the rest of the story.
Ah. You see, Tim, at my school we were taught that a priori and a posteriori were about how we found things out.
a priori stuff was found out by considering only the concepts involved. It was what comes before.
a posteriori stuff was found out by looking around. It was what comes after.
Now, on that way of thinking, that water is H?O is an empirical discovery, and hence a posteriori. And yet necessarily true.
Not sure I understand this properly, but assuming the quality of the verification to mean the strength or weakness of its agreement, then it seems to me there’s no conflict. Observation is supposed to qualify a logical proposition.
Quoting tim wood
It isn’t final, it’s contingent, as are all judgements based on experience. And it does imply it is possible there is water that isn’t H20, re: heavy water. As long as we conceive water as the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen, we can allow certain different combinations of them without contradicting the physical substance called “water”. Can’t we?
Gold is a yellow metal.
That's not an analytic expression. Nor is it a priori. Given a suitable arrangement of lights, one could make gold appear purple.
Naming and Necessity, pp. 118-9
A world independent of our experiences is a world about which we can say nothing. And of that of which we cannot speak, we ought not speak.
Just staying in my lane, doncha know. Kant said *ALL* mathematical expressions, particularly geometric formulations, are synthetic a priori propositions. He had to, of course, because he was looking for laws based on principles, which cannot have exceptions. Curved space was something he hadn’t envisioned, so he was wrong about *ALL* expressions, for some predicates of Euclidean geometry do not hold under Riemann configurations. For us guys with no use for Riemann configurations, we don’t care that much; I never fly far enough for minimal geodesics to make any difference I would notice, and event horizons are not in my immediate future. Well....unless something bad happens at CERN.
And that region of epistemology he did claim? He claimed it well and truly.
Kant said:
But Tim said:
Quoting tim wood
I find this hard to reconcile.
I could be wrong, but looking at this debate, it seems that the basis for your confusions as to each other's arguments and conclusions is not clearly defining the difference between something that is "synthetic a priori" (pace Kant) with something that is necessary (analytic?) a posteriori. I think much of the confusion will dissipate if these two are clearly differentiated.
“.....For this very reason all analytical judgments are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, Gold is a yellow metal....”
Preamble, Sec2b,
This I grant willingly; gold is an elemental substance to which the law of contradiction would necessarily hold. Water, a compound substance, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be H2O necessarily.
Synthetic Vs. analytic: it's synthetic if it brings two distinct ideas together; it's analytic if one idea is contained in the other.
a priori vs a posteriori: it's a posteriori if you have to look around to find it out. Otherwise it is a priori.
Necessary Vs. contingent: it's necessary if it is true in all possible worlds; otherwise, it's contingent. This is where I would expect Tim and I to disagree.
Hence: synthetic a priori: two distinct ideas that are associated without looking around.
and, necessary a posteriori: found out by looking around, but true in all possible worlds.
First thing that might cause confusion is the addition of necessary and contingent. Though very related to synthetic and analytic, it is different, and by the time of Kripke there might have been further refinements as to analytic vs. necessary and synthetic vs. contingent. Thus, we might not be speaking in the same languages and creating a sort of category error.
To move forward we should give examples. Banno said:
Quoting Banno
So what would be your ideal example? Kant uses certain scientific truths that can only be gained through our a priori psychological predisposition for space/time/causality (and other categories).
And yet,
And it is this necessity in which I am interested.
So, is being a priori the very same thing as being necessary? Or is it rather that all a priori things, amongst others, are necessary?
And what do you make of the case, in the Kripke text I quoted above, in which we ponder what it might have been like of gold were not yellow?
I believe he thought a priori truths to be necessary and/or universal. I would assume he is saying they are the same thing. Really the tricky part with Kant is his idea of analytic and synthetic. Analytic seems to be a sub-set of a priori that are tautologies. The meaning is in the subject- you don't have to look any further. Many philosophers think that math is just this.
However, if a priori means necessary and universal, then there is another sub-set people don't think about- synthetic truths that are always necessary and universal. Thus, many proofs in math are universal and necessary, but are not tautologies, they have to be found out in the world. Where does this ability come from to gain universal truths that are not just odd pairings (pace Hume)? It comes from a priori synthetic categories of our psychology.
I wonder to what extent this bears on Kant. You've had your hands full discussing Kripke with people who want to discuss Kripke, but not on Kripke's terms. In threads specifically discussing Kripke, their's seems like a bad approach. But once you leave Kripke's province....I've seen you say, elsewhere, that you think Kripke is confusing metaphysics and grammar. And so...
(the above being, largely, a self-serving apology for commenting on Kripke, without really knowing Kripke, just like everyone else, but...)
We've identified something as water. Then we learned some. And we learned that what we identified as water always has the structure H2O. Now:
[quote=Banno] if we discover or stipulate a substance that is phenomenologically the same as water, but with some alternate chemical structure, it is not water.[/quote]
Here's a scenario that it seems like Kripke would admit is possible (seems that way to me anyway, correct me if wrong). Let's say some group of people coined the word 'water' talking about a pond in their town X. Visitors to this town (there's a trade route or something. the water people have silk, say, so people go there a lot, to get silk) ---but visitors to this town pick up this term. "water. That's like the stuff we have at home! We'll call it water too!." Years go by, science grows. Less syphilis, more television. People in town x learn chemistry etc. Water, in their pond, is H20. For whatever reason, though, what's called 'water' everywhere else has a different chemical structure. There is only one place with H20 water as far as we know, and its in the pond of town X. All the other 'water' is something else entirely.
What are we talking about when we talk about necessary, a-posteriori facts? And what does it have to do with Kant?
Kripke introduces "all possible worlds" to the idea of natural kinds. So, in all possible worlds, the term "water" is always H20. This means that water is necessarily H20.. It didn't have to be H20 before it was named thus, but once someone used it as a name for water, it became a necessary truth "after the fact". It didn't have to be from the outset like a synthetic a priori truth. If it was a synthetic a priori truth, H20 would always have to have been named water, but that would be silly. So at least in the cases of proper names and natural kinds, there may be a kind of truth statement that Kant didn't account for which is necessary a posteriori truths.
I think I follow so far. That's why, in my example, I talked about a specific village who named the substance in their pond.
This wouldn't change much I think. Just like there can be two Johns who are not the same person, so too do you have two waters. It is not the name itself but the idea that it is fixed to a referent in all possible worlds.
My sense is that Kripke isn't talking about a priori a posteriori synthetic analytic etc in the same as Kant. So the introduction of him here is a kind of confusion of genres.
One person (kant) is talking about the structure of cognition and reality. Another (kripke) is talking about how to use names and identity as best we can in order to meaningfully communicate. Both seem like good conversations, but different ones.
The water is actually water (that would be an analytic truth :smile: ). Your Richard Nixon named kid is actually Richard Nixon. In all possible worlds, the "water" (of the village) is rigidly fixed to whatever substance they named. The water that is H20 is also rigidly fixed to H20. They are different referents, but they are rigid designators none the less. In all possible worlds, there is some essential thing that water has that if you took it away it would not be water. It is just that there are two waters, just as there are two Richard Nixons. There are several interpretations of Kripke- once is causal essentialism I believe. That would mean, at some point there was a dubbing of Richard Nixon (the president guy) and Richard Nixon (some other Richard Nixon), and that name is fixed to that referent by this original baptism. I believe Banno has a broader interpretation whereby it is simply the fact that we use the name Richard Nixon in some historical fashion that it gets fixed on to a thing.
Quoting csalisbury
I think that Kripke himself brought up the idea of being connected with Kant in his book. He was the one who said that Kant didn't think of a possibility for necessary a posteriori truths. This I suspect is why Banno is bringing it up perhaps.
This is precisely what he Kripke was against- a "descriptivist theory of names". Saying "Richard Nixon is the guy who was president" is not true in all possible worlds, and thus not the basis for the actual person Richard Nixon. Rather, the proper name is rigidly fixed at some point when he was named Richard Nixon and used continuously by other people after that.
Quoting csalisbury
I agree that Kripke definitely seems to veer clear of metaphysics but as far as truth claims, it does intersect. However, I do think there could be different terminologies going on that may make it incommensurable, despite his claim that it does have to do with Kant. It would be obviously in some kind of "What would Kant say if he was around.." kind of way as obviously Kant can't speak for himself, so it is interpretations of Kant as applied to more contemporary philosophy.
I get this, I swear! My example - the village- was designed (tho maybe poorly) to accommodate these very ideas. So I know my kid Richard Nixon (love you rick :heart: ) is really Richard Nixon, but he's not that Richard Nixon. The water, not in the original pond - the water that is just like water except for not being H20 - may very well be 'water' if the people call it that. But it's not the same 'water' as the water in the villagers pool. It has the same name, but its different. Same name, different identity.
Same name, different identity, but the name is fixed to the identity in all possible worlds. Perhaps we cannot get the essential property of the other liquid, so there is nothing to fix, but we can maybe put in X essential property for now. When it is found that specific essential property will be rigidly designated as that liquid (also called "water"). The fact that two different referents can have the same name doesn't matter to this model. It is only the fact that there is some essentialness that stays the same in all possible worlds after the referent is dubbed that particular name.
That's what I'm saying!
