Yeah.....just think of how many meanings can be changed merely by gutting a quotation. — Mww

Kant is not always clear, but this paragraph (B310) is.

In the first sentence he defines what he means by a problematic concept.
A concept is problematic when it is not contradictory, but pretends to refer to a reality that is not cognizable.
In the second sentence defines noumenon: the concept of a thing in itself that is not contradictory but escapes the unique intuition possible: sensible intuition. That is to say, noumena are problematic. [You may think here there is a difference: noumena are the concepts and things in themselves are its reference. In reality Kant uses the name noumenon in both senses. In the twelfth line he speaks of "phenomena" as objects outside of the appearances, that is the same way he speaks of things in themselves.]
In the subsequent lines to the end he reinforces the idea of emptiness of noumena (according to the Kantian principle that concepts without intuitions are empty) and concludes that, even being empty, they have a double utility. They show that they cannot been get by sensibility [against English empiricism -Hume] and so they mark the limits of intellect that cannot be overstepped.

I think the seeming contradiction you have marked is due to the two different uses of the word "noumenon" that Kant envisages here. Problematicity summarizes it and its utility.

Anyway, Kant only say in these sentences that noumena cannot be explained by sensibility because they point to an impossible-pure knowledge of metaphysical entities.

Noumenon = relative to appearance. — Xtrix

Noumenon is just the opposite of appearance in the sense that appearance is the phenomenon. We can see houses (phenomenon). We cannot see God (noumenon). In this case appearance is known by sight. If "relative" means the opposite, well, but it is a strange way to say it.

The concept of limit is not trivial. It is the battlefield of any philosophy: What can I know?

OK, but per consciousness, almost everybody in quantum mechanics denies that consciousness causes collapse. — Andrew M

Yes. But in quantum mechanics (not philosophy) the subjective means the problem of measurement, that is to say, the fact that some objects cannot be known -or even exist- independently of the fact to be measured. May be "intersubjective" would be more accurate, but usually they are called "subjective". In any case not "objective".

eft is the question of Kant and modern science. For the purposes of modern science, Kant is usually ignored. But there's also an inclination to dismiss his thinking, and imo that's an error. What his thinking is about, is things that are perceived, or that reason gives us. — tim wood

Welcome, Tim.

I agree. The fathers of 20th' Scientific Revolution were obsessed with Mach, Hume or Plato and let in oblivion Kant (with d'Espagnat exception, but he was not a father, just an older brother). Maybe Kant was too attached to Newtonian science that they were trying to overcome. But if this was the case, they got muddled with Kantian details and overlooked Kantian principles.

What it seems important as principle in Kant is the regulative use of the reason. That is to say: physics principles are a priori because they come from a priori conditions of our knowledge, not being things in themselves. This links with Kuhnian concept of paradigm and with quantum paradoxes of measurement, relativity, etc. We live a world mediated by the categories of our way of thinking.

I'm not familiar with his writings. Can you, or anyone else, explain why Kant should be considered important for understanding QM or science generally? — Andrew M

See previous comments, please.

But in quantum mechanics (not philosophy) the subjective means the problem of measurement, that is to say, the fact that some objects cannot be known -or even exist- independently of the fact to be measured. May be "intersubjective" would be more accurate, but usually they are called "subjective". In any case not "objective". — David Mo

Agree. Really glad to see someone here who appreciates this. Are you familiar with philosopher of science Michel Bitbol? He has some very interesting things to say about this.

“...objects are quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects, are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility...”
(B45)

Simple substitution, object in itself for thing in itself. It is done by the author repeatedly. Please show how my argument is wrong. — Mww

In this paragraph Kant is criticizing the "ordinary" representation of things in themselves, purely empirical. His criticism begins from "But if we consider..." The idea is that the in thing itself cannot be reached through the generalization of the senses.

Are you familiar with philosopher of science Michel Bitbol? — Wayfarer

Sorry, no. Can you point me to a link on the Internet? I read in French.

https://youtu.be/pYRLapWBqJY

One meaning of noumenal is ‘object of pure thought’ or actually of nous. In that sense — Wayfarer

Etymologically, yes. But that compromises us with Greek philosophy, which is what Kant wants to criticize.

