• I like sushi
    5.2k
    2. Not actually possible. If Kant is so complex, and I can find several notable and respectable writers who take the position I'm putting forward, you can't make this claim. Its exactly the same as I'm objecting to above. It is a standard response which is not actually capable of being made on the writings Kant left. The interpretive process gets us here, fairly squarely.AmadeusD

    Show me in the text where Kant says noumena is physical. You cannot. End of story.
  • I like sushi
    5.2k
    Henry Allison: Takes the dual-aspect argument on and imo compellingly.
    P.F Strawson makes similar comments in Bounds of Sense
    Lucy Alais doesn't commit, but is heading in this direction, from what I've read (but that could turn out to be embarrassingly unhelpful)
    Schulting seems to presuppose the noumena as physical
    the SEP on Qualified Phenomenalism seems to also support this, or at least run over why its reasonable.
    AmadeusD

    I imagine out of all of these SEP might hint at such. I doubt very much any other states noumena is physical. you are jus trawling for secondary commentaries for evidence instead of presenting primary source quotes ... which makes me wonder if you have actually read COPR? Many people pose as if they have when it fact they simply did a course on it and were spoon fed information via a secondary source. Perfectly understandable as not everyone has the tiem or inclination to sift through such a dense volume.
  • Wayfarer
    25.2k
    It's not a blindness but a sensible intellectual humility. All we know is this world. We can have no way of knowing if there is more. I think your assertion that most of the population think this world is all there is unsupported by the data: It is estimated that more than 85 percent of the global population identifies with a religious group.

    I'd say those who want to believe in something that cannot be known to be true are the ones wearing blinkers.
    Janus

    You think the Kant's description of the unknowability of the in itself is a religious dogma, because you don't understand it. You think he's projecting an unknowable something. Meanwhile, 'the world', which you so confidently proclaim our knowledge of, is itself not the knowable, familiar and determinate realm which you so casually believe it to be. So you categorise this kind of argument, and that of the original post, as being kind of religious, which is why you think them dogmatic. It's just completely transparent, and it's the opposite of intellectual humility.
  • Mww
    5.2k
    What's your point here?Metaphysician Undercover

    Ohfercrissakes. Obviously, my point is your thumb will be just as wounded by a mis-directed “faulty idea” as mine is by a hammer.

    And for truth accurate representation is necessary…..Metaphysician Undercover

    Wonderful. Be sure and let me know when, or if, you happen upon an accurate representation. That to which you compare the one you have, to another you don’t, from which the necessarily deficient quality of yours is determinable….well, good luck with that, I say.

    Now, you might say the comparison is always just between your own representations, a succession predicated on changes in experience, which, ironically enough, is precisely what every cave-dweller since Day One, has done. But there is never in the manifold of successive changes in your own representations the implication of the unconditioned, that from which no further change is possible and from which the only logical notion of an accurate representation, is given.

    Which leaves you with….(sigh)…..only those that don’t contradict each other, and from which it is clear the form of truth, that in a cognition which conforms to is object, already manifests an accurate representation, and justifies logic as the necessary criteria for the form any truth must exhibit.
    ————-

    To find truth we must exceed empirical knowledge.Metaphysician Undercover

    Given as established the conditio sine qua non form of truth, that in a cognition which conforms to its object, and the impossibility of exceeding empirical knowledge with respect to experience of the objects contained in those cognitions, which is always that to which the form of truth relates, it follows there is no universal criteria for the fact of truth available to the human being.

    There may be considered sufficient reason to exceed empirical knowledge insofar as the empirical knowledge we have does not afford us truth as such. But considering sufficient reason for an impossibility, is incomprehensible.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    14.1k
    But it’s more complicated than that...Punshhh

    Yes, i think it's very complicated, and the trend for us is to simplify. We even have evolved in a way which has us sensing a very small bit of reality. So it is intuitive for us, as built into the fabric of our very existence, to simplify things. Consider for example, that our eyes are only sensitive to a small portion of the electromagnetic wavelengths, one octave so to speak. We've simply evolved in a way to focus on a very small, but very relevant part of reality.

    The simplification helps to keep us focused directly on what is important and purposeful to our little corner of being, but it misleads us into thinking that this is representative of "the universe" as a whole. Ontologies like monism are an extension of this misleading trend toward oversimplification.

