"The division of objects into phaenomena and noumena, and of the world into a world of sense and a world of understanding, can therefore not be permitted at all, although concepts certainly permit of division into sensible and intellectual ones; for one cannot determine any object for the latter, and therefore also cannot pass them off as objectively valid. If one abandons the senses, how will one make comprehensible that our categories (which would be the only remaining concepts for noumena) still signify anything at all, since for their relation to any object something more than merely the unity of thinking must be given, namely a possible intuition, to which they can be applied?" (B311, A256)

Kant is actually referring here negatively to intellectual concepts or "pure understanding" (?). Categories as concepts for noumena would refer only to unity of thinking. - Little later Kant refers to noumenon not as an intelligible object but as a problematic understanding which contains this object.

Or: categories are originally noumena which are phenomenalized through schemes. This is a movement from rationalism to empiricism. However, there remains a strong rational or intellectual moment in Kant's system.

Obviously not an easy subject, so many distinctions to keep in mind. :)

Representations of our sensibility is an affect on our senses. An affect on our senses is a perception. A perception requires what we call an outward object. Outward objects are outward things. Outward objects in themselves are things-in-themselves. Outward objects in themselves are perceived. things-in-themselves are perceived. That which is merely perceived is unknown to us. Things-in-themselves are unknown to us.
— Mww

Your argument is wrong. To think that an undetermined "something" has caused A is not the same as knowing the cause of A. Moreover, Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR. — David Mo

—————-

“...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. — David Mo

——————

I still don’t see how my argument, that paragraph ending in things-in-themselves are unknown to us, is wrong. Your “But if we consider....” is in B63, which has to do with transcendental objects. B45 isn’t treating objects of perception as transcendental objects.

I understand “objects are quite unknown to us in themselves” (B45), but I don’t think that is meant to imply objects unknown to us in themselves, are not the objects of perception. If such should be the case, we must have two distinct and locally separate objects...the one we perceive, and the exact same singular entity left behind because it is unknown to us. That would be like.....if we don’t know what they are, we can’t see them, which is logically absurd. Or, which is just as silly.....we can’t see them because we don’t know what they are.

I would appreciate a reference for your “...Kant says countless times that we cannot perceive things in themselves. This is the main point of CPR....”. I would agree we cannot perceive any transcendental object, and if the thing-in-itself is considered as one, we wouldn’t be able to perceive it with our representational system. But that does not say spacetime objects are only considered transcendentally.

Not that hard, yet numerous professors have been at loggerheads about the true meaning of his work for decades.

What happens is students go to university and their professors tell them the ‘true meaning’ of Kant. Then they meet other students who’ve been told something different by a different professor OR their professor was astute enough to let them know that COPR has been a contentious text since its inception.

Thank you, I'll check it out.

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". — David Mo

An interpretation-neutral term that captures that is counterfactual definiteness (i.e., the ability to speak "meaningfully" of the definiteness of the results of measurements that have not been performed). Almost all quantum interpretations reject counterfactual definiteness (the notable exception being the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation).

See also below, which echoes Heisenberg's concern that I quoted earlier:

Because it asserts that a wave function becomes 'real' only when the system is observed, the term 'subjective' is sometimes proposed for the Copenhagen interpretation. This term is rejected by many Copenhagenists[24] because the process of observation is mechanical and does not depend on the individuality of the observer. — Copenhagen interpretation - Metaphysics of the wave function

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. — David Mo

So the issue is that there doesn't seem to be a use in physics (or philosophy of physics) for notions like "things in themselves" and "a priori conditions of knowledge".

To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here?

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. — StreetlightX

Exactly correct. So you're right, why bicker about whether noumenon means the same thing or something else -- it doesn't negate the above, which is all I'm really concerned with in this thread.

So to move this discussion into a slightly different direction: is anyone very familiar with Heidegger's take on the subject/object distinction? I myself have read a great deal and am not in the camp that he's a deliberately obfuscating charlatan, as many of my friends claim.

Nevertheless, if anyone has bothered I'd like their interpretation.

Thanks again - I wasn't familiar with his podcast, but I like the podcaster as an interviewer. I know Dan, we live in the same town, and although I don't particularly agree with him much he's a very kind man and deserving of his success.

is anyone very familiar with Heidegger's take on the subject/object distinction? I myself have read a great deal and am not in the camp that he's a deliberately obfuscating charlatan, as many of my friends claim.

