Kant and Modern Physics
There seems to be a difficulty here.
Statement 1: Kant in the Critique gave a solid argument here. Remove all awareness of an object (the thing itself) and something still exists, noumena. These are the external, independent of our minds.This is a one way track: from noumena to mind to its representations to us, phenomena. All science is based on phenomena, not the true external realities, noumena (not quite what Kant may have said).
Statement two: Science has shown remarkable capability of verification, prediction and use.
How is is this possible if it is only the appearance of external reality (phenomena), not the external reality itself (noumena)?
I appreciate any ideas on this subject.
Thanks,
Arthur Rupel
Statement 1: Kant in the Critique gave a solid argument here. Remove all awareness of an object (the thing itself) and something still exists, noumena. These are the external, independent of our minds.This is a one way track: from noumena to mind to its representations to us, phenomena. All science is based on phenomena, not the true external realities, noumena (not quite what Kant may have said).
Statement two: Science has shown remarkable capability of verification, prediction and use.
How is is this possible if it is only the appearance of external reality (phenomena), not the external reality itself (noumena)?
I appreciate any ideas on this subject.
Thanks,
Arthur Rupel
Comments (86)
It's possible because phenomena are still related to noumena. The phenomena are in some way related to the noumena. So, if we establish a relation between phenomena, we have also established a relation between whatever parts of the noumena created them. This relationships is "true" even if it's not the objective relation.
I like to think of it as an encrypted message. Objective reality is the original text, your mind the encryption machine, empirical reality is the encrypted message. You can analyze the encrypted message and find relations between different parts. These are "real", they represent information that was in the original message, but they are not that information.
Phenomena = Known
Having both is essential, as you cannot have complete knowledge of any one thing, but some knowledge of what it is. This prediction is a postulate of Gödel's Incompleteness theorem. .
Ideas on the subject. Or, more accurately, opinions. Or, more more accurately, a possibly inaccurate understanding of an EXCRUCIATINGLY complex speculative epistemological philosophy:
Kant is accepted as being ahead of his time in the physics of his day, but only from a theoretical approach. That is, he theorized, but didn’t experiment, and just because some of what he thought has been subsequently established by physical science, I don’t think the modern science community attributes much of its progress to him.
Awareness is the same as consciousness. To remove awareness is to remove the extant intuitions residing in consciousness of the object, which immediately deletes any experience of them. Removing the intuitions, however, does not remove the conditions under which it is possible to become aware of objects given from sense. These are the “something that remains” as the pure forms of intuition, of which there are only two, called space and time. They are not noumena, but pure a priori conceptions belonging to the mind, the deduction of which is both unknown and unnecessary, because no experience is at all possible without them.
There are two ways to cognize an object, either it is given by sense or it is thought by understanding. That which is unknowable in the sensible world is the thing-in-itself, that which is unknowable in the world of thought is the noumenon.
On empirical knowledge:
The as yet undetermined object given to sense is called phenomenon, and that which resides in consciousness that relates to it is intuition. Imagination unites phenomenon to its intuition, from which representation of an object arises, of which no true identity of the object is yet allowed, but to which now understanding has something to relate its conceptions.
That a determined object of extant experience can be cognized without being presented to sense is evident by the mere thought of it, and an undetermined object remains imaginable. But if an object is thought, there is no sensuous phenomenon with which intuition may be related, and therefore imagination must import a suitable object to use for the creation of its representations. Otherwise, there would be no consistency between an object of sense and the very same object merely thought. These relations are the conceptions belonging to understanding itself, and are deduced from experience even while not derived from an immediate instance thereof.
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On non-empirical knowledge:
There obviously arises in the mind conceptions for which no empirical object is possible, as is the case with “cause”, “substance”, “quality”, and such other pure conceptions. Because it is absurd to suppose the human cognitive system has two distinct methodologies to cope with two distinct kinds of knowledge, but rather it is very far more parsimonious to suppose there is but one method but with distinct components contained within it, or, which is worse, we are left with the reality of only one kind of knowledge, but by means of which it is absolutely impossible to explain how it is we really do know that things like “cause” and “quality” actually are comprehensible, effective and even necessary in our understanding of the world of sense.
Here of course, we are presented with a major problem, for we must exclude anything from our cognitions suggesting even the possibility of an object associated with an empirical conception, including the entire faculties of sensibility, intuition, imagination and most importantly, representation, yet holding with understanding and judgement, for even this method of cognizing is relational because of the type of rational being we are. It is here the transcendental deduction of, and the objective validity for, the pure categories are required, these being no more than the pure form of properties or attributes to which a concept would necessarily adhere if it were possible to think one. That is, for instance, if a thing is a cause it must be possible to conceive that it exists. If this be accepted, the method for the uniting the pure conceptions with......something....must happen, or there remains nothing to which judgement may apply, and no cognition would follow and we would have a cognition of what constitutes “cause”. Because we do think “cause”, consistently and intelligibly, it must be the case the concept relates to something. This something is a noumenon, and we have no idea what it is, but it must be something, because without it, no relation between a pure conception and a priori cognition is possible.
Ever wonder why it is, that we can cognize a multiplicity of properties for frying bacon, but we can’t intuit a smell for it. While science rightly declares the sensory apparatus precludes this information, the philosophy of speculative epistemology makes no such intuitive distinction. One of the most obvious requisites grounding our knowledge for this particular thing, has a missing intimate component. If it is possible to truthfully cognize frying bacon while missing an important consideration, it stands to reason it is possible to just as truthfully cognize a pure a priori conception without that which makes it possible.