Yes, and so is Kripke :smile: .
I'm trying to say that bringing that analysis to bear on Kant is confused, and confusing.
I'm going to let @Banno answer that since he brought it up in this thread and had the disagreement with @tim wood. I just saw that there might need to be clarification before they went any further with how they are defining terms. I guess the way Banno answers this will bear directly on your question.
Here's something new - two sorts of necessity: logical and existential.
But if being necessary is being true in all possible worlds, then they are much the same. So I guess I kinda think it does...
And that's what is interesting about looking at Kant through Kripke eyes. Kripke's view of necessity appear to be at odds with Kant's.
That's a long stretch.
I don't think so? I think it's more like they're carrying on two different seminars in two different parts of the house. I don't think they blend well in one room. Which isn't to say they can't be brought under one umbrella.
Ever get some bug in yer ear, keeps you up at night......rather than argue from point A, let’s rather see how it may be that point B has legitimacy.......
Quoting tim wood
The thesis:
Put these two together, I submit that you are correct. The proposition “water is H2O” is an analytic a priori statement, insofar as it adheres to the conditions of universality and necessity, which Kant teaches such statements require.
The proof:
From the Prolegomena, “.....I require no experience *beyond* my conception....”, which presupposes an experience, and it is *from* this experience that “gold” becomes an empirical intuition to start with, to which understanding assigns the conceptions of yellow and metal to it necessarily. Thus, henceforth, “Gold is a yellow metal” is analytic, insofar as the conception of gold must have the conceptions of yellow and metal conjoined with it.
It is clear, now, that the proposition “water is H2O” is analytic in the same regard as “Gold is a yellow metal”, and your “...label the process of discovery...” comes into play. It is merely a matter of what the experience is: for gold it is much simpler, yellow and metal, both of which are already empirical intuitions themselves, re: we already know what they are. H2O, on the other hand, has no intuition of its own, other than as a conjunctive term. The issue then becomes, the requirement for another kind of experience in order to distill “hydrogen” and “oxygen”, which are intuitions themselves, but do not belong together universally or necessarily, or in any particular combination thereof, out of the conception of “water”. At some arbitrary point, experience will inform the understanding that “water”, in its original conception, will have these two additional conceptions conjoined with it, re: my mention of Vion, 1869. Again, henceforth, “water is H2O” will be an analytic statement.
Now, “water is H2O” being established as an analytic statement, does nothing whatsoever to disestablish the synthetic empirical statement that water is a translucent, non-compressible fluid. It subsequently appears that water, if it remains a translucent non-compressible fluid but is not H2O, then the predicate H2O does not belong to water necessarily, whereas the former two conditions absolutely must so belong. If a thing is compressible it is not water, but if a thing is D2O, the conditions of non-compressibility and translucence are still met and the substance is still “water”.
Piece ‘a’ cake, I tell ya!!! Unless I’m wrong; then cake becomes egg.
Absolutely. Kinda difficult sometimes, but still fun. One guy bases his argument on something from Chapter 2, say, and his dialectic adversary bases his counter argument on that same something from Chapter 8.....and they end up in a veritable intellectual fistfight, because the Good Doctor treats the same thing in different ways.
Ever notice that pre-Kantian philosophers of some note classify folks like us as “of the vulgar understanding”, but Kant was gracious enough to call us “of the common understanding”? Gotta appreciate that, I must say.
Guess I'll have to stop being lazy and actually read Naming and Necessity with y'all before I say more.
Point me to where Kant says this. I think you're making Kant an indirect realist here, suggesting that we experience phenomena that in some how relate to an unknown reality (noumena) but we simply don't know to what extent. I don't think Kant offers any attribute to noumena, including it being causative of phenomenon.
No, we [i]do[/I] feel the water. We also hear noises and see images. You make it sound as though you do not know what it means to feel water. When we say that we feel water, that's referring to the information which we receive from the process which began with the stimulus: water. That's part of the environmental interaction. The water is the stimulus which activates the sensory receptors. The information stems from - and can be traced back to - the water. Yours is only a partial description of the process and it has limited explanatory power. Things just wouldn't make sense if we took that approach.
1. What is the "bridge", if any, between the analytic/synthetic dichotomy and the dualism between the phenomenal and the noumenal?
2. If the "bridge" in question (and the Copernican turn in general) is somehow connected precisely with synthetic a priory judgments, how can those who accept the analytic/synthetic dichotomy but reject synthetic a priori truths ('positivists' in a broad sense) adhere to the Copernican turn and, given all this, what could they say about the epistemological and ontological status of noumena?
Thanks.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sentience!
My fellow existentialist Shop1 summed it up rather nicely. In the forgoing quote, the infamous example, as used in science/physics, is the judgement that 'all events must have a cause'. That's an important distinction, as Shop 1 put it, from our psychological make up. Meaning, there are certain Kantian innate, intuitive, a priori 'fixed' features of consciousness, that posit such judgements and ideas. And without having the ability to posit such ideas (synthetic a priori), discoveries in physics would be extremely limited--perhaps not even possible at all.. It could be thought of as our intrinsic metaphysical Will that we are unable to control, from within our stream of consciousness. And in this case, it's all relative to our sense of wonderment. Our metaphysical will creates possibilities (which in-turn enhance our quality of life as we know it).
And so our intellect creates these ideas a priori, partially from experiencing the world (phenomenology), and partially from this sixth sense as it were; this a priori intuition, something beyond the ordinary five senses---synthetic propositions/judgements. The supposition relates to how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible. I believe that is part of the 'bridge' you are speaking of...the bridge that transcends logic. It's transcendent because it's something beyond pure reason and the ordinary five senses/sensory experience. The sense of wonderment from self-awareness, which confers little if any Darwinian survival advantages, exists in the mind a priori.
With respect to the Copernican Revolution, what is your thought there?
With respect to Logical Positivism, in short, cognitive science came to reject it (as was obvious over time) viz the aforementioned/various states of consciousness/higher reaches of human nature... .
First I’ve heard of it.
Analytic/synthetic distinction has to do with judgement or cognitions, in the form of logical propositions, in which the conception in the predicate directly relates to, in the case of the former, or indirectly adds to, in the case of the latter, the conception in the subject.
On the other hand, phenomena has to do with the faculty of sensibility and its representation of things which are perceived, which always relates to intuition, whereas noumena has to do with the faculty of understanding and its representation of things that are merely thought, hence never relate to intuition, but to conceptions alone.
Seems to me to be two very separate domains of discourse.
Kant is very clear on exactly what he means by both the analytic/synthetic dualism, and the phenomenal/noumenal dualism, each having its own named section within the pertinent chapter. Post-Kantians, neo-Kantians and non-Kantians alike are nonetheless rather fond of taking The Esteemed Professor epistemological places to which he would never have agreed to go, the thoroughness of his thesis being the clue. I mean.....in 800 pages, you’d think he would have covered just about everything he wanted covered. Still, he does shoot himself in the foot a couple times, so, there is that........(sigh)
"Fuck you, 3017"
— tim wood
“The temptation to belittle others is the trap of a budding intellect, because it gives you the illusion of power and superiority your mind craves. Resist it. It will make you intellectually lazy as you seek "easy marks" to fuel that illusion, [and] a terrible human being to be around, and ultimately, miserable. There is no shame in realizing you have fallen for this trap, only shame on continuing along that path."
— Philosophim
Well, these are indeed rather separate domains, but both distinctions are very important for Kant, so one could suspect that they are somehow interconnected. It seems that, after all, the connection is indirect — through the doctrine of synthetic a priori judgments. But if this is so, my second question becomes particularly acute. The line of reasoning is as follows.
1. 'Positivists' indeed want(ed) to adhere to the Copernican turn for a variety of reasons, one of them being their commitment to linguistic conventionalism, that is, the doctrine of "human-made" concepts, the dependence of the world on a thinker, or what Heidegger called 'subjectivism' in general.
2. Thus, they tried to criticize Kant but have not strictly returned to Hume, etc. Instead, they embraced the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, while rejecting synthetic a priori truths.
3. But given that the doctrine of synthetic a priori judgments ensures both the Copernican turn and dualism between the phenomenal and the noumenal as the necessary component of this turn, it is hard to see how to reconcile 1 and 2.
So, the following questions arise:
1. Is 'positivism' just a deficient Kantianism, regardless of Kant's own faults, an inconsistent doctrine that cannot be judged by its own standards?
2. What could 'positivists' say about the epistemological and ontological status of noumena? Are they non-existent for them, or 'meaningless' like other metaphysical claims?
3. What could those who reject the very dichotomy and Logical Positivism (Quine, etc.) say about the Copernican turn and the epistemological and ontological status of noumena?
1) we can know nothing about the real world because we create phenomena
2) thoughts of the world are even founded on contradiction because of Antimonies
3) yet we can be sure the world will remain orderly
Doesn't 1 and 2 contradict 3?
In keeping with the existential psychology theme, while like LP, existentialism rests on phenomenology. However, the concept of being, becoming, and potentiality, relative to the human condition, did not seem to be on the radar for the LP's. Psychologists discovered in the early 20th century the importance of both/and versus either/or in phenomenology and resulting axioms of logic. By the mid-sixties, LP, and its limitations, seemingly became apparent in cognitive science and its popularity waned.
