Empiricism And Kant

Ilya B Shambat

The empiricist approach to discerning reality is making sense of evidence that has been gleaned from the senses. Some philosophers – such as Kant – challenged this approach. They stated such things as that senses are imprecise, and that (in Kant) they only see the appearance of things – the “phenomenal” - but fail to see the things in themselves – the “noumenal.”

I want to make sense of the whole thing.

Now the senses are actually not imprecise. Incomplete yes, but imprecise no. We do not see the radio waves or the infrared radiation; we see the visible light. However the information that I get from seeing the visible light is not an erroneous one. If I see you, I am fairly certain that I am actually seeing you – both the phenomenal you and the noumenal you. I can from this make an educated guess that you are not Adolf Hitler.

In many cases, the things as they appear are very much the things as they are. If I am beholding an apple, I can be sure that I am holding an apple and not a frog. In this case the noumenal and the phenomenal are the same thing; and senses very much are a valid guide to reality.

Where Kant does have a point is in understanding people. People are very different inside from how they are on the outside. What a person looks like through the visual sense says absolutely nothing about the person's character or predispositions. In case of people, the Kantian argument has quite a lot of validity even if it is not conclusively correct. To understand the person in-himself takes much different skills from discerning him in appearance. In this situation, the noumenal and the phenomenal very much differ from one another; and it takes different skills to understand each.

The empiricist view works with most of non-human reality. With human reality, Kant has a point. Do not discard physics or mathematics because of its empiricist origins. Do not judge what a person is on the inside from what he is on the outside. There is a place for both approaches, and it is instructive of all intelligence to recognize which – and where – to apply.

Streetlight

Lol Kant never said the senses are 'imprecise'; whole thread is invalid.

tim wood

I want to make sense of the whole thing. — Ilya B Shambat

And you shall: Kant distinguished between pure and practical reason - maybe Mww will join us here - and as a practical matter, he knew what he saw and wasn't confused about it. What he was on about was how science could ground its knowledge, and for that he had recourse to the joint effort of mind and thing together and not just one or the other.

That is, when Kant at down, he knew perfectly well it was a chair he was sitting in. But we can imagine him asking himself how a scientist knew it was a chair, beyond just practical, everyday knowing which cannot pass for scientific knowing. His answer was The Critique of Pure Knowledge. Which you should now obtain and start to read.

And search Mww on this site and read some of his comments on Kant.

Izat So

Retinal images are 2D. We perceive in 3D and no it’s not just because of stereoscopic vision. People have to learn to see and when they have sight trouble that causes them to miss the critical period for this, it is difficult. Furthermore, we fill in the blanks. I can’t see the legs of the side table obscured by the couch but I can make sense of it in 3D space. I can distinguish objects by sight. We learn this combining sight and proprioception. As we do that we learn to objectify our perceptions (which is probably why little ones throw things given to them).

Echarmion

In many cases, the things as they appear are very much the things as they are. If I am beholding an apple, I can be sure that I am holding an apple and not a frog. In this case the noumenal and the phenomenal are the same thing; and senses very much are a valid guide to reality. — Ilya B Shambat

The question you should ask is this: how do you know whether all the sensations of an apple (color, shape, smell, taste etc.) are caused by an apple in and of itself and not by a frog that causes you to perceive an apple?

Ilya B Shambat

↪StreetlightX

He definitely said that there was a difference between the phenomenal (the thing as they appear) and the noumenal (the things as they are). I show where his approach is right and where his approach is wrong.

Mww

I want to make sense of the whole thing. — Ilya B Shambat

The opening salvo makes clear that ain’t gonna happen. Kant never says the senses are imprecise....
(“no consideration is here made of optical illusion”)
.........nor that the senses “see”, much less “see” the appearance of things......
(“...the faculty of sensation, which I term receptivity...”)
........and worst of all, the catastrophic misinterpretation of the distinction between phenomena and noumena makes abundantly clear no sense is to made of this particular examination of the Kantian approach....period.

Literary license in the form of “this is how I see it” is one thing; throwing interpretive jello at the paradigmatic wall is quite something else.

Carry on.
(Waves at Tim as he sashays out the door)

Empiricism And Kant

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