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The root of the confusion:
Empirical Understanding has a thing (phenomenon) associated with it and an unknown thing-in-itself is associated with that phenomenon. Pure Understanding has an a priori thing (category) associated with it and a noumenon associated with that category, as its unknown thing-in-itself. They are not the same, not even close, even if they share a term meant to illustrate a similar quality of each.
For what it’s worth.
Eh, that's a little much, even if it's close to correct. For one, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems are really only applicable to math formalisms and more strictly, to those expressive enough to form number theory. They don't apply, for example, to propositional and first-order logical systems. We know everything about those systems*, they're complete and consistent.
*I think first-order classical logic isn't entirely decideable though? Can't recall.
What is odd is Kant's proposal of a noumena is unobservable and therefore unscientific.
Well Kant was a philosopher, not a scientist in the strict sense. Noumena are a metaphysical concept.
A private world then, this noumena...
I can't see how noumena can be talked of though. Did Kant simply posit noumena and then say nothing about it?
The argument for noumena is that there must be something that creates the phenomena. That is, our minds are affected by something outside of themselves. This is the noumena. Kant's point, and this is one of the major cornerstones of his philosophy, is that all that can be said about the noumena is that they *are* in some way. What they are or how they are cannot be determined by humans, as humans only have access to phenomena.
Phenomena are our observations and experience of things outside of our awareness of self. As such, we have "access" to them by experiencing them.
Quoting Evola
The dot is not the only phenomenon. There is a whole range of phenomena that, taken together, we call "Mercury".
“....Quoting Evola
What you’re missing....if anything, really....is, it depends on how one uses the term. Science, including the Enlightenment era science of Kant’s time, usually terms natural events as phenomena, as a dot on a photograph is plate or, much earlier, Newton’s spinning bucket. As such, we all have access to phenomena just by being extant in an objective reality.
But Kantian metaphysics does not use the term that way, it being a particular nomenclature assigned to a very specific epistemological procedure:
“....The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon...”
In other words, the scientific phenomenon isn’t a Kantian phenomenon until the scientific, or which is the same thing, the experience, is received into and processed by reason. This distinction in terminology is important only insofar as it is diametrically opposed to the even more metaphysical name, noumenon.
Ahhh....excellent. You are quite correct. The whole reach of this kind of metaphysics has to do with the relational nature of human reason, to which everyone must agree. We relate everything to something, endlessly and completely. If we decide on a truth, it is only because we have determined something about the conditions that justify it. Same with phenomena; just because we think a certain way in order to arrive at them does not in itself preclude the possibility of cognizing another way, which still must be relational, but can have different manifestations of its objects. Simply put, under the terms of this theory, noumenal objects cannot be either intuited or conceived, but noumena itself remains as a viable concept because it fulfills a function within the terms of the theory. Different theory, different noumena, or, different manifestations of the job noumenon actually perform.
That being said, the Kantian use of noumena, while not original, is by far the most developed, even if wrongly so.
That objection makes no sense to me. In what way is calling the dot "Vulcan" insetad of "Mercury" wrong? The world of the phenomena is a collection of experiences. If additional experiences are registered, that world changes. This doesn't make the old phenomena "wrong", it just makes the old theories about the entirety of phenomena incomplete.
Quoting TheMadFool
Ockham's razor is applicable as part of the scientific method, i.e. within phenomena. I don't think it's a general principle of epistemology.
Wouldn’t Kant have to explain why the noumena is inaccessible? What’s Kant’s criteria for accessing the noumena?
He seems to be saying phenomena are an indirect means of getting to the noumena but what would satisfy Kant if direct knowing of the noumena is the issue?
I ask because if he’s asking the impossible then it seems quite futile to make the distinction noumena-phenomena.
Neither Mercury nor the purported "Vulcan" are noumena though. As I said, Mercury is a collection of phenomena, as are all physical objects. There are noumena behind these phenomena, but we have no idea what they are, and they cannot meaningfully be called "Mercury".
"Vulcan" was presumably the name of a collection of phenomena as well, but the concept or theory of a planet Vulcan fell out of favor as new phenomena were added that the old theory could not account for.
Quoting TheMadFool
Kant did, of course, explain. I don't know if I can do that explanation justice, but I can try.
So the noumena are that which exists outside our self. They cannot be known by thinking alone, because that would require them to already be within the thinking subject. So they can only be known by the ways they affect us. Everything that affects us is filtered through our senses and our minds though. It is subjective. Therefore, objective or "direct" knowledge of noumena is impossible to humans. It would only be possible to a subject that knows noumena by thinking them.
This distinction is important because it tells us something about the nature of empirical knowledge, which has implications for the interpretation of certain apparent dilemmas like the first cause or free will.
But science was already very sophisticated by the time of Kant, and proved to be a reliable way of obtaining useful knowledge about the world.
Quoting Christoffer
Although the original Kantian metaphysics does indeed suffer from certain anachronisms in light of newer developments in science and mathematics, the general idea behind Kantian philosophy remains viable to this day.
Do we explain phenomena in terms of "unobserved" aspects of reality? The way I see it, all scientific theories do is account for observations. Our theories on spacetime, quantum fields and replicators (?) are all based on the observations they account for.
Gaining knowledge of noumena would mean gaining information that has not been processed by a human mind. This is impossible for a human mind to do.
Sure, theories also include predictions for future observations, that is the point of making them after all. But that prediction is based on accounting for past observations. If a theory cannot account for current observations, whatever it predicts for future observations is already beside the point.