I don't think Kant specifically addressed cognitive science...though I would welcome correction because it certainly seems he was encroaching into a domain that perhaps he was not qualified to speak to... .
In any case it's important to underscore that existential psychology (along with other groups) uncovered the limits of verbal, analytic, conceptional rationality by subordinating those to raw experience, prior to any concepts or abstractions (much like the metaphysical Will/Voluntarism)..
And so as a segue to the synthetic a priori knowledge, if one has both a phenomenal experience combined with an a priori inclination to posit things like causational concepts or judgements, the LP would claim irrelevant. The irony is, most all theories in physics involve (start with) synthetic propositions.
Neither one are that important, the one merely sets the stage for what Kant needed to logically prove, that Hume was wrong....or at least incomplete....insofar as there is such a thing as an priori pure reason, and one has a better understanding of his own knowledge, if he doesn’t “commit it to the flames”, and the other is merely a tacit admission that the human intuitively based representational system of a posteriori knowledge acquisition is not necessarily the only kind there is.
As for positivists and such.....ehhhh.....I don’t care that much. They’re just names, after all. All certain knowledge of real things is given from experience, to be sure, but not all certain knowledge is of real things. The problem rests entirely on the respective susceptibility to proofs, and the methodology by which they are obtained.
I’d be interested in an expansion on your line 3 reasoning. Without that, I’d withhold comment on the questions derived from the line of reasoning.....which I might not agree with.
I had in mind analytic/synthetic distinction on the one hand and between phenomena and noumena on the other.
Well, prima facie, the basics seem quite clear — since time, space, and causality are 'subjective' precisely because of grounding on synthetic a priori judgments, the role of the latter in the Copernican turn is decisive. As for the noumenal/phenomenal, it is a more complicated matter, but it is at least clear that this dualism is simply an integral part of the Copernican turn. So, I myself wonder, whether there can be an explanation of how the Copernican turn could be possible without appeal to synthetic a priori truths. The situation is complicated by the fact that the Copernican turn was seen by Kant as a metaphysical enterprise, whereas 'positivists' consider metaphysics 'meaningless'.
1. you cannot experience another's self-awareness, since then you'd be them instead [sup](self-awarenesses are indexical)[/sup]
2. so there are things you cannot experience, always just over the horizon, noumena
3. you are not everything, self-identity, individuation, self versus other
4. but you can know thereof by interaction, be it the rubble in the driveway or others
(Could likely be expressed better.)
Granted, in as much as the logical proof of the possibility of synthetic a priori conditions justified the metaphysical leap from objects being necessary and sufficient for human knowledge, to objects being necessary, but not in themselves sufficient.
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Quoting Sentience
I don’t see it, myself. The metaphysical paradigm shift, re: “...When he found that he could make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he reversed the process, and tried the experiment of assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at rest. We may make the same experiment with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge....”, has nothing to do with a dualism, per se, but only with a singular concise, logical methodology.
Key is “nature of our faculty of intuition”, which is the source of phenomena. Noumena, on the other hand, as has been mentioned, is the preview of understanding, and its propensity to think objects which never avail themselves to the human version of intuitive representation. In the Kantian cognitive system, understanding is far removed from intuition, requiring a synthesis with it, and in the case of pure thought, has no synthesis with it at all.
Now, you may be of the mind that noumena are things-in-themselves, which gives rise to a natural dualism. But noumena are not things-in-themselves, thus the dualism is destroyed. To say noumena could be things-in-themselves to rationalities other than those using the human representational variety, is an altogether empty assertion, for it would be impossible for us to even understand how such could be the case.
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Quoting Sentience
I would say not, at least from an Enlightenment approach. The necessity and universality of a priori cognitions in general had to be proven possible, in order to give the transcendental theory the power of logical law. To make it irreducible to inductive principles alone, in other words, which is the mistake he accused Hume of administering as a valid epistemological philosophy. It bears remembering that Kant was an Aristotelian logical advocate, thus grounded his theory on syllogisms out of respect for their susceptibility to empirical proofs, which Hume and the empiricists of the day could not provide.
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Quoting Sentience
Do they? Or do they think the science of metaphysics is meaningless? If so, it’s probably because there is no such thing as a proper science of metaphysics, as even Kant himself came to admit. But that takes nothing away from metaphysics being a valid explanatory cognitive theory.
Anyway....if you’ve got decent counterarguments, fire away.
To the extent that I can discern, there's no reason not to posit noumena. In other words, Kant can't be penalized for his concept of noumena.
That said, there maybe enough justification to apply Occam's razor - the world with both noumena and phenomena would be orders of magnitude greater in complexity than just phenomena without the noumena.
I don't fully understand why noumena are not things-in-themselves and would rather say that noumena are things-in-themselves from the point of view of Kant's implicit assumptions. But my point was not so much about dualism as about the Copernican turn. So let me summarize.
1. The analytic/synthetic dichotomy is grounded on the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, not vice versa.
2. The Copernican turn is thus possible based just on the analytic/synthetic dichotomy without appeal to synthetic a priori truths.
3. The Copernican turn has nothing to do with a dualism, per se, but only with a singular concise, logical methodology.
Granted these points are true, the questions arise: what does the Copernican turn consist in and how could it be ensured? Isn't a "singular concise, logical methodology" in question precisely the analytic/synthetic dichotomy in the first place? If this is so, then my main question could be reformulated as follows: what is the "bridge" between the analytic/synthetic dichotomy and the Copernican turn, given that the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal is supposedly not an integral part of the latter?
Yes, and you can also, broadly speaking, treat like cases likely and different cases differently. And as such, that is really the one basic premise behind synthetic a priori knowledge. It's different because of its synthesis. In any case, we still cannot determine the true nature of these things-in-themselves.
Consciousness remains a mystery... . But once again, the irony is that the synthetic a priori is very useful in science. Go figure :smile:
That is a falsification of Kantian theoretical conditions. The thing of the thing-in-itself is a real physical object, the affect on our sensibility giving us sensations. The in-itself of the thing in itself is that which is not represented in us as phenomena, but is that which belongs to the thing as it is in itself without being represented. But that which is not so represented, is not thereby noumena. The common misunderstanding of Kantian theoretical conditions is that just because we don’t know the thing as it is in itself, and we do not know conceptions represented as noumena at all, that the thing in itself is noumenal. This is catastrophically false, from a purely transcendental Kantian point of view. There is no reason whatsoever to consider objects the understanding thinks, which are mere conceptions, as being equivalent to that which belongs to an object as it is in itself, the very conceptions of which are unavailable to us.
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Quoting Sentience
Before I respond to that, I would ask, how would you think it is so?
Before this suggestion can be treated as catastrophically false, the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal must itself be justified. However, we have preliminary seen that it at least cannot be justified by appealing to the analytic/synthetic dichotomy or the Copernican turn since it supposedly constitutes the ground for them. So, please, let us concentrate more on the questions above.
Quoting Mww
Well, prima facie, because the dichotomy in question is perhaps the main logical innovation of Kant that occupies a central place in his argumentation.
Quoting Sentience
Kant didn’t innovate the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, those having been in philosophical existence for millennia, and to which he paid little mind. Aristotle, remember? All he did was propose, then prove, the validity of a certain kind of synthetic proposition, the a priori kind, which itself came to occupy a central place in his argumentation. The others he merely considered as given, and of no particular import with respect to transcendental philosophy.
So I still don’t know how you think this is so.
I cannot agree with this — it is Kant who introduced the sharp separation, that is, a dichotomy, between the analytical and synthetical truths. It is well established in the history of philosophy. So it is even not true to assert that Hume is close enough to Kant in this regard. Therefore, those who reject synthetic a priori propositions but adhere to the dichotomy itself are still Kantian enough to create a controversy I have formulated.
Ok. So you think that because Kant gave a synopsis of the differences between analytic and synthetic judgements, truths...whatever...that he is responsible for the reality of them? Do you see there is scant difference between Aristotelian necessity/contingency propositional dualism, and Kantian analytic/synthetic propositional dualism? What is different, and strictly Kantian, is the a priori designation for synthetic propositions, those having nothing whatsoever to do with experience, not in their proofs, but in their construction, the validity of which neither Aristotle nor Hume considered.
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Quoting Sentience
Correct. Hume rejected a priori truths, and a priori reason in general, being a proponent “constant conjunction” rather than admitting the purposes and validity of pure a priori cognitions.
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Quoting Sentience
Those who reject the a priori synthetic domain reject transcendental epistemological philosophy, hence cannot call themselves Kantian enough for anything. Adherence to the dichotomy itself, merely the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions alone, could apply to anyone who thinks about it. But it all goes haywire for the common understanding when the a priori conditions are appended.
Not to say there isn’t some controversy formulated, but I don’t really understand what it is. Guess I’m just not feeling it, as you’ve put it forward.
Not to interject into the wonderful discussion, but since physicists (cosmology) start with synthetic propositions, wouldn't those who reject them not wonder at all (no advancement of a theory is possible)? And if there is no wonder, there is no advancement in science and humanity (?).
Yes, simply because in Aristotle, there is no analytic/synthetic dichotomy since Kant has elaborated not only the synthetic a priori/a posteriori part of the distinction but the analytic as well. And this is of primary importance when it comes to the (post-)Kantian character of 'positivism'.