I was halfway through making that post and posted it accidentally, I’ll come back to it later.

@Xtrix Just started listening to the latest podcast on Sean Carroll’s ‘Mindscape’ with Dennett.

From the poscast:

Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term. (Substitute “exploring” for “explaining” and you’d have a good mission statement for the Mindscape podcast.) Few modern thinkers have pursued this goal more energetically, creatively, and entertainingly than Daniel Dennett. One of the most respected philosophers of our time, Dennett’s work has ranged over topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, metaphysics, free will, evolutionary biology, epistemology, and naturalism, always with an eye on our best scientific understanding of the phenomenon in question. His thinking in these areas is exceptionally lucid, and he has the rare ability to express his ideas in ways that non-specialists can find accessible and compelling. We talked about all of them, in a wide-ranging and wonderfully enjoyable conversation.

Sounds like it would interest you. I’m just 15mins in up to now.

In that chapter on noumenon Kant once refers* to categories as noumena. Categories are the only legitimate noumena? Categories as problematic or possible "objects" are legitimate because they exist only with regard to empirical knowledge that they are conditioning. Here noumenon is not a positive concept or object with its own kind of "seeing" but a negative concept where is only abstracted from the conditions of sensible experience. Negative concept of noumenon doesn't entirely reject the sensible intuition as the legitimizing basis. (Positive and negative noumenon is Kant's own distinction.)

* Kant actually refers to "pure understanding" here

the problem with Dennett is that he believes humans are moist robots. Nice guy, and all, but not on account of anything he believes.

Thanks for the pointless personal comment. Here’s my reciprocal contribution to the category of ‘personal pointless comment’ ;)

You're welcome, but as you know, the exchange consisted wholly of pointless impersonal neuronal reactions. ;-) (So, scientifically pointless, not just socially gauche.)

One meaning of noumenal is ‘object of pure thought’ or actually of nous.
— Wayfarer

Etymologically, yes. But that compromises us with Greek philosophy, which is what Kant wants to criticize. — David Mo

I suspect it is rather because he wanted to distance himself from scholasticism, as all the early moderns were obliged to do.

But if you unpack the notion of 'noumenal', it means 'an object of mind'. And what Aristotle meant by that, as I understand it, is close to what the Platonic tradition calls an 'intelligible object'. What intelligible objects are, are concepts, as distinct from mental images and sensations. An example is given in Descartes' sixth meditation, that being the chiliagon, a thousand-sided polygon. 'Descartes says that, when one thinks of a chiliagon, he "does not imagine the thousand sides or see them as if they were present" before him – as he does when one imagines a triangle, for example. The imagination constructs a "confused representation," which is no different from that which it constructs of a myriagon (a polygon with ten thousand sides). However, the philosopher does clearly understand what a chiliagon is, just as he understands what a triangle is, and he is able to distinguish it from a myriagon. Therefore, the intellect is not dependent on imagination.' And even though it might be impossible to validate whether the chiliagon is genuine by mere sensory inspection, because one has grasped the concept, one could validate the model by the painstaking task of counting the sides. But one can only do this because one understands the concept.

You see, nowadays, the whole nature of 'concepts' has become rather indefinite and vague, whereas for the rationalist tradition, it was really rather rigorous. But as we nowadays operate within a consensus view which sees the intelligent subject representing images of the external reality in ideas, then the rationalist understanding is no longer intelligible at all (which is ironic, considering.)

In any case, the point for this discussion is that intelligible objects possess a reality which actual objects rarely do, in that they're perfect and imperishable - after all, a chiliagon will be thus in all possible worlds. But nowadays, with our inclination to validate everything empirically, we want to know if it's something that exists 'out there somewhere' - and, if not, then of course we're inclined to doubt its reality. It is, we say, something that only exists in the mind.

And this is a point which I don't think Kant fully appreciated, although I would be more than happy to be shown to be wrong.

Well the noumenal belongs to the (faculty of the) understanding, which is the faculty that deals with the intelligible, so the choice of word makes rather perfect sense.

"It is implied in this distinction [between noumena and phenomena] ... possible things, which are not objects of our senses but are thought as objects merely through the understanding, in opposition to the former, and that in so doing we entitle them intelligible entities (noumena)." (B306).