Quoting Evola
For "reason" to discover information, that information must be there. It must be accessible to reason. Quantum fields are observable via their effects, they are possible to experience. Noumena are not, because experience necessarily makes that which is experienced subjective.
I'm not saying he was wrong or that the methodology wasn't advanced enough for serious science. I'm saying that science is a field which builds on top of itself in order to progress. Previous findings get adjusted or changed depending on new evidence and proven theories get mixed together with new ones into a synthesis. Hypotheses clash until they are proven into theories and strange observations lay the foundation for tomorrows struggle for evidence.
All of this leads up to the best possible answers about the world there is and that time is usually the current present time. So, my point was that in order to view his ideas with rational eyes we need to view them in the context of all the knowledge we have today.
Before our modern methods of science, before Popper and alike, science lacked in its methodology. Quoting darthbarracuda
Agreed. The problem though is that many thinkers/philosophers take a lot of previous philosophy and scientific methodology as truths instead of parts of a general overview of the history of science. We use what works, but need to apply it to our modern understandings. One thing that I find lacking with the people who try to create hypotheses and arguments based on ideas before the 20th century is the lack of things like falsifiability and understanding of logical reasoning. Not saying Kant's ideas aren't working, just that the logic and falsifiability methods came long after him and could help improve upon his ideas. The solution to combine older ideas with new ones is using them through the methods of modern times.
Reason certainly can be used to ascertain something further about these things, these things being noumena. But upon discovery of this something new, which falsifies the theory that initially developed them, it may not be advisable to continue calling them noumena at all. As in the case of any falsified theory, the terminology of it cannot be displaced, but is usually either consequently re-named, or the conditions sustaining that old terminology are remediated.
“....And even if we should suppose a different kind of intuition from our own, still our functions of thought would have no use or signification in respect thereof. But if we understand by the term, objects of a non-sensuous intuition, in respect of which our categories are not valid, and of which we can accordingly have no knowledge (neither intuition nor conception), in this merely negative sense noumena must be admitted. For this is no more than saying that our mode of intuition is not applicable to all things, but only to objects of our senses, that consequently its objective validity is limited, and that room is therefore left for another kind of intuition, and thus also for things that may be objects of it. But in this sense the conception of a noumenon is problematical, that is to say, it is the notion of that it is possible, nor that it is impossible, inasmuch as we do not know of any mode of intuition besides the sensuous, or of any other sort of conceptions than the categories—a mode of intuition and a kind of conception neither of which is applicable to a non-sensuous object. We are on this account incompetent to extend the sphere of our objects of thought beyond the conditions of our sensibility, and to assume the existence of objects of pure thought, that is, of noumena, inasmuch as these have no true positive signification....
......Thought is certainly not a product of the senses, and in so far is not limited by them, but it does not therefore follow that it may be employed purely and without the intervention of sensibility, for it would then be without reference to an object. And we cannot call a noumenon an object of pure thought; for the representation thereof is but the problematical conception of an object for a perfectly different intuition and a perfectly different understanding from ours, both of which are consequently themselves problematical. The conception of a noumenon is therefore not the conception of an object, but merely a problematical conception inseparably connected with the limitation of our sensibility....
.....Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, without at the same time enlarging its own field. While, moreover, it forbids sensibility to apply its forms and modes to things and restricts it to the sphere of phenomena, it cogitates an object in itself (consequently not itself a phenomenon), and which cannot be thought either as a quantity or as reality, or as substance (because these conceptions always require sensuous forms in which to determine an object)—an object, therefore, of which we are quite unable to say whether it can be met with in ourselves or out of us, whether it would be annihilated together with sensibility, or, if this were taken away, would continue to exist. If we wish to call this object a noumenon, because the representation of it is non-sensuous, we are at liberty to do so. But as we can apply to it none of the conceptions of our understanding, the representation is for us quite void, and is available only for the indication of the limits of our sensuous intuition, thereby leaving at the same time an empty space, which we are competent to fill by the aid neither of possible experience, nor of the pure understanding.....”
All that says is, if the theory concerning how we logically and comparatively think, and how our knowledge is constructed is true, or at least as yet unfalsified, there is room for things like noumena, even if we can’t use them for anything. A wheat/chaff kinda thing, sort of.
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On science. Science of the day, that is:
The Nebula Hypothesis, in “ Universal Natural History and the Theory of the Heavens”, 1755, anticipating LaPlace 1796;
The natural disposition of geography for earthquakes, Lisbon, “On the Occurences of Natural Calamities..... ”, 1756a,b; the theoretical possibility for replacing religious acts of God;
Berlin Royal Academy of Science Prize “Examination of the Question Whether the Rotation of the Earth......”, 1754a, anticipating “leap seconds” and the theory of tidal friction;
Discredit of Newtonian absolute time, “Metaphysical Foundation of Natural Science”, 1783, anticipating Einstein, 1905;
I don't know what you mean when you say, "We know all things about logic systems." Apparently I don't know them all, or even a good number of them. What is noumena to me, may be phenomena to you. XD
"In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued that knowledge does not conform to objects but, rather, objects conform to knowledge. That is to say, the subject himself imposes the order he experiences in nature. As such, the subject is not in direct experiential contact with the world. Reason cannot extend beyond the world as we experience it.
But could it be said that the tremendous success of modern science, particularly physics, suggests that we are indeed in direct experiential contact with the world and that Kant is therefore wrong?"