Quoting Mww
How can they adhere to the Copernican turn then?
Don’t we need to distinguish between rejecting synthetic propositions, and a priori synthetic propositions? I agree the rejection of the a priori would seem to halt the thinking that is always antecedent to hypotheticals, but wouldn’t necessarily halt the thinking, if not antecedent to then at least in conjunction with, observation.
And the scientific method, hence the physicalists, always start from observation, so I agree, synthetic qua contingent propositions cannot be rejected. Actually, I don’t think a priori synthetic propositions are rejected either; it’s just that they are not recognized as such.
Can you break down this analytic, synthetic, a priori, a posteriori concepts for me? You'll be doing me a big favor. These concepts appear to be dependent on, what to me is, more basic ideas viz. noumena and phenomena. I'm probably wrong but I'd like to hear your take on these matters. Thanks.
The pure empiricists don’t, holding with the assertions that the physical world is primary, as opposed to the rationalists who hold with subjectivity being the primary. The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, recognizes the equality of both, in conjunction with each other.
How can they be completely un-Kantian if they adhere to the analytic/synthetic dichotomy? W.V.Quine has even written the article titled Two Dogmas of Empiricism, one dogma being precisely this adherence. And if this dichotomy were so "traditional", it could not play any serious role in the Copernican turn, which is hardly admissible.
Agreed, they really can't because then no real novel discoveries would take place at all (?). Meaning in principle, you would just speak in terms of tautologies all day long, which would not make sense in an experiential world that we live. (In science, synthetic statements are used because they can be tested.) Otherwise, I suppose it's like speaking in tongues, as it were.
I think of synthetic a priori examples in a couple easier ways:
1. That structure uses math to describe it (and arguably explains its existence-metaphysical).
2. Could that structure be described in mathematical terms(?)
3. Could that galaxy have mathematical properties for its existence(?)
4. He used abstract math to calculate the laws of gravity.
Those are easy examples of a synthesis of a priori concepts in themselves (abstract mathematical knowledge) that don't require experience (using a calculator), along with physical phenomena that requires sensory experience to perceive, apprehend, and advance an understanding of.
I think Kant used the sentence : A straight line between two points is the shortest. as an example in his CPR. An interesting interpretation is that the truths of arithmetic and geometry aren't true in this way, they are true in a "once you realize they are true you realize that they always-already HAD to be true" kind of way.
But back to the metaphysics part. Having an innate (a priori) sense of wonder becomes logically necessary to posit such synthetic judgements, no? Meaning, it seems a priori knowledge has inner necessity and also true universality.
But generally speaking: Synthetic Statements: A synthetic sentence is a sentence, which may or may not be true. It would need non-linguistics, information about the subject the speaker is referring to. Synthetic statements are based on our sensory data and experience.
And so as an aside, I have this so-called sixth-sense (a priori) that 'all events must have a cause' and as a physicist, I'm going to advance that theory through similar a priori mathematical abstracts. And if that little scenario seems cogent, what then even causes one to posit such judgments (about causation in that case) to begin with? I think those are some meaningful synthetic metaphysical questions relative to consciousness. (In other words, why do I care whether all events are causational, and what causes me to wonder about cause?)
It is traditional, it doesn’t play a part in the Copernican turn, as you call it, admissibility aside.
The real dichotomy on Kantian metaphysics, is between sensibility and understanding, the former historically the only condition for knowledge, derived from experience alone, the latter forthwith being shown to be just as valid as a knowledge source, but derived from pure thought alone, and actually is the ground for knowledge a posteriori. It’s always been that way, Kant just made the reality of it accessible.
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Quoting Sentience
I never said they were. I said to be un-Kantian is to reject a priori synthetic propositions, the domain of principles and what is derivable from them.
It occurs to me that you may be attempting to understand Kant with some post-modern analytic system. If you can do that, fine. I haven’t seen it yet, but that only means either you haven’t done it, or you have done it and it flew right over my head. Either way....my interest is waning.
Quoting Gregory
It isn’t a question of believing. There are things, our knowledge of those things only extends as far as the representation of them, therefore there very well could be something left over in the thing that isn’t represented. That’s not a fact, it’s merely possible, because otherwise, we are justified in claiming complete knowledge of things, yet time and again we have been shown to be wrong. So either the fault in knowledge is from the system we use to acquire it, or, the thing wasn’t as well known as we thought. If we can prove the apodeictic certainty of our knowledge system, then it remains that the fault lays in the thing itself. Or, the thing as it is in itself.
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Quoting Gregory
Noumena are already great big nothings anyway, so throwing them out isn’t really doing anything.
In Kant, appearance is how physical sensation....the output from sense organs to the cognitive system....is represented in the system. As such, appearance cannot contradict itself because mere appearance isn’t yet anything contradictory. It just is something, the nature of which system has not yet determined. From sensing a tickle, we do not yet know what caused it. Could be a hair, a bug, the wind...whatever.
In Kant, the only part of the system that contradicts itself is understanding, and the part that contradicts the system as a whole, is judgement.
That’s the way I see it. Humans have this propensity for “what if...”, for no apparent reason, other than some arbitrary question simply presents itself. At the immediacy of “what if...”, all is a priori. Thereafter of course, pure reason becomes practical.
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Quoting 3017amen
Agreed; the conditions under which contradiction is impossible. And if contradiction is impossible, that for which necessity and universality are the grounding principles, absolutely must be true, re: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, all bodies are extended....and a host of others.
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Quoting 3017amen
Ya know.....we as plain folks probably don’t. But reason does, because in order to answer a question with absolute certainty, it must not be met with merely another question. In other words, the answer must be unconditioned, have no contingent predicates. But it’s not the finding of the unconditioned by which we think as humans, it is the search for it by which we think, and when we’re all happy, insofar as this any one question is answered sufficiently, we stop looking for the unconditioned by simply neglecting its relevance.
Quoting Mww
Mww!
If only Schopenhauer and Kant could have a sit-down! An Existentialist and arguably a Phenomenologist have a summit meeting!
This all reminds me of philosophical Voluntarism. My translation or interpretation of your forgoing quote suggests concepts like stream of consciousness and metaphysical Will.
As an example, if in my stream of consciousness, through no volition of my own, my Will causes me to wonder about causation, and I put those thoughts into judgements and propositions regarding questions (synthetic sentences/synthetic a priori) about how I got here (my existence), what kind of logic is that? In other words, that entire process of thinking or process of thought become what, a phenomenon of sorts(?).
What shall we consider as its purpose, when it confers no Darwinian survival advantages(?). I believe these questions are part of why they are considered or associated with Kant's metaphysics. Why ask why, and how do we ask why. What comprises those means and methods within consciousness...
And that all speaks to things like Kantian innate intuition, the questions about noumena, so on and so forth.
I read the passage cited above by Tim Wood carefully, and the last sentence says it clearly that there is no noumena in the sense of another world we are indirectly interacting with. My understanding is that Kant did believe he has once nursed on his mother's breasts. That is, he believes in the reality of consciousness coming from matter. We get awakened to a priori thoughts by synthetic thoughts (i.e. while nursing). First we have the subconscious, then the world comes to meet us, birthing the conscious ego. A priori is logic, awaken by the senses. It slowly developes into adult logic. To even think of noumena is to posit synthetic a priori, which is barely not in itself a contradictory category for Kant. You simply can't prove anything transcendent from human experience. Whether the world is made of necessary stuff or contingent stuff is a completely different question from what Kant was addressing
Well, you seem to have a theory. Good luck with that, seriously.
As Kant well understood, there is personal private experience and then there is public instrumental scientific experience. For science, it can be taken for granted that the whole purpose is to investigate a noumenal world that otherwise is a complete mystery.
The preconditions and mechanics of personal experience are a complex, as a glass seen through darkly. We cannot easily tell whether the world we recreate in our imagination when awake, or dreaming, is even close to overcoming biological and psychological limitations.
In either case, there is no reasonable alternative to some form of independent noumenal world that's out there around us.
If I understand that correctly (which I may not be), the one problem with that would be causation. If causation didn't exist, then the argument for a non-noumenal realm is stronger. But causation exists, whether it's a unending string of turtles or one super turtle, etc.. Likewise, other reasonable alternatives to noumena could be the concept of other possible worlds (Multiverse) and the world of mathematical abstracts.
How does one have a mathematical experience?
Causation exists as a metaphysical reality from your stream of consciousness. Otherwise you would have to explain why/how you wonder about causation to begin with. Think of it as self-awareness, and what that means.
Yep, in layman's terms, it's called everyone's sense of wonderment. It comes from self-awareness.
Quoting tim wood
And where does reason come from?
Quoting tim wood
Does that mean intellect and wonderment don't exist?
They (intellect/wonder) are kind of like mathematics. They exist. It's another form of reality.
Quoting tim wood
Indeed. Just like the explanation of consciousness itself; problematic.
In human terms, pragmatically, what would one's quality of life look like if one didn't wonder?
results the concept of a noumenon.It is not of anything, but signifies only the thought of something in general, in which I abstract from everything that belongs to the form of sensible intuition." Kant
Phenomena IS noumena.
What is real about consciousness?
Quoting tim wood
Causational.