"The Transcendental Aesthetic, already of itself establishes the objective reality of noumena and justifies the division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and so of the world into a world of the senses and a world of the understanding (mundus sensibilis et intelligibilis)" (A249)

And of course, the understanding is what furnishes us with the concepts necessary for the cognition of objects. Kant is very much drawing on a modified classical vocabulary and grammar in his use of these terms.

Kant is very much drawing on a modified classical vocabulary and grammar in his use of these terms. — StreetlightX

Agree. That is a subject I would like to read more about. As I said in an earlier post, it seems to have many points of convergence with hylomorphism, but this is not something that I've often seen commented on.

https://www.amazon.com/Kants-Theory-Normativity-Exploring-Reason/dp/1107127807

This is what you want, if you can afford it!

Marvellous. One for the wishlist. Worth reflecting on the opening quote:

Metaphysics is not a philosophy about objects, for these can only be given by means of the senses, but rather about the subject, namely, the laws of its reason. — Immanuel Kant

Read Kant in full. Guides are generally opinions of Kant - and there are MANY differing opinions.

In lieu of agreeing on this whole noumenon/TIT stuff, it's perhaps worth drawing attention to one thing that often gets lost in modern appropriations of Kant's vocabulary: for Kant, the very form of the 'object' (the 'object-form') is itself supplied or imputed by the subject (or the faculty of understanding more specifically) onto the world (the-thing-in-itself). That is, the-thing-itself is so inaccessable to knowledge that we can't even say of it that it is an object, or that it has the form of an object. The world is not composed of objects! Instead, objects are strictly 'epistemological' posits, the form under which the world is grasped, which is itself provided by the transcendental subject. Another way to put this is that the object-form is ideal, and is nothing but a correlate of the subject.

I've always found this to be a far more interesting take on the subject/object dichotomy than the usual reading which substantializes the object (or ontologizes it) as something 'out there' and for which it is the role of the 'subject' to grasp or engage with. — StreetlightX

Cool!! :up: :up: :up:

In that chapter on noumenon Kant once refers to categories as noumena. — waarala

This has no sense for me. Could you quote Kant's exact sentence, please?

Anyway, Kant only say in these sentences that noumena cannot be explained by sensibility because they point to an impossible-pure knowledge of metaphysical entities. — David Mo

Understood, and all well and good. Some groundwork, if I may:

Thought. A thought. Full stop. No ways and means, no object, no terminology. Just a split-second instance of what a human does as a private rational agency. A form of something as yet without content. Then, consider its spontaneity. The proverbial, “it just popped into my head” kinda thing. Granting this actual occasion is sufficient reason for Kant to speculate this, as the second theoretical tenet:

“....Our knowledge springs from two main sources, the first (receptivity for impressions); the second is the (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is thought....”

And because of that tenet, these consequences are justified as following from it:

“....we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, understanding.....”
“.....Conceptions, then, are based on the spontaneity of thought...”

Thus is given that concepts are representations, and as such, arise spontaneously from the faculty of understanding, which makes explicit understanding is the faculty of thought itself. In other words, it is meant to justify that understanding thinks. From that, and with various support found within the theory, thought is cognition by means of conceptions.
———————-

Now, that being what the understanding is, it remains to be said what the understanding does.

“.....But the conjunction of a manifold in intuition never can be given us by the senses, for it is a spontaneous act of the faculty of representation. And as we must, to distinguish it from sensibility, entitle this faculty understanding; so all conjunction (...) is an act of the understanding. To this act we shall give the general appellation of synthesis, thereby to indicate, at the same time, that we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves....”

Thus is given that understanding is the faculty that thinks, and in empirical thought, thinks a synthesis of conjoining representations of its own spontaneous creation to the representations of a manifold in intuition. Or, conceptions to intuitions, hence the adage, “...Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind....”

Sidebar: This......we cannot represent anything as conjoined in the object without having previously conjoined it ourselves......is the oft-abused, but fundamentally critical “Copernican Revolution”.
———————

The onset of the noumenal problem arises here:

“....understanding which is occupied merely with empirical exercise, and does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may exercise its functions very well and very successfully, but is quite unable to do one thing, and that of very great importance, to determine, namely, the bounds that limit its employment, and to know what lies within or without its own sphere....”