Wouldn’t it depend on what you mean by physics suggesting we are indeed in direct experiential contact with the world? Under what conditions would that theoretically, then provably, be the case?
The Critique, particularly the part you reference, is concerned with the possibility of a priori knowledge, hence the critique of *PURE* reason. Of course, the only way that would even be possible is if intuitions and conceptions already exist in the mind. So if it can be proved some do, then it becomes theoretically possible all do. And if it can logically be shown they all do, then the mind, and therefore reason, and therefore the thinking subject in possession of it, can not have, and does not function by, direct knowledge of the world. Direct perception, yes; direct knowledge, not so much.
Direct experiential contact is misleading. Experience is itself not a contact, it is a process. Perception is direct contact, but it is not an experience. Direct knowledge, ok; direct experience ok; direct sensory awareness, ok. Direct experiential contact, not ok. The first two are negatives. The third is a positive. The last is simply unintelligible.
There is no doubt The Good Professor was quite wrong about a lot of scientific things. His math for tidal friction had the Earth slowing down rotationally 1/86th of a second in 2000 years. A whole bunch of orders of magnitude too fast, because the conservation laws had yet to be codified. And being a Newtonian at heart, he would probably have embraced them. A lot of his metaphysics, if not wrong for his time, are at least outdated, re: on women’s place in social structure, the “Science of Right” having to do with ethical politics.
And although the math can get complicated, and the concepts can get more and more complex - that is pretty much what physics is.
"Physics is valid within the limits of human reason."
I would change one word:
Physics is valid within the limits of human awareness.
"At the core of all physics is a mathematical expression of observation and then expanded."
The key word is observation which is perception-phenomena.Delete all perceptual qualities, and something still exists, the thing in itself, noumena. Noumena and noumenal processes are what is there when we are not, It is the actual external reality independent of consciousness.
That something is there, which is given representation to our minds as phenomena, I believe is a statement hard to dispute.
We study phenomena, which are based on noumena and awareness. In a way it can be said we are studying representations (to us) of actual external realities, not these realities itself.
The question then is how is physics so successful when in a sense we are studying what we see in our minds, not what is actually out there.
Another point: If all that a physicist know about physics is what he is conscious of and yet we have no idea what consciousness is, then what is physics?
Another point is consciousness is a very real part of the universe, yet we seem to separate it from physics. It is most likely that it is impossible that it can be included, but we should at least remember it is there and that a full understanding of the cosmos is therefore not possible.
Kant was very meticulous with his wording, to the point where to properly understand his work, you need to write your own dictionary as reference. Changing words around in Kant's works is not a good idea.
Quoting Arthur Rupel
The success of physics is also a phenomenon and thus "just in our minds", so there is no contradiction.
Quoting Arthur Rupel
We know perfectly well what consciousness is, since we constantly experience it. What we do not know is [i]how[/I] consciousness is.
Quoting Arthur Rupel
Consciousness is very real. But it's not part of the universe in the sense that "the universe" is constructed by a consciousness.
Quoting Arthur Rupel
That depends on whatever you consider a "full understanding". We cannot be omniscient of course.
One of us has grossly misinterpreted the Critique.
what exists when all perception is taken from from the "observeables". It would seem that it is the remarkable capability of the mind to take what is utterly beyond awareness and give it an appearance in awareness. How this can happens is one of the great ignored questions.
Bishop Berkley had previously that that it is ridiculous to believe that anything exists outside our minds since everything we see is inside our minds. God is the great coordinator. Kant got us out of this annoying statement by the very logical statement that there is a real existence outside our minds which is given an appearance inside our minds
Kant did not write a lot about noumena other than it is there. What I am doing is simply exploring and speculating further what noumena is. This is not part of Kant. But this is an exploration and speculation of idea.I claim nothing else.
My main point is that physics have studied phenomena with remarkable success. Physics explains, predicts and is experimental verified. If noumena is the actual external reality, it should be calling the shots. This is an contradiction of two statements that are obviously true.
Kant is notoriously hard to grasp, so right off the top, I shouldn’t present myself as an expert by any means.
That being said, I haven’t found anything on the removal of perception from “observables” that leaves behind anything but space and time, which do not fit the explanation for noumena.
And the mind does indeed give appearance to that which is far beyond it. Such is called transcendental illusion and is PRECISELY why the critique was written in the first place, to direct reason to its proper domain. Kant states definitively the illusion cannot be removed because of the nature of the mind itself, only exposed and controlled.
Explore to your metaphysical content.
However if we look at the science yellow is in the electromagnetic spectrum I thing (and I could be wrong) in the range of 500 nm,
Many would say this is the noumenal interpretation of the color yellow, However how is a nm? It is a measurement in space. What is space? It would be Kant's interpretation that an inherent quality of our mind, a seed, in consort with perception, to give order to our perceptions (phenomenal objects in space).
Or space could very well be (not Kant's interpretation) of something in noumenon..
Electric and magnetic fields were based on Faraday's perceptions and thought.
Perceptions are representations of noumenon. The external real gives, with the interaction of the mind, the phenomenal real (what's in our minds).
I would guess that giving noumenon a conscious representation is some how a part of evolution. Somewhat along the line evolution and maybe something else kicked in to improve our chances for survival.
To say that what we see is really out there is a questionablel assumption. To say that what we see is what represents what we cannot see may be a more reasonable assumption
Another Utube presentation was given by Amy HABER,The Noumenon of Kant gives a very enlightening discussion of this. Crudely put she discusses noumenon as triparte:
1. It is the utterly unperceivable interacting with the mind to give the perceivable. The external reality and the mind interacts to give the world reality,
One interesting point that feeling of "outside" is a mental impression (Kant). This simple short statement
knocks the wind out of a lot of stuff.