I would exercise caution against use of the false dichotomy. Dialectically, it's both/and. In this case, a synthesis between the two. Not too dissimilar to the synthetic a priori.
Just not to be confused with the real, which I suspect you're zealous to do.
— tim wood
What is real about consciousness?
Ironically enough, times two:
And any answer to that is going to be definitional and problematic because bespoke, and thus not one-size-fits-all.
— tim wood
Indeed. Just like the explanation of consciousness itself; problematic.
In human terms, pragmatically, what would one's quality of life look like if one didn't wonder?
No, but from the text, I gather noumena would be representations of things in the world, arrived at by rationalities with means other than the intuitive system used by humans. I might be able to say how they are a logical possibility, or even a sheer happenstance of the understanding, but I can’t say anything about the reality of them. If I could, they’d be phenomena, hence not noumena after all.
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Quoting tim wood
That which is prior to perception remains inaccessible to empirical knowledge, yes.
Perception doesn’t access anything, it is just us being affected by something physical, external to our senses. Perception isn’t part of the cognitive process, it is merely the occasion for the use of it.
If you mean by inaccessible to perception that something can’t be perceived at all, that’s fine, but being inaccessible doesn’t have anything to do with being prior to, because prior to perception presupposes the possibility of the very perception being claimed as inaccessible. A thing can’t be totally inaccessible, which would be the same logical deduction as being impossible, and be presupposed at the same time.
Real physical objects in space and time are the cause of sensations in us, as effects, perception being the means by which one becomes the other. That’s why it is said perception is passive.....it doesn’t do anything except pass forward the data.
Not to say any of that is gospel, mind you.
Yes. It's been quoted by other philosophers that he was considered one of the first from his particular era...
Yes, but it would seem to be necessarily true only by virtue of the fact that if we found something that was indistinguishable from water in every other way than that it turned out not to be chemically constituted the same, we would not count it as water. This means the so-called necessity is one of definition, and in that sense, analytic.
Consider the other possibility that Kripke does not (as far as I am aware) entertain: what if we discovered something that was phenomenally nothing like water (or ice or steam), but was found to be chemically constituted the same? Would we count that as water?
Should we define water chemically or phenomenally, in other words; and would either choice not be merely a matter of a preference in common that becomes established as convention? Or would we say that something must be the same, both chemically and phenomenally, to be defined as water?
Sort of, maybe? Wasn't Kant recruited by both camps?
Isn't the heart of the issue is that while some noumenal world is indisputable, noumenal objects fade in and out of existence depending on the reader? Are those objects fully out there, somewhat out there, or only in the public eye?
I'm thinking it was more private...
My point was purely philosophical:
The scientific noumenal world of the noted theoretical physicist Kant is to be distinguished from noumenal objects or things-in-themselves.
Kantian noumenal objects are not real in an Aristotelian sense of being discrete. Noumenal objects are indeterminate sources of complex personal sense-perception possibly leading to logical judgment.
As is typical for him, Kant plants himself in the middle as the arbitrator, drawing on the strengths of the extreme points of view. There is something out there, but it is not real until judgment says so.
Why am I the addressee?
Oh. Ok.
1. Is it true that, for Kant, the assertion of the existence of things-in-themselves is made according to a purely analytic judgment?
2. Do, for Kant, appearances and things-in-themselves constitute two separate kinds/levels of existence? In other words, is it true that an object must exist as appearance along with things-in-themselves, or, rather, an object-as-appearance can exist only as the thing-in-itself?
Thanks.
Suppose you put some water in a kettle on the stove and turn its burner on. Now according to common thought, we know the water is going to boil.
In fact, we only predict the water is going to boil from the model of the apparent observable world that we construct in our mind as part of our learned experience of it. We think we know the water will boil because in most cases it does. However, we dont know it until after it does boil, before which, for example, the gas mains or some other unlikely event could cause it not to. In a similar way, all experience leads us to believe we have 'knowledge' of a posteriori events, but the knowledge is really assumed prediction from prior experience, and not certain knowledge.
What Kant tried to do was to define knowledge that could be known independent of observed 'a posteriori' events, which he called 'a priori' knowledge. That distinction is still valid, but some reasonably doubt whether it is truly knowledge that can exist independent of thought.
The noumenal world is not part of a priori knowledge, although partly constructed upon it, it is the representation of the apparent observable world in our minds. This has been a difficult topic in philosophy as it has not been possible to construct empirical tests which distinguish between different possible versions of such a noumenal world, and some challenge whether it exists at all. While one can refine different alternative views, they are still opinions, which some adopt religiously, and others deny religiously. And there are views that only language exists, for example, in Wittgensteinian metaphysics, in which case the whole debate is only a language game.
At Oxford I was taught to consider many of these views, and my tutor spoke of their relative 'merit.' The merit of a view is not only derives from its logical coherency and usefulness in explanation, but also from its teleological nature, that is, what benefits it provides to science, law, ethics, and other modern fields which still rely on philosophy as their foundation. Many philosophers will of course scoff at that, especially existential cynics, but Oxford does not have a great deal of respect for existential cynics as contributing much to the quality of life, so the feeling is mutual.
So then you may ask, what is a 'reasonable doubt' of a priori knowledge? A reasonable doubt has to provide an equally cogent explanation for what the epistemological status of logic and mathematics actually is, and there hasn't been many of those. There are those who simply scoff or deny, and their philosophical position is of little merit.
Part of the reason I haven't looked in detail at the thread here is that existential cynics, especially nihilists, have staged rather a takeover of this forum for some extended periods of time in the past, and I dont really have the spiritual presence of mind to maintain a pleasant face to them in many cases. But I am glad to see you at least started this thread with a very good issue )
The distinction between phenomenal and noumenal then becomes a psychological difference between experience - as causal reaction to stimuli, and conscious understanding of experience.
It remains that:
Quoting philosophy
...but the falsity is not between the mind and reality per se; the falsehood arises from the mind's conscious experience of itself.
That's not actually true. Just because a biological mechanism exists to produce the representation does not mean that the abstractions are 'part of reality.' It means that the abstractions do exist, and therefore, higher functions of the mind must be supported by mechanical apparati which typically don't do a very good job at ensuring all members of the species are actually capable of handling higher-level abstractions without making fundamental errors. Some even dispute the process of reason is actually an advantage, calling it 'intellectual elitism' or some such, and they've had alot of success, so it's not even clear the ability to reason is a competitive advantage in the first place. False representations of reality go a long way these days.
I agree there's a prevalence of false representations, but would add that there's a relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and the consequences of such action within a causal reality. This explains why our current mode of existence is not sustainable. We'll die out if we are not correct to reality. It's for that same reason, sensory perception is necessarily accurate to reality.
Our ape ancestors swinging through the trees - looking out for ripe red fruit, seeing the next branch nearer or further away than it actually is, would plummet to their death, and we wouldn't be here. Understanding of sensory perception is where the disparity between experience and reality sets in. We may not understand what we experience, but what we experience is accurate to reality.
Kant understandably locates the problem between phenom and noumon - between subject and object, but that's wrong. The difference is between subconscious physical process and conscious understanding; a psychological problem.
That is a logician's assumption. For lower-order concepts, there is obviously a need to distinguish between what is food and not food. Above basic, first-order concepts on the needs of life, it's not actually clear that the abstractions logicians consider necessary truth actually are either necessary or true. From a logician's point of view they are. From Schopenhauer's or Nietzsche's point of view, that's even naive. Human beings do not control themselves based on a logician's view of 'reality' and from what behavior ive observed in the USA during the Trump administration, human beings dont care how many people it kills either, as long as those with power are having their desires satisfied.
I don't know what you mean by saying "that's a logician's assumption." Thanks, I guess! I don't think you get my meaning either. From the structure of DNA, to the physiology of organisms, to the behaviours of animals, unto the knowledge bases of human actions - we have to be correct to a causal reality to survive. What's wrong is rendered extinct.
Nietzsche had a very poor understanding of evolution. He believed man to be an amoral brute - but he couldn't have been. He raised young, generation after generation, he shared food and looked after the tribe. Man is imbued with a moral sense - who then suffered the occurrence of intellectual intelligence, and sought to articulate that which he innately understood.
That's where the opportunity for error arises - not from man's sensory equipment - tested from the DNA upward by the function or die algorithm of evolution over millions of years, but from conscious intellectual understanding of his sensory experience. So Kant's got his distinction in the wrong place.
Chief Justice Thomas said last week he'd be 'open to hearing' arguments that Twitter violated rights to free speech by banning Trump. As its now a GOP majority in the supreme court, that means, without question, more Trump tweets by 2024. Fait accomplis. One could wonder how long ago Trump knew that would happen i guess, but its here now. More Trump tweets.