The entire foray into noumena is justified by this one thing:

one may see a piece of toast, but one may also see a piece of toast with a face in it.

All this is, is the faculty of understanding turning itself into the faculty of imagination, insofar as there is created a phenomenon from that which no such phenomenon should be contained.

And the problem is caused by the understanding itself:

“......The understanding, when it terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of such objects....” (B306)

Without the direct references, it shall be given that the conceptions understanding thinks as belonging to a mere notion of an object in itself already established as a phenomenon from the faculty of sensibility, it calls a noumenon, thus nothing but an intelligible concoction dreamed up by understanding simply because it has voluntarily exceeded its empirical mandate in the employment of its spontaneity.

In effect, understanding represents to itself, on its own accord, the notion of a thing, terms it noumenon, but stops right there, without also thinking schema that would then be synthesized to it in order for such notion to have reality.

Understanding here thinking to or within itself, not with respect to sensibility thus without empirical content, therefore it is the pure understanding. The only conceptions belonging to pure understanding are the categories. The categories can only apply in empirical thought having to do with objects of sensibility, and the notion of an object in itself understanding thinks for itself, is no such thing. The only concepts with which pure understanding has to synthesize......which is its job after all.....are the categories, but synthesis of pure conceptions with mere notions cannot give a cognition. Therefore, noumena are nothing but logically possible, pure thoughts of the understanding, and most certainly not a thing in itself.

It now should be clear that.....

“.....giving the name of noumena to things, not considered as phenomena, but as things in themselves, hence is compelled to cogitate them merely as an unknown something....” (B310, 1985)
“....the concept of noumena, not to be thought as objects of the senses, but as a thing-in-itself, solely through a pure understanding....” (B310, 1929)

.......is simply an elaboration of B306, in which the original thought of the pure understanding as “object in itself”, is thoroughly interchangeable with the thing in itself of B310, and only is meant to advocate noumena have no possibility of ever being a cognized empirically just as the actual, real physical ding an sich outside us has no possibility, and not that they should ever be thought as being the same thing. The difference in consideration as to why they cannot, lays in the consequences of noumena being the off-shoot of a mere notion, but the ding an sich stands as an unknowable, albeit a real, physical object. The former is objectively valid as a thought, the latter is objectively real as an object.
——————

In the case where it is said noumena are the limit on appearance, or sensibility, derives from the following:

Phenomena are the result of the synthesis of appearance to intuition by the imagination. Understanding synthesizes phenomena with conception. Pure understanding attempts to synthesize a notion of an object in itself already given as phenomenon, which already has an appearance as its predicate. The notion of an object in itself deletes phenomenon proper......

(When the face in the toast is the focus of attention, the toast itself fades to background)

.......thus the appearance used in the synthesis of them, is likewise deleted. Keeping in mind understanding unites intuition with conception, it follows the deletion must be appearance, because if understanding thinks to delete intuition, it doesn’t work at all, a contradiction. The limit on sensibility is then, that upon the thought of noumena, the faculty of sensibility ceases to function as the source of empirical knowledge. It is the toast that is real, not the face.

The devil for some, and the nonsense for others, is in the details.

In effect, understanding represents to itself, on its own accord, the notion of a thing, terms it noumenon, but stops right there, without also thinking schema that would then be synthesized to it in order for such notion to have reality. — Mww

This really ought to be the end of the conversation. The noumenal is of the order of the intelligible and thus belongs to the understanding. Anyone who similarly thinks that the thing-in-itself is also intelligible and is a posit of the understanding simply ought to give up reading Kant forever.

Read Kant in full. — I like sushi

YES!!! And get several translations. Sometimes comparing them helps with one’s comprehension.

YES!!! I mean....the guy’s tough, sure. Sometimes confusing, absolutely. But it’s all in the book, if a guy wants to dig it out bad enough.

The thing is that Kant isn't even that tough. His hardness to read is way overrated. Once you get the general idea of his project, everything he says falls into place really nicely. The vocabulary is a little foreign when you first come across it but that's it.

True enough, actually. But, man......those paragraph-long sentences.....I have to start over by the time I get to the end of some of them, I swear.

But you are right, all in all. He lays a very basic set of pre-conditions, in the introductions, to be sure.