2. The noumenon of the I, "das ich."
3. Tjhe noumenon of the whole (I could be wrong on this one).
Impossible to overstate this point. Maybe even more true of theoretical physics. Thus, finding the right way to synthesize these two areas is tricky. Is it even worth it? I am a fan of Kant, but even the infamous 'analytic/synthtetic' distinction, which Kant thought of as a fine way to begin, is poorly understood. Kant claimed that mathematics is synthetic, or 'synthetic a priori' judgment. This is a controversial point, and much of the controversy is about understanding what it even means. I think one would want to understand what it means before speculating about what Kant might have made of Einstein's non-Euclidean geometry, for example. This theoretical physics of Eistein is certainly a challenging and fascinating subject.
Look at it this way. If we surmise that what we perceive is analogous to what is really out there we may be able to make progress. For example, if we see something moving in a circular manner we can surmise that there is something out there that is changing in a cyclical manner - not necessarily a circular manner. So our experience is telling us something real.
Also, if we perceive something, assuming the analogy as above, we can then focus on a smaller detail of the perceived object. Then on a smaller detail and so on. We can then determine how these details are related to each other and assume that these perceived relationships between parts are also analogous to the actual relationships between the parts of the perceived object.
This process of endless division into smaller parts should be coherent and analogous to the coherence between the parts of the object itself. If there is coherence in our phenomenological perception, down to the finest detail, this coherence can be understood to reflect the actual coherence of the object itself because the object is the source of our perception.
In other words, if our perception is, in any way, analogous to what is really there, it should be analogous down to smaller and smaller details. We can then make a detailed map of what is really there.
The only other possibility is that nothing in our perception is analogous to what is actually there, which is philosophy gone mad.
There is always the temptation -- many if not most scientists do this -- to identify models as the noumena themselves. This is not to be confused with people who refer to models as if they were noumena as a shorthand. But some people believe that the theoretical models known as quantum mechanical wavefunctions are as they would be if we had direct knowledge of the noumena themselves.
Sometimes this is fairly justifiable. If we have direct knowledge of the phenomena of the noumena, such as atoms, DNA, etc., then it's reasonable to proceed on the basis that this regular, scientific universe is not so much of a trickster as to make the noumena vastly different from the models. Sometimes the theory itself is so compelling (e.g. the special theory of relativity) that one is inclined to bet that it is a good match for underlying reality.
But, generally, identifying models as noumena is a failure of scientific thinking. Science provides insight about phenomena. It is up to philosophy whether the models are accurate depictions, and it is a matter for science to determine whether the models give accurate predictions.
I've never really understood this widespread detestation of physicists among philosophers. I've seen it in every philosophy forum I've been in. Whether you're interested in it or not, it's been extremely successful on its own terms. Complaining it doesn't operate differently seems no more sane to me than berating a spoon for not being a hammer.
Awareness of the object is distinguished from noumena, which is the thing in itself, according to Kant. Kant was very concerned with questions regarding causality. He wanted to know how we could know, for example, that the law-like succession we observe is governed by unseen causal forces. An overly simple way of stating this is, we have immediate use and awareness of mental acts. These mental-logical acts involve strict necessity. Such necessity is not observable, so in order for us to be able to apply these acts towards an observable phenomena, a noumenon must lend itself in such a way that it grounds our use of necessity. In other words, such necessity must exist noumenally in order to use concepts that we cannot observe phenomenally. So, we can infer some things about what reality must be like, as a condition on the possibility of certain forms of cognition/experience.
By what standard do you say science is successful. They've gone ape shot of matter and been able to make some things. Who's to say it's successful enough or that there aren't alternate reasons for how they created what they did?
I already stated that: on its own terms. Science proceeds from building models of reality and succeeds by testing those models. The more accurate the prediction, the more successful the model. The more phenomena it can predict or explain, the more successful the model. Science's predictive power outclasses anything else we know of. Those are science's terms, because that's what science is. If you want anything else, use a different tool.
Quoting Gregory
Scientific standards. Kind of covered by "on their own terms" yet again.
Quoting Gregory
Irrelevant. If you postulate a god, for instance, who is making all observations fit with theories that have previously and consistently made other excellent predictions (also via the god), it's still working. It's just working via a god.
Btw none of that really explained why there's such a widespread disdain for physicists among philosophers. I mean, even if science had massively underachieved, is that sufficient cause for hate? You say we're too Kantian? But Kant and Kantian philosophers don't bother you?
Someone once told me that an insult only hurts if it's true.
In the words of Graham Harman, philosophy has an inferiority complex. A few scientists have a big dick and like to show it off. A few philosophers get emotionally hurt, take the bait and make an even bigger fool of themselves than the scientists did.
It's all very pathetic, since the majority of scientists and philosophers are mature and too busy to care about this sort of thing.
It could be God or anything the human imagination can think of pulling the strings. Scientist think they understand matter, but can't prove that. Kant tried to defend regularities but it all fails. I think consciousness effects matter more than we know. Heidegger implies as much. This could explain how scientist make things. There i s no relation between sciences model and reality. They are wrong to think they can model reality anyway. Their statistics are flawed too. Something as basic as whether space-time push us into the chair, pulls us, or opens up to let it rest are still debated by scientists. Your senses can't feel the laws of nature, so there I no access to them even in they exist
‘Appearance’ is a better term than ‘awareness’, as it is nearer in meaning to ‘phenomenon’, which means literally ‘what appears. The term ‘noumenal’ is derived from nous, intellect, meaning ‘an ideal object’ or ‘an object of rational perception’. This goes back to the Platonic-Aristotelian understanding that perfect forms were known immediately, knowledge of them was not meditated by sense-data.