There's no rational explanation for this or any 'representation of reality' it fits in lol. Its insane. Sorry I have to go to bed. Good night )
I'm in the UK, so reluctant as I am to weigh into the midst of your politics, I have to say, the left worries me more than the right. Biden's about to spend $2 trillion on the wrong technology and the wrong approach to climate change - and by the time everyone knows he's wrong, it'll be too late. We need massively more energy, not less. Wind and solar cannot meet current energy demand, less yet - extract carbon, desalinate and irrigate, produce hydrogen fuel, recycle - all of which we need to do to secure the future. And like I said previous - if you're wrong, you're gone! Sweet dreams!!
results the concept of a noumenon. It is not of anything, but signifies only the thought of something in general, in which I abstract from everything that belongs to the form of sensible intuition." Kant
That is a great quote. I like this thread. Kant is dear to me
He was apparently very Anti-German, why this is so, is not clear. The most interesting pages are these ones, to me anyway:
https://archive.org/details/essaysphilosoph00unknuoft/page/272/mode/2up
I very much belong to a roughly Kantian-Schopenhaurian line of thinking, but Cudworth should be noted too.
I hope you’re aware that the A249-A254 section from which that quote is taken, was re-written by the author, in the B edition. While it is true he said all that stuff, it is just as true he thought better of it six years later, thereby making this quote obsolete, as far as the overall treatise is concerned.
Doesn’t really matter all that much, with respect to the thread title. Kant never did posit a noumenal “world”, hence whether or not he was justified in positing its existence, is moot.
Just sayin’......
One distinction I think worth noting, is that things-in-themselves is tantamount to the nature of our existence, the true nature of a thing or things observed, an (any) object perceived by our senses.
There was an admitted irony to Kant's uncovering of how humans go about analyzing things from our senses, and whether our a posteriori abilities in using experience in makeing judgements about things, are the only means/methods of obtaining understanding/knowledge about our world and the stuff in it, including our own cognition.
The irony rears its head when we somehow, someway, are curious (about a thing or things) yet this same sense of wonderment a priori/a posteriori, doesn't reveal any answers to the thing-in-itself (the nature of its existence). The metaphysical statement 'all events must have a cause' is at the root of this notion that things we see and experience in the world, have an existence that cannot be explained using ordinary logic. Hence things-in-themselves being tantamount to the nature of existence, which in turn is beyond human understanding.
So we have this so-called 5th dimension or sixth sense that seems intrinsic to our way of Being, (an exciting desire of curiosity about causation), yet in itself, doesn't really explain anything at all. The thing-in-itself/nature of existence remains enigmatic. That's the a priori aspect of the phenomenon.
In contrast, if we knew how to make something out of nothing, then arguably we would not encounter this problem...
Lucy Allais' Manifest Reality is so, so, so good. :starstruck:
Substituting, it should be congruent that a representation is not what appears.
Quoting val p miranda
Substituting again, it should be congruent that representation is not what appears, but rather, the thing-in-itself is what appears, from which follows that it should be congruent that the thing-in-itself is not a representation nor an appearance.
Quoting val p miranda
It can only be assumed now, rather than substituted, that because the thing-in-itself is not representation, and our sensibility only detects macro reality, then the thing-in-itself is what our sensibility detects such that it then appears to us, making the thing-in-itself contained in or by macro reality.
But the assertion reads, “the thing-in-itself is what appears, but our sensibility detects macro reality”, which implies the thing-in-itself is not what our sensibility detects thus is not contained in macro reality. Or, put another way, the thing-in-itself is what appears, but the thing-in-itself is not what is detected, which reduces to, what appears is not what is detected.
Or it could be that the thing-in-itself appears by some other means than its detection by our sensibility, which carries the implication that there is a multiplicity of methods for the manifestation of what appears, that at the same time must not be a representation, given from the first substitution.
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As a matter of curiosity alone, did you derive your entry from this little tidbit......
“...At the same time, it must be carefully borne in mind that, while we surrender the power of cognizing, we still reserve the power of thinking objects, as things in themselves. For, otherwise, we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears, which is absurd...” (CPR Bxxvii)
.......and if not, wherefrom, may I ask?
You know, from a Kantian point of view, science only tells of a thing, what a human asks. If we don’t know a thing as it is in itself, but only as our sensibility presents it to us, what could we direct science toward, other than the representations sensibility gives us? In effect, we are asking science to justify our interpretation of the world, rather than inform us with direct evidence of the world as it is in itself.
Yep! :up:
In that same light, though Kant, through logic, felt like all metaphysical inquiries were fruitless, he at least did acknowledge that humans have that same (metaphysical) intuition that causes us to wonder in the first place...which is intrinsic a priori to the intellect.
I wouldn’t agree with that, as much as I would agree Kant thought metaphysical pursuits....wondering, if you will.....culminating in the certainty of a science, is fruitless. While it is necessary to treat metaphysics as if it were a science, in order to gain as much certainty as possible, and that using the purity of logical form, as long as experience is required to prove what metaphysics proposes by means of that logic, just as experience is required to prove the sciences proper, we are at a loss.
Not to argue without cause, but there is at least one condition under which metaphysical pursuits are fruit-FUL, and that is to restrict pure reason to its proper bounds. But that’s the very philosophy of which Everydayman has no recognition of needing despite being endlessly guilty of violating.
Quoting 3017amen
Absolutely. The opening paragraph of the A edition says almost exactly that, albeit in Prussian academic Enlightenment prose, setting the stage for the next 700 pages. He does walk it back slightly in the B edition, by saying all that, but it only applies if one “rises to the height of speculation”. I guess he had to account for the folks that didn’t care about wondering, blessed with a mere “common understanding”. Which is still a lot kinder than Hume, who says of Everydayman “a man of vulgar understanding”. (Grin)
There’s a perfect little nutshell if there ever was one, right there. Especially the successive media part, which even the rabid physicalists cannot deny, without making themselves foolish. The brain doesn’t sense stuff; it only registers that other body parts have sensed stuff. As long as a one-to-one correspondence between those is physically impossible, any epistemological theory centered around the thing-in-itself can never be refuted.
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Quoting tim wood
Correct, according to his theory of human knowledge, keeping in mind this is with respect to our perception of things, meaning our basic sensory apparatus in juxtaposition to real spacetime objects. When using devices of experiment, on the other hand, we have merely relinquished the sensing of the object, from which we get our representations, and replaced it with the sensing of the equipment, which is still a representation to us, but a representation that represents what is being tested.
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Quoting tim wood
Yeah, but, Abboooottttt!!!! We don’t care about what a tree isn’t. All the conceptions judged not belonging to the intuition of a thing, does nothing to tell us what it is. Instead, we end up with a perpetually undetermined phenomenon. So, yes, we can build up quite a bit of knowledge, by synthesizing conceptions understanding thinks as belonging to an intuition. How do you think it is, that we got so farging many kinds of nails!!!
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Quoting tim wood
Yep. It isn’t that science cannot know, meaning it isn’t that science cannot tell us, but rather, it is us that sometimes may not know what to ask science to tell us and, possibly, it is us that doesn’t accept what science has to say.
That is the distinction of not only, do we not know the nature of the thing-in-itself, but just as important (if not more important), is the distinction between asking metaphysical questions (all events must have a cause?).
The proposition all events must have a cause is not formulated from pure reason. Yet science, using reason, asks that same question to discover a something about a something.
So, in CPR, he discovered/uncovered that distinction where we have other forms of intellect (intuition, etc.) which is metaphysical/self-awareness (not instinctual), and does not consist of the usual standard reasoning/formal logic (a priori/a posteriori) as found in normal reasoning/the intellect. In a nutshell, that's basically Kant's metaphysics.
If we were not able to ask that question/said proposition, virtually no scientific discoveries would be made. In that case, theoretically, we would not care. We would have no self-awareness.
We can only know the world as it appears to us, yes. That doesn’t mean the world is as it appears, but only that we have no other way to judge how it is, other than as it appears to us.
Kant didn’t mind Aristotle’s forms; he just didn’t like where they were located: Aristotle::world; Kant::mind.
Ok...the proposition does not derive from pure reason, any proposition being merely an expression derived from antecedent cognitions. That all events have a cause is a principle of pure reason, nonetheless. Can we say that much is true?
Quoting 3017amen
There are accidental scientific discoveries, right? Not many, to be sure, but enough to prove it is not necessary to ask that question in order to have such discoveries. I guess it’s probably true enough, that, while not absolutely necessary, they are conditionally necessary if one doesn’t wish to wait around for accidents.
Mww!
Well, not really. And here's why I'm drawing the distinction:
All events must have a cause = a synthetic a priori proposition.
As a reference: physical theories always involve synthetic propositions because they make statements about the facts of nature that can be tested - Paul Davies.
In that context, what is a priori, is this judgement that we believe all events must have a cause. Meaning, it is intrinsic or innate, from human consciousness and self-awareness. I think of it more like an existential component of human nature. We can't escape this need to wonder, to be curious, in many ways to listen to our innate forms of intuition telling us there is something more.
In other words, in consciousness, how are synthetic a priori judgments possible (?). Kant's argument is that it's not learned. And I agree. And of course if it is some sort of instinct, what biological advantages are there to asking such questions (?). I submit that there are none.
To me, this is one of his claims to fame...
Agreed, as long as it’s being expressed, “a priori” and “synthetic” confine the expression to certain conditions.
Quoting 3017amen
And if a judgement, for which no expression is necessary, “a priori” and “synthetic” confine the judgement to certain relations, and such judgement can never be a mere belief. It is a truth, insofar as its negation is a contradiction.
The synthetic a priori judgement is, first, a product of pure reason because its ground is a category (relation, schema: causality/dependence), and second, it is transcendental because it relates to concepts in general and from which other a priori cognitions become possible.