    As for the “activity of something else”, presumably we are talking of distant, or large objects, acting as poles. As in electrical, or magnetic poles?Punshhh

    Not necessarily distant or large. If for example, we understand electromagnetism as waves, then there must be substance which the waves are active in (common called aether). That is simply the nature of a wave, it is the activity of the particles of an underlying substance. In our trend to simplify things, it seems like we overlook this need for an underlying substance which is active as waves, in our representations of electromagnetism. But then we end up with a wave function, or something like that, which accounts for the energy of the waves in their capacity to interact with assumed particles of matter, without providing any real representation of the waves.

    The issue of poles is a further problem which I don't think can even be approached without a true representation of the waves. To look for the poles without first representing the waves would be like looking for a cause without first knowing the effect which you are looking for the cause of.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    14.1k
    Ohfercrissakes. Obviously, my point is your thumb will be just as wounded by a mis-directed “faulty idea” as mine is by a hammer.Mww

    Sorry Mww, but I still don't get it. Whether or not a person understands how one received a wound, or even what it means to be wounded, is irrelevant to the feeling of being wounded. It seems like you are trying to say that fi one doesn't know how they got wounded, then they cannot feel the wound. If that is your point, then it's not valid.

    well, good luck with that, I say.Mww

    Thank you, as you seem to understand, we need as much luck as we can possibly get, with this endeavour.

    Now, you might say the comparison is always just between your own representations, a succession predicated on changes in experience, which, ironically enough, is precisely what every cave-dweller since Day One, has done. But there is never in the manifold of successive changes in your own representations the implication of the unconditioned, that from which no further change is possible and from which the only logical notion of an accurate representation, is given.Mww

    You seem to be saying that the process would go on forever, infinitely. I disagree, I think there would be an end to it. Whether the end comes in a good way or a bad way is another question, but I think the good way would be better than the bad way.

    Which leaves you with….(sigh)…..only those that don’t contradict each other, and from which it is clear the form of truth, that in a cognition which conforms to is object, already manifests an accurate representation, and justifies logic as the necessary criteria for the form any truth must exhibit.Mww

    You are completely neglecting the reality of possibilities, and our inclination to judge some possible outcomes as better than others. It is not contradiction, or lack of it, which forms the basis, or grounding of our judgements, it is better and worse, good and bad, which provides that base. And these have a view toward the future, rather than the view toward the past which empirical representation has. Therefore real truth is grounded in the principles by which we judge goodness, as the basic form of all judgement.

    Given as established the conditio sine qua non form of truth, that in a cognition which conforms to its object, and the impossibility of exceeding empirical knowledge with respect to experience of the objects contained in those cognitions, which is always that to which the form of truth relates, it follows there is no universal criteria for the fact of truth available to the human being.Mww

    Do you recognize two very distinct meanings of "object"? One is a physical thing, an object of sensation, empirical knowledge. The other is a goal, or end, the good. Since the physical object of empirical knowledge is demonstrably a faulty concept, produced by the deceptive nature of the senses, then we must consider that the true "object" is the goal or end, the good. Therefore "the form of truth" relates to the good, as the true object, the goal for the future, and not to the false "object" which is the object of empirical knowledge. The "object", as the goal, or end, the good, cannot be known by empirical knowledge, and this is why we must exceed empirical knowledge for real truth, to understand the real object, as the good. That is the principle of the is/ought divide.

    There may be considered sufficient reason to exceed empirical knowledge insofar as the empirical knowledge we have does not afford us truth as such. But considering sufficient reason for an impossibility, is incomprehensible.Mww

    Do you classify knowing the good as impossible?
  • Paine
    2.8k

    I looked through what I could find of Henry Allison's writings, and he promotes a view of 'transcendental idealism' over against the view of 'transcendental realism' that he attributes to P.F. Strawson. I cannot copy and paste from the preview but here a link to Allison's book: Kant's Transcendental Idealism.

    The Preface orients the distinction in the context of the CPR. Chapter 1 introduces sharp critics of transcendental idealism on page 4 and introduces P.F. Strawson as the champion of those views on page 5. The two thinkers are diametrically opposed in this debate concerning 'things-in-themselves.'