My gloss on it is that all we know are appearances, we don’t know how things are in themselves. And appearance always implies a subject, as the subject is the one to whom something appears.
Kant’s analysis of causation was a response to Hume - it was exactly Hume’s attack on causality which Kant said ‘awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers’. Kant was concerned to show that the assumption of causal relations was foundational to the nature of reason.
I don’t see any necessary conflict between science and philosophy, although I see plenty of conflicts between scientific materialism and other schools of philosophy. But some of the current leading physicists, like Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli, are deeply philosophically informed.
That does make sense, mine is enormous :rofl: Seriously though, was that a thing I missed? I remember the Science Wars back in the early pomo days, and that kind of went weird. A scientist definitely started that one with a (tiny) dick move, but it seemed to get forgiven and forgotten pretty quickly. Bruno Latour gave us a kicking and everyone seems to think we're butthurt over it, but we totally incorporated that stuff. The science/philosophy pissing contest I'm not aware of.
Quoting Gregory
I'm not even sure any of that is coherent, and I'm even less convinced it's a case for actually disliking a group of people. Personally I find consciousness overrated, but we have an interpretation of 50% of the theoretical keystones of modern physics that puts way too much emphasis on the importance of consciousness. Sounds like you'd be in your element. "[N]o relation between sciences model and reality"? Really? If a model 100% of the time in 100% of circumstances predicts what a real thing does, there's no relation? You sure? And what does curved spacetime have to do with statistics?
I would add that we can't know things in themselves apart from the manner in which they appear to us, according to Kant, but we can infer that certain realities, such as causal forces and free will must exist (metaphysical certainty), as conditions on the possibility of the types of things that appear to us. I think this is essential to Kant's position as a whole.
In response to Hume's analysis, Kant argued that we never observe causal forces, we infer they exist based on the strict, law-like successive order in the phenomena. Although we never observe necessary connections in the succession, we apply our a priori concepts which involve necessity and logic. However, the fact that we are able to apply these concepts and recognize causal force implies that such causal forces must exist and ground the phenomena, as a condition on the possibility of our experience of them. So, Kant is in agreement with the standard scientific viewpoint in many regards, and in disagreement with hard materialists and other philosophers on this issue.
I had in mind the "new atheist" thing and counter-thing, which seemed to generate some pissing.
For Hume, ‘all events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined but never connected.’4 It is true that we often
observe the ‘constant conjunction’ of certain events. But correlation is not causation, and we cannot legitimately infer from the former to the latter. Hume concludes that the ‘idea of a necessary connexion among events’ arises only because ‘the mind is carried by habit’ to expect a second, associated
event when it encounters the first.
Kant, of course, endeavours to overcome Hume's scepticism by means of a transcendental argument. We cannot do without causality. If relations of cause and effect cannot be found in sense-data themselves, as Hume maintains, then they must inhere in ‘our ways of thought about the data’ (S 37). For Kant, causality is rescued as an a priori category of understanding. If we were not able to organise the sense-data we receive according to the laws of cause and effect, Kant says, then we would scarcely be able to have subjective experience at all.
From Wikipedia
“ In metaphysics, a noumenon (/?nu?m?n?n/, UK also /?na?-/; from Greek: ?o???????) is a posited object or event that exists independently of human sense and/or perception.[1] The term noumenon is generally used when contrasted with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to anything that can be apprehended by or is an object of the senses. Immanuel Kant used noumenon to refute idealism, that the noumenal world may exist, but remains unknowable through human senses.[2] In Kantian philosophy, the unknowable noumenon is often linked to the unknowable "thing-in-itself" (in Kant's German, Ding an sich), although how to characterize the nature of the relationship is a question still open to some controversy.”
From Stephen Hawking
“If what we regards as real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy? But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a theory. I therefore take the view, which has been described as simple-minded or naïve, that a theory of physics is just a mathematical model that we use to describe the results of observations… Beyond that it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality is independent of theory.”
I think both Kant and Hawking would object to the notion that the models of science get us direct access to reality itself. Scientific models are good in so far as they allow us to make predictions. That does not allow us to say that science gives us an entirely, complete, adequate or satisfactory model of all of our experience of the world or of reality itself.
:up:
That's quite a recent thing, though, isn't it. The dislike seems older than that. And it's a pro-science rather than intra-physics thing. They quote Bertrand Russell a lot too. :grin:
If it's the atheism generally of science that's responsible, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Gregor's beef isn't obviously a religious one in the normal sense, though the idea that science might be wrong not in any pragmatic sense but because it's based on the wrong book (Kantism rather than Humism) is very familiar.
Quoting Gregory
That really is too silly. Of course scientists don't believe they're changing reality by changing its models. They're improving their models to better predict real phenomena. It's a self-correcting discipline.
What he means by it is given in a few short sections of the introduction and is relatively easy to understand. The problem since, isn’t the understanding of it, but whether or not it is the case. And because it is contained in a theoretical domain, transcendental philosophy, it must be completely legitimate within that domain, but may not stand outside it. Quine, I think, being the most vocal antagonist, Frege and Carnap being favorable towards it.