Quoting 3017amen
In consciousness, they are not; it is reason alone from which such judgements arise. We are conscious of that to which the principle applies, but not of the principle itself, unless or until we wish to examine how experience is possible and we find everything reduces to this fundamental logical necessity. From this, it follows such judgements are not learned; they are given. What we might learn, is how to exchange the subjectivity of our reason for the objectivity of our expression.
“....V. In all Theoretical Sciences of Reason, Synthetical Judgements "a priori" are contained as Principles....” (CPR, B15)
I respect your interpretations of the Good Professor, even if I might disagree with some of them. Hell....it might be me that’s barking at the moon, dunno.
"Rain is the cause of wetness, the effect. The cause and effect are one and the same existing water. With regard to the form, the cause is rain, which is lost in the effect (wetness). But in that the effect is nothing without the cause, the effect as effect is lost. All that remains is undifferentiated wetness." Hegel's lesser Logic
Is this too abstract in a Kantian discussion or does this gel with some of you?
Yeah, it’s a long ways past where our knowledge of things needs to be. All we need is cause and effect as the bottom line, without regard to the subtleties of either one by itself. The exception is, from a Kantian point of view, that the conception of freedom can be used as an uncaused cause, in which case we can have one without the other. Kant recognizes the inherent contradiction, so he just says we only need to think of freedom as an uncaused cause, not that we have to prove that it actually is one. Which is pretty abstract, when you stop and think about it.
Mww!
Can you speak to that quote in a bit more detail? It seems very intriguing to me. The sixth sense, intuition, innate or intrinsic sense, that there is some sort of causational agent is important. We wonder about causation but we don't understand why (or how) we wonder about it.
Quoting Mww
I agree to the extent that it is a synthesis of logical concepts from sensory experiences, but the transcendental part relates to the a priori conditions supplied by the mind. It just is. We seemingly were born with this need. This need to know (in this case about causation and/or causational forces). That is a seque to your other quote:
Quoting Mww
You would have to explain, using logic, why we use synthetic propositions to discover novel things... . You could attack it several ways you could explain how the Will creates this need... .
Quoting Mww
Agreed.
Gregory!
In a kind of lighthearted way, that reminds me of the differences between science and engineering. Meaning, medical science/the human mind, body and spirit, as well as trying to forecast the weather, is not like engineering. In engineering of course you apply the appropriate formula to the problem and the problem is solved.
Yes, physics is the science of understanding how different matters work. Metaphysics is understanding how any substance would react to any other, and I think Kant himself gives an interesting take on this in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, published a few years after CPR. If anyone wants to dig further into this after reading the Critique, that is the work to go to. I'm reading Michael Friedman's commentary on it right now
Law of noncontradiction? Objects exist and don't exist at the same time. That is Kant's point. The law only applies in our psychology, as the Antinomies show
You said....
Quoting 3017amen
....to which I responded by saying that to believe events MUST have causes precludes the notion from being a mere belief. If it was a belief, it would have to be stated as events might, or events should, have causes. If, on the other hand, the very concept of “event” immediately invokes an ordering of time, insofar as any perceived event follows from some antecedent event related to it, then the a priori synthetical principle of cause and effect, relative to any perception, is established as universally necessary, hence true because its negation contradicts experience, re: it is impossible to perceive the same thing for all time, therefore every perception is conditioned by successions in time, that condition being an antecedent event that is necessarily its cause.
It is good to bear in mind we don’t care about events unknowable, but only events present or possibly present to our perception. We don’t care at this point what the event is, nor do we care what the cause is, but only that anything given to sensibility has that relation, and that relation must be conceivable, hence understood, by us, otherwise experience itself is impossible.
Even if it is the case that you meant “this judgement that we believe” we still have a problem, in that, because belief is itself a judgement of relative certainty, we have subjected a judgement to a judgement, which jeopardizes the possibility of a cognition developing from it. Infinite regress, or stalemate, both of which are anathema to knowledge.
Mww!
Thank you for expanding on that thought. Much like I must have a brain to have feelings, it must be then, that a synthetic a priori judgement must be necessary for any thought experiment to move forward. In turn, it still leaves us with the question (one of many) as to why we should have this sense of wonderment about causation.
But getting back to the nature of a thing, or things-in-themselves, I believe Kant thought it "Transcendental” for both the limit of all knowledge of objects, and the universal properties that all objects must have. Using a somewhat novel term, is there such thing as a transcendental truth?
(Is consciousness, self-awareness, reason, and life in general, considered a good, objective existence?)
And hidden in that, is the paradigm shift from ontology to epistemology.
As do I, and the bookkeeping reduces to.....us. Humans.....
Quoting tim wood
.....just like that. Assembly presupposes being, which is sufficient reason for why Kant doesn’t pay much attention to it. Doesn’t matter what is, if we cannot fathom how it is possible to know the manner in which we are affected by it.
Quoting tim wood
Hence the fundamental principle for transcendental philosophy, to maintain reason where it belongs, where it can do the least harm, by “...closing up its sources of error...”. To speak of the world is nothing but to speak of the human’s understanding of the world.
Quoting tim wood
Not sure about pure knowledge, but what he takes away in pure speculative reason (causality belongs to Nature alone, and not one whit belongs to man), he gives back in pure practical reason (causality belongs to man and not one whit belongs to Nature).
“...All rational knowledge is either material or formal: the former considers some object, the latter is concerned only with the form of the understanding and of the reason itself, and with the universal laws of thought in general without distinction of its objects. Formal philosophy is called logic. Material philosophy, however, has to do with determinate objects and the laws to which they are subject, is again twofold; for these laws are either laws of nature or of freedom. The science of the former is physics, that of the latter, ethics; they are also called natural philosophy and moral philosophy respectively. Logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise it would not be logic, i.e., a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not.....”
(F.P.M.M., 1785, in T. K. Abbott, 1895)
Paragraph granted!!!!!
By transferring space from the external world to the internal system of reason, Kant removed the need for explaining a real medium for the existence of objects, which Newton couldn’t provide.
It's hard to say "what out to happen" from the principle of duty alone understood as the categorical imperative. If everyone steals we have a problem, but if millions are starving and nobody steals there is a problem. Kant seems to say what is most practical is the more universal and ontological in regard to morality, and his book is even call "practical reason". But Kant has a point that we have to understand morality in some general sense, otherwise we are lost in the realm of personal opinion
When the world becomes true but relative, questions of conscience can become more prominent. It's all very subtle and we are not all in the same place mentally. So the Golden Rule comes into play then, which is a part of the categorical imperative
Not sure Kant used those terms together, but I guess a truth derived under transcendental conditions would be a transcendental truth. All that needs be, are transcendental conditions. What they can’t be, is empirical, for if every truth was derived from empirical conditions, there would be no need for pure reason in the first place, hence no imagination of supersensible, transcendent, possibilities. In other words....we would cease to wonder. Or, rather, we wouldn’t have an understanding that thinks of things the reality of which it cannot obtain.
Actually, what ought to happen is that which the transcendental conception of freedom grants. So it is easy to say what ought to happen, because we tell ourselves what that is, but it is not from duty that we are told. It is from the autonomy of the will.
While it may be easy to say what ought to happen, it is not always so easy to actually cause to happen that which we have told ourselves, should. If it does, we consider ourselves moral; if we do not we cannot consider ourselves moral, for we have defied our own will.
I do not understand the principle of duty as the categorical imperative. If you do, I won’t argue about it.
As for the golden rule, I needn't remind you it is a rule by definition, therefore cannot carry the authority of an imperative, which has the force of law. Just as a rule is distinct from a law, so too is the golden rule distinct....not part of....the c.i.
And to make it right is to.....what?
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Quoting val p miranda
Man created, sure. Real, immaterial, ok. But existence? That which exists can be phenomena; can time or space be phenomena?
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Quoting val p miranda
The Kantian system holds better if the LNC is considered a principle, not a fundamental concept, or, which is the same thing, a category.
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Quoting val p miranda
Not part of the second. Nevertheless, why does time make the antinomies faulty?
If the categorical imperative is binding, than the Golden rule is for the reason that the later follows from the former. As Fitche pointed out, there is a sense in which we bind ourselves to morality and don't all follow a complete will to power. Perhaps we fool ourselves, but when we conceptualize morality we need to think of a universal law that works because it's universal, we need to believe the Golden rule is one of those rules, and we need to believe they are binding beyond our mere fiat. This is what happens when we conceptualize
The world of time and space do not allow us to do whatever we want, so the LNC applies to it in a sense. But not as Aristotle thought since the antinomies throw out what Aristotle thought he settled: soul and free will, Zeno's paradox, and Deity
Not sure what to say about that. If you care to elaborate....that’d be nice.
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Quoting Gregory
In Kant, morality is a human condition, and as such, there is no need to bind ourselves to it, for it is exactly half of our intrinsic nature, the other half being pure speculative reason. No need to bind to that which is inescapable anyway.
What we do bind ourselves is to duty, insofar as there are certain duties, re: “perfect” duties, sufficient to oblige our compliance to our c.i.
Kant/Fitche/Schopenhauer. What a mass of intellect, right there. The latter two picked on the Master, but, really....what else could they do. Kant’s a hard act to follow, and everybody knew it.