    In the Cambridge edition of CPR, Strawson is cited in an editors' footnote for the following text:

    Elucidation.
    Against this theory, which concedes empirical reality to time but dis-
    putes its absolute and transcendental reality, insightful men have so
    unanimously proposed one objection that I conclude that it must natu-
    rally occur to every reader who is not accustomed to these considera-
    tions.20 It goes thus: Alterations are real (this is proved by the change of
    our own representations, even if one would deny all outer appearances
    together with their alterations). Now alterations are possible only in
    time, therefore time is something real. There is no difficulty in answer-
    ing. I admit the entire argument. Time is certainly something real/
    namely the real form of inner intuition. It therefore has subjective real-
    ity in regard to inner experience, i.e., I really have the representation of
    time and of my determinations in it. It is therefore to be regarded re-
    ally not as object but as the way of representing myself as object But
    if I or another being could intuit myself without this condition of sen-
    sibility, then these very determinations, which we now represent to our-
    selves as alterations, would yield us a cognition in which the represen-
    tation of time and thus also of alteration would not occur at all. Its
    empirical reality therefore remains as a condition of all our experiences.
    Only absolute reality cannot be granted to it according to what has been
    adduced above. It is nothing except the form of our inner intuition. * If
    one removes the special condition of our sensibility from it, then the
    concept of time also disappears, and it does not adhere to the objects
    themselves, rather merely to the subject that intuits them.
    The cause, however, on account of which this objection is so unani-
    mously made, and indeed by those who nevertheless know of nothing
    convincing to object against the doctrine of the ideality of space, is
    this. They did not expect to be able to demonstrate the absolute reality
    of space apodictically, since they were confronted by idealism, accord-
    ing to which the reality of outer objects is not capable of any strict proof;
    on the contrary, the reality of the object of our inner sense (of myself
    and my state) is immediately clear through consciousness. The former
    could have been a mere illusion, but the latter, according to their opin-
    ion, is undeniably something real. But they did not consider that both,
    without their reality as representations being disputed, nevertheless be
    long only to appearance, which always has two sides, one where the ob-
    ject is considered in itself (without regard to the way in which it is to be
    intuited, the constitution of which however must for that very reason al
    ways remain problematic), the other where the form of the intuition of
    this object is considered, which must not be sought in the object in it
    self but in the subject to which it appears, but which nevertheless really
    and necessarily pertains to the representation of this object.

    [Kant's footnote at "It is nothing except the form of our inner intuition. * is as follows]

    I can, to be sure, say: my representations succeed one another; but that only
    means that we are conscious of them as in a temporal sequence, i.e., accord
    ing to the form of inner sense. Time is not on that account something in it
    self, nor any determination objectively adhering to things.

    [Kant's note on the manuscript is as follows]

    "Space and time are not merely logical
    forms of our sensibility, i.e., they do not consist in the fact that we represent actual re-
    lations to ourselves confusedly; for then how could we derive from them a priori syn
    thetic and true propositions? We do not intuit space, but in a confused manner; rather
    it is the form of our intuition. Sensibility is not confusion of representations, but the
    subjective condition of consciousness."
    CPR A36/B53

    The editors' footnote #20 says (in part):

    Kant refers here to objections that had been brought against his inaugural
    dissertation by two of the most important philosophers of the period,
    Johann Heinrich Lambert and Moses Mendelssohn, as well as by the then
    well-known aesthetician and member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences,
    Johann Georg Sulzer. Lambert objected that even though Kant was correct
    to maintain that "Time is indisputably a conditio sine qua non of all of our
    representations of objects, it does not follow from this that time is unreal,
    for "If alterations are real then time is also real, whatever it might be" (letter
    61 to Kant, of 18 October 1770, 10:103-11, at 106-7). Mendelssohn also
    wrote that he could not convince himself that time is "something merely
    subjective," for "Succession is at least a necessary condition of the repre-
    sentations of finite spirits. Now finite spirits are not only subjects, but also
    objects of representations, those of both God and their fellow spirits.
    Hence the sequence [of representations] on one another is also to be re-
    garded as something objective" (letter 63 to Kant, of 25 December 1770,
    10:113-16, at 1I5). (The objection that time cannot be denied to be real
    just because it is a necessary property of our representations, since our rep
    resentations themselves are real, has continued to be pressed against Kant;
    see, for instance, P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense [London: Methuen,
    1966], pp. 39 and 54.)
    — CPR page 721

    Strawson appears to hold the criteria of mind-independence as the last word on objectivity. Allison defends Kant's argument that the subjective condition is integral with the real.
  • Punshhh
    3.2k
    The simplification helps to keep us focused directly on what is important and purposeful to our little corner of being, but it misleads us into thinking that this is representative of "the universe" as a whole. Ontologies like monism are an extension of this misleading trend toward oversimplification.
    Do you realise that you have just said that we know nothing, in particular. Well apart from what we have evolved to deal with.
    I would go further and state that we cannot say anything positive, or negative about anything other than our world (except through revelation), welcome to the ranks of mysticism.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.