More important than all that, was why Kant developed that thesis to begin with, what it was the groundwork for, the whole intent of this entirely novel metaphysics. That mathematics is synthetic is beside the point of whether a priori cognitions are possible, and if so, whether they are necessary. And THAT is the alleged “dogmatic slumber”.
——————
Quoting Dan Langlois
In Kant’s time, a good horse dictated one’s top speed. Trains were in their infancy, their import and longevity yet to be established. If he’d made it just another few years, he might have been the one to notice tossing an object out the window of his railcar didn’t appear anywhere near the same to him as it did to his manservant watching him ride away. The guy was a peer-reviewed scientist after all, even if his legacy is philosophy.
—————-
Quoting Dan Langlois
....which is always a good thing, but do yourself a favor and forget those damned cursed noumena; they have no place in Kantian epistemology except as a placeholder for that which isn’t. And when you read his texts, and find the one or two instances where he actually calls noumena a thing-in-itself, it is most important to take it in context, for he explicitly states elsewhere, noumena are nothing whatsoever for us as humans.
2) scientist slip up all the time and say like "we will use this math instead.of that one". I'm convinced they use The Secret and if we are God, that makes sense. It's so bizarre they think they can prove the cosmological things within a materialistic paradigm. Math describes matter in a very limited precise way
Morning thoughts
This was well known from Gallileo's Two New Sciences two hundred years before Kant. Although not on a train, obviously.
Kant said every effect must have a cause. I don’t imagine he said reality had a cause.
In Kantian epistemology, reality, in and of itself, without modifiers or qualifications, is a category, a “pure concept of the understanding”, and accordingly, has no object of its own by which it is empirically known. Instead, they have schemata, by which they are thought. As such, no category, and by association, reality, can be either a cause or an effect. And if every effect must have a cause, and reality is not an effect, it follows reality does not necessarily have a cause.
That reality must have a cause may very well be western, thomistic, and wrong.....but it isn’t Kantian.
Absolutely. My fault for starting but not finishing: it stands to reason he knew of parabolics, but didn’t connect it to the possibility of relative simultaneity.
Good catch.
How do you figure that?
Isn't the problem with this, at least on the Kantian view anyway, that concepts such as "to produce", which are causal in nature, only make sense in the realm of phenomena and so to think that noumena produce phenomena in any circumstances is incoherent. I know Kant tries to make sense of the idea of noumenal causation to deal make room for freedom of will, but not entirely successfully.
In the way I just explained before the bit you quoted.
Quoting jkg20
"To produce" is at best a loose way of saying what I'm trying to say, but all our language is causal and temporal so what else can I do. Noumena are supposed to be the things that phenomena are appearances of; they're the "really real" things "behind" the mere appearances. That relationship between noumena and phenomena, whatever the details of that might be, is what I'm talking about with this "produce" talk.
We can keep the notion that there is something "really real" and observer-independent -- unlike all the phenomenal appearances that are observer-dependent, conditioned by the structures of the minds doing the observation -- but at the same time do away with any notion that there is anything to those "really real" things besides their propensity to appear certain ways to certain kinds of observers.
Ok. Under that condition, I shall remain satisfied with what I know, rather than anticipate something I might learn.
Regularities are a strange concept. A always follows B for no reason is very odd. It's strange because there are plenty of times where C does not follow A. And we can only observe that Bs follow As and not Cs. It's just a brute fact of existence that Bs happened to follow As and not Cs.
Reference?
Perhaps stop talking about noumena and "really real" things?
I can think of some context where "really real", "actually real" and so on might make sense, but they are all cases of insisting on the reality that how things appear are how things are.
I am saying that the difficulties that that might otherwise pose are dissolved if we dispense with any notion about the noumena besides their propensity to appear certain ways to certain kinds of minds. We are then left with something like the “objective idealism” of JS Mill, who held the "permanent possibilities of experience" to constitute the entirety of an object's existence. We could also call that kind of view “empirical realism” (which Kant himself embraced), or “physicalist phenomenalism”.
This issue of grounding things is itself problematic though, for it runs into an infinite regress. If phenomena are grounded by noumena, what grounds noumena? Whatever it is that does, what grounds that in turn? Ad infinitum. To demand everything be grounded leads to Munchausen’s/Agrippa‘s trilemma: either you need an infinite chain of grounding, or you stop in a loop somewhere, or you just stop somewhere. Kant’s way out of that conundrum, and that of critical rationalists after him like Popper, is to turn that demand on its head: you don’t initially reject everything until it can be grounded from the (infinite) bottom up, you initially accept all possibilities and then progressively rule out the ones that you find reason to reject.
So on that kind of account, we don’t need to ground permanent possibilities of appearances: things just seem to us to be persistently available to observe, and until we have reason to doubt that, we don’t need any further justification to suppose that things just are as they seem.
“....The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation is sensation. That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical intuition. That undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon....”
“... The conception of a noumenon is therefore not the conception of an object, but merely a problematical conception inseparably connected with the limitation of our sensibility. That is to say, this conception contains the answer to the question: "Are there objects quite unconnected with, and independent of, our intuition?"—a question to which only an indeterminate answer can be given. That answer is: "Inasmuch as sensuous intuition does not apply to all things without distinction, there remains room for other and different objects." The existence of these problematical objects is therefore not absolutely denied, in the absence of a determinate conception of them, but, as no category is valid in respect of them, neither must they be admitted as objects for our understanding....”
