I'm struggling with this disagreement between Kant and Hegel regarding things-in-themselves and would really appreciate some help. — philosophy
According to Kant, knowledge does not conform to objects but objects conform to knowledge, to our a priori structure. — philosophy
If boundaries don't exist in the real world, then neither do things — Jake
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”
If we are engaged in making sense of the world by imposing our a priori structure on it (''falsifying'' the world, as Nietzsche puts it), it seems to follow that the world as we experience it and the world as it is cannot be one and the same thing. — philosophy
How, then, did Hegel account for experience at all? — philosophy
"in this way thought, at its highest pitch, has to go outside for any determinateness; and although it is continually termed Reason, is out-and-out abstract reasoning. And the result of all is that Reason supplies nothing beyond the formal unity required to simplify and systematize experiences; it is a canon, not an organon, of truth, and can furnish only a criticism of knowledge, not a doctrine of the infinite. In its final analysis this criticism is summed up in the assertion that in strictness thought is only the indeterminate unity and the action of this indeterminate unity.
Kant undoubtedly held reason to be the faculty of the unconditioned; but if reason be reduced to abstract unity only, it by implication renounces its unconditionality and is in reality no better than empty understanding. For reason is unconditioned only in so far as its character and quality are not due to an extraneous and foreign content, only in so far as it is self-characterizing, and thus, in point of context, is its own master. Kant, however, expressly explains that the action of reason consists solely in applying the categories to systematize the matter given by perception, i.e. to place it in an outside order, under the guidance of the principle of non-contradiction." — Valentinus
Whenever I read Hegel it very quickly just starts to seem like a list of words to me. — Terrapin Station
The same thing happens to me when I read most continental writers, including (and kind of starting with) Kant. — Terrapin Station
Do boundaries exist in the real world beyond our minds? If boundaries don't exist in the real world, then neither do things, and thus one might be called to question the insight of thinkers who continually refer to them. — Jake
An illusion created by the limitations of the observer? As example, the Earth appears to be at the center of the universe from our limited perspective on the surface of the Earth, but that's not actually true. — Jake
So it's an illusion that the cliff has a boundary and if he walks past it he'll fall and be injured? — Terrapin Station
Here's a little experiment to illustrate. Drink a glass of water. When does the water become you? The boundary can be reasonably drawn in a number of places, revealing that whatever boundary you wish to choose is arbitrary. — Jake
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