If everyone was perfect, every door would open for each desire. But we are imperfect and we don't know why, religious explanations not being satisfying. So we are bound by rules, laws of matter and rules of the mind
Proof for what
Time exists in understanding physics. Space, as well. On a higher level there is just phenomena but Kant leads to those higher levels of thought and its not required to have a "proof"
Kant said the antinomies are necessary contradictions which lead the mind to higher levels
He doesn't solve them
The world is phenomena so its best to see the world as eternal but in Kant's way, not Aristotle's. Modern physics has this all worked out. The only antimony that defies any explanation is the one about infinitesimals
I don't find the question of why there is something instead of nothing meaningful. We can ask "why something" but not "why not nothing". At death we go to nothing but we don't know what that is or what that means
The world is phenomena. Why is there something? Why not no thing? It doesn't matter! Why is the sky blue
I don't think he did either. Nonetheless, for additional fodder:
[i]Transcendent truths are those unaffected by time or space. They define the world, but are not defined by the world. An example of a transcendent truth is "God is good", or "there is no God". Either way, how one looks at things contained by time and space is a result of the transcendent truth... .
World views are made up of transcendent truths, things we believe are true before we question whether or not anything else is true.[/i]
[i]A school of philosophy is a collection of answers to fundamental questions of the universe, based around common concepts, normally grounded in reason, and often arising from the teachings of an influential thinker.[12][13] The term "philosophy" originates with the Greek, but all world civilizations have been found to have philosophical worldviews within them... .
A religion is a system of behaviors and practices, that relate to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements,[16] but the precise definition is debated.
Transcendence is the aspect of a deity's nature and power that is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws.
Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some theologians and metaphysicians of various religious traditions affirm that a god is both within and beyond the universe (panentheism); in it, but not of it; simultaneously pervading it and surpassing it.[/i]
In layman's terms, consider that transcendent truth's, are those metaphysical truths (conscious phenomena) like our sense of wonderment we've been discussing; the feelings about the color red, Love, abstract mathematical truth's, etc., all of course associated with human self-awareness/the human condition...then consider timeless truth's some of which are phenomena from the aforementioned features of consciousness. Accordingly, we then have a sort of Kantian innate awareness or quality that seems to transcend our typical notion of logic. (Albeit, we do know that a priori mathematical truth's seem to be timeless, eternal truth's which are considered transcendental.)
And so that's where I thought maybe you would take the previous post/question. I suppose one point would be (as I believe Kant might argue) that there is more to life other than pure reason (a priori/a posteriori).
But back to the OP, is the concept of Noumenon (part of Kant's transcendental idealism), something that exists a priori like mathematical structures? If one believes math (a timeless eternal truth), which defines the universe so well, exists independently (a priori) and is discovered from time to time (versus human invention), how does that fit into Kant's idea of Noumenon, I wonder?
Plato thought the world was phenomena (real but not fully reality). Kant believed truth was immanent and not transcendent. His basic epistemic stance is that WE are phenomena
Actually, no, he did not, for they are not faulty in the least. An antinomy perfectly exemplifies a case in which pure speculative reason inevitably conflicts with itself with respect to transcendental ideas.
“....If we employ our reason not merely in the application of the principles of the understanding to objects of experience, but venture with it beyond these boundaries, there arise certain sophistical propositions or theorems. These assertions have the following peculiarities: They can find neither confirmation nor confutation in experience; and each is in itself not only self-consistent, but possesses conditions of its necessity in the very nature of reason—only that, unluckily, there exist just as valid and necessary grounds for maintaining the contrary proposition. The questions which naturally arise in the consideration of this dialectic of pure reason, are therefore: 1st. In what propositions is pure reason unavoidably subject to an antinomy? 2nd. What are the causes of this antinomy? 3rd. Whether and in what way can reason free itself from this self-contradiction? A dialectical proposition or theorem of pure reason must, according to what has been said, be distinguishable from all sophistical propositions, by the fact that it is not an answer to an arbitrary question, which may be raised at the mere pleasure of any person, but to one which human reason must necessarily encounter in its progress. In the second place, a dialectical proposition, with its opposite, does not carry the appearance of a merely artificial illusion, which disappears as soon as it is investigated, but a natural and unavoidable illusion, which, even when we are no longer deceived by it, continues to mock us and, although rendered harmless, can never be completely removed....”
(CPR A421/B449)
Noumena is beyond (transcends) the phenomenon of observation (observing a thing), but tells us nothing about the nature of the thing. The nature of existence that is beyond logic and reason (cosmological/mystery, etc.).
That is the main 'regressive' takeaway about the physical world viz self-aware conscious beings: existence ---->logic--->phenomena--->transcendence---> noumena.
That could be understood hypothetically but not as long as we are connected to phenomena
.....all good.
Quoting 3017amen
The concept of noumena....maybe, yes. Noumena themselves, iff there were such things.....not a chance. Mathematical structures, while a priori for their construction, lend themselves intuitively to phenomenal representation for their reality. Noumena, on the other hand, as products of the understanding, hence are only discursive constructs which eliminates them from intuition, hence can never be phenomena, hence can never be represented in the human world of objects.
If electrons are described through mathematics, does that become our reality? As Gregory alluded, is that some sort of Platonic existence?
Quoting Mww
But if mathematical structures describe the nature of the universe, how would that square with your description/quote?
We don’t know that they do; we only know they describe the universe in such a way the universe becomes comprehensible to us, strictly given the kind of intelligence we are.
But what is mathematics itself? Is it an abstract construct, like other things from our consciousness?
Simply put, I guess, mathematics is the science developed by reason out of the category of “quantity”, in response to observations in the world. If the categories are part of our innate rational constitution, as transcendental philosophy stipulates, then the ground of mathematical structures resides in us naturally.
Okay, but if this innate sense of reason provides for an abstract objective reality, what is the nature of [this] our reality?
Sorry Mr. Wood, didn't mean to ignore you. Try this refresher:
Why...or rather, how....would there be any difference between them, our reality or objective reality? Doesn’t matter what there is under any conditions whatsoever, reason is the one and only way a human is ever going to find out about it. Even accident or pure reflex as mere occasion for experience, still needs its possible understanding, which reverts right back to reason.
Since the OP is largely about metaphysics, I believe, to answer your question, the metaphysician does LOL:
We're not interested in why there is a universe. Language is platonic because it's human. Reality is non-platonic: real non-real phenomena
Indeed. I don’t give a damn WHY there is a universe. That there is something I think of as it, is good enough.
An antinomy isn’t a proof; it’s a logical argument, a “...dialectical proposition or theorem of pure reason...”
“....This method of watching, or rather of originating, a conflict of assertions, not for the purpose of finally deciding in favour of either side, but to discover whether the object of the struggle is not a mere illusion, which each strives in vain to reach, but which would be no gain even when reached....”
I suppose you think you can refute solipsism
You don't understand metaphysical process. You're not seeing that antinomies of self, geometry, world, and divinity reach a point, literally a point, in the brain around which your mind revolves. Your mind isn't revolving
As is your prerogative.
I’d be interested in how you regard the antinomies from other than a logical point of view. Not sure I’d understand, but I’d at least gain familiarity.
True enough, but that isn’t “a different point of view, not a logical one”. What you say here is still a logical point of view.
A noble attitude, for which I salute you.
In order to communicate, humans developed language which is very universal. The intricacies of inner life are such that we can only speak in general terms. It appears that Platonic ideals and talk about noumena results from the function of language itself. It is as if we can't really speak of individual phenomena in itself without putting it into general agreed upon categories
They "mean", then, doubtless this bit of paper here, which is quite different from that bit over there; but they speak of actual things, external or sensible objects, absolutely individual, real, and so on; that is, they say about them what is simply universal. Consequencely what is called unspeakable is nothing else than what is untrue, irrational, and something barely and simply " meant"- Hegel
Note: Kant first explains time and space as intuitions in his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770
"Becoming" is a word which resonates with Eastern and Western philosophers, but as you say language is important and Kant's use of the word "phenomena" in the context of his "analogues of experience" is important because it situates "substance" in between being and nothingness (in that substancial existence not noumena) but doesn't say the world is illusion (unlike Berkeley). We understand being in the context of everyday life and inner experience but we never find a pure Beingness because such just doesn't exist
Actually that was Einstein lol
Nothingness is left when you take away being, but that is not no thing (Sartre). Being and nothingness are a fabric which makes spacetime to the left and matter to the right. But to follow this to its conclusion seems to indicate that objects exist and don't exist at the same time, therefore you're right that it's hard to find the single point around which any philosophy can revolve
"A singular thing is actual as coming from Concept [mind] and posited [by language] as something universal in identity with itself... Concept produces itself.. and is what is mediated by and with itself. It is a mistake to assume that, first of all, there are objects which form the content of our concepts of them, through the operation of abstracting that we spoke of earlier.. Instead, the Concept is what truly comes first, and things are what they are through the activity of the Concept that dwells in them and reveals itself in them... The Concept is its own relation to self."
That's Hegel in the lesser (second) Logic talking about what phenomena is
As I understand phenomenology, mind is a priori in that it springs from the brain but we also do not know, and can't figure out, which is prior