Taken together, it is very non-Kantian to say noumena are the ground of appearances, in the human cognitive system, the only one of which we have any empirical knowledge or a priori suppositions at all.
Phenomena are appearances; appearances are given from sensation, which is an entirely empirical condition, hence appearances cannot be given or grounded in either a transcendental object or idea, nor a conception of a strictly discursive faculty such as human understanding, which requires an object for its conceptions.
Inseparably connected to the limits of our sensibility does not imply a limit in procedure, to which noumena can never be connected, but a limitation in kind, the possible differences of which make noumena at least possible.
Its pretty obvious if you study his religious writings that Kant loved what Hume had to write on miracles. Kant put the world in our minds, our heads themselves in our minds. He did this in order to protect regularities. Heidegger had a more realistic approach in his arguments about "being in the future". Technically, there is no way to know what a cup will do when you reach to drink your coffee
If you want to define "noumena" as "whatever grounds appearances" go ahead, but it is completely topic neutral since even appearances can ground appearances.
Not quite; we can have reasons to believe whatever we like, and apparently, some even believe noumena to be actual, which presupposes they have reasons justifying such beliefs. Or, if not actual, at least functional, in some way. For instance, that noumena ground appearances, which in itself may even be the case, but not from Kantian transcendental epistemology, because the ground for appearances is already stipulated as sensation.
What we don’t have, and cannot have, is the cognitive system under which noumena are included.as an operational predicate. All Kant was doing by even mentioning noumena, is admitting the cognitive system we do have, as he describes it, does not imply there can be no other kinds.
As a sidebar, perhaps, is that Kant, as well versed in Greek philosophy as he was, felt he had to account for noumena because the Greeks did. I mean, he predicated his entire system on logic, which is the epitome of Greek thought, so if he left noumena out, his system wouldn’t be as complete as logic required. But noumena confuse and confound his system, again, highly illogical, so he did account for it by saying it has no account outside the mere thought of it. For which he has been thoroughly chastised by non-Kantians and neo-Kantians alike.
You go on to mention Quine, as if Quine maybe understood it. Did Quine even read Kant? No reason to feel misled, he never claimed to have read Kant. As to 'whether or not it is the case', yes, it is the case.
'That mathematics is synthetic is beside the point of whether a priori cognitions are possible, and if so, whether they are necessary.'
Okay, but there isn't anything controversial in mathematics being a science. What then, is the 'mathematical evidence'? It's a priori. Nothing controversial in that either. The synthetic part is the controversial part. Addition and geometry have apodictic certainty, they're necessary. You came to the thread to debunk them? Don't you *like* mathematics? 2+2 = .. what?
'If he’d made it just another few years, he might have been the one to notice tossing an object out the window of his railcar didn’t appear anywhere near the same to him as it did to his manservant watching him ride away.'
This doesn't get me to Kant having been wrong about anything that he did notice.
By the way, I see this later remark of yours:
'In Kantian epistemology, reality, in and of itself, without modifiers or qualifications, is a category, a “pure concept of the understanding”, and accordingly, has no object of its own by which it is empirically known. Instead, they have schemata, by which they are thought. As such, no category, and by association, reality, can be either a cause or an effect. And if every effect must have a cause, and reality is not an effect, it follows reality does not necessarily have a cause.'
True that 'reality' is a category, but I don't think that seems to be the issue. I think the thread is, maybe I rephrase a bit, that *appearances* have a cause. Kant discusses this notion. The logic is that 'appearance' is what things look like or seem to be rather than what they actually are. Thus, there is the question of 'what they actually are' -- it's implied in the mere concept of 'appearances'.
Excellent observation. Both Plato & Aristotle were doing Science in 500BC, but walking the tightrope without a net of technology-enhanced empirical evidence. And both saw a necessary distinction between physical Nature (Real) and metaphysical Theories (Ideal). So, Kant was merely updating that ancient science, with almost 1800 years of empirical & theoretical knowledge. Descartes' Discourse on Method had already boiled it down to the basics : the Observer, the "I" whose existence cannot be doubted, is the foundation of all other knowledge.
Therefore, Kant grounded his science in the distinction between Observer (noumena) and Nature (phenomena). These categories are equivalent to the Ideal vs Real dichotomy of the early scientist/philosophers, who made no professional distinction between Scientist & Philosopher. But they did ground their knowledge in both physical (phusis) & psychological (meta-physical) forms of information. :smile:
Quoting tim wood
Kant's Transcendental distinction was between "out there" empirical things and "in here" mental ideas about things. Hence, our knowledge of Nature consists of sensory appearances (haecceity), and rationally-inferred essences (quiddities). So, we don't know those ideal essences directly, but only by inferences from observations. And Hume had already noted a problem with Induction of general principles from limited observations of instances. As you noted, Kant proposed a synthesis of Ideal essences and Real appearances : the unobservable ding an sich, which we must accept as an unobtainable Ideal that we only approximate in our ideas & theories. :nerd:
Transcendental idealism is the view that objects in space are “outer” in the empirical sense but not in the transcendental sense. Things in themselves are transcendentally “outer” but appearances are not.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/
The Problem of Induction :
Hume asks on what grounds we come to our beliefs about the unobserved on the basis of inductive inferences.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/
PS___ I'm not an expert on these quirky questions. So my remarks are only an attempt to clarify my own understanding of the knowledge problem : how do we verify what we know?
Quoting Dan Langlois
Appearances have a cause, yes: things.
Appearances of things, in the Kantian sense, is NOT an indication of what they look like, nor do appearances indicate what a thing is or seems to be.