Nevertheless, if anyone has bothered I'd like their interpretation. — Xtrix

I like Heidegger, especially the lectures that made him famous among students well before Being and Time. Have you read any of the early stuff or perhaps The Young Heidegger by Van Buren? Having looked at the early stuff, it's clear to me that Blattner's Heidegger's Temporal Idealism gets 'death' wrong. It's nothing so complicated. It's just the possibility of our own death, certain but indeterminate. Memento mori!

To answer your question, what I take from Heidegger is that the subject/object paradigm is artificial, which is to say founded on something primary that just 'worlds' or 'events.' I am the there itself, caught up in time or even as time that runs out, having started without my permission in the middle of situations and habits I did not choose. Theory's subject-object device is part of an epistemological project that neglects our primary, non-theoretical kind of existence --the same experience of sharing a world of tools and words that makes such a theory possible in the first place.

At the same time, the subject-object device is used well by the empiricists (including Kant).

Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, i.e., the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism? It is the very contrary.

Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, space, etc.)—no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay,

All the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance.

The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown, that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself. — Kant

Kant just radicalizes Locke, and yet, as others have noted, he goes so far that we no longer have a plurality of things, for this imposes too much structure on whatever causes sensation. Small wonder that Kant is so controversial; he's on the edge of absurdity.

There are basketballs out there, there are no basketballs in my head. Therefore it is absolutely impossible that the basketball I know, in whatever way, shape or form I know it, can be the basketball out there. — Mww

I think you know Kant better than me, so perhaps you can clear this up. Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there? Isn't our division of experience into a system of 'law'-obeying objects the work of our minds? As I understand it, what is 'really' out there (according to Kant) is utterly unknowable, and not even in space or time or the causal nexus. So we can't even say that our intuitions/sensations are 'caused' by it. My rough understanding of Kant (I'm willing to be schooled) is that ordinary reality is a kind of intersubjective representation of a represented that only exist theoretically as a '?.' Kant is fascinating for taking such an extreme position. Even space and time are just modes of representation. (!?)

In the same way, if I consider all the representations of the senses, together with their form, space and time, to be nothing but appearances, and space and time to be a mere form of the sensibility, which is not to be met with in objects out of it, and if I make use of these representations in reference to possible experience only, there is nothing in my regarding them as appearances that can lead astray or cause illusion. For all that they can correctly cohere according to rules of truth in experience. Thus all the propositions of geometry hold good of space as well as of all the objects of the senses, consequently of all possible experience, whether I consider space as a mere form of the sensibility, or as something cleaving to the things themselves. In the former case however I comprehend how I can know a priori these propositions concerning all the objects of external intuition. Otherwise, everything else as regards all possible experience remains just as if I had not departed from the vulgar view.
...
My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from reducing the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of securing the application of one of the most important cognitions (that which mathematics propounds a priori) to actual objects, and of preventing its being regarded as mere illusion. For without this observation it would be quite impossible to make out whether the intuitions of space and time, which we borrow from no experience, and which yet lie in our representation a priori, are not mere phantasms of our brain, to which objects do not correspond, at least not adequately, and consequently, whether we have been able to show its unquestionable validity with regard to all the objects of the sensible world just because they are mere appearances. — Kant

A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? Does Kant not need to assume that we all intuit space the same way? And how can he see anyone's beetle in their box? The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? I still think Kant is great.

I’m mostly in that camp with your friends. He does well to make clear some of Husserl’s ideas, but overall he narrows the phenomenological interest to language alone.

He’s quite popular on this forum I believe so you’re going to get something more in line with your thinking from others.

In phenomenological terms the whole subject/object issue isn’t much of an issue at all.

I like Heidegger, especially the lectures that made him famous among students well before Being and Time. Have you read any of the early stuff or perhaps The Young Heidegger by Van Buren? Having looked at the early stuff, it's clear to me that Blattner's Heidegger's Temporal Idealism gets 'death' wrong. It's nothing so complicated. It's just the possibility of our own death, certain but indeterminate. Memento mori! — mask

Yes I've read his lectures on Aristotle and Hegel. I didn't find Blattner's book all that convincing. I haven't heard of "The Young Heidegger."

Theory's subject-object device is part of an epistemological project that neglects our primary, non-theoretical kind of existence --the same experience of sharing a world of tools and words that makes such a theory possible in the first place. — mask

Interesting. It does seem he's getting at that when speaking of "de-worlding." But yes, that the subject-object dichotomy is just a "founded" mode of seeing the world I get out of him as well. And I have to say that prior to reading Heidegger, I never had quite considered things in this way, despite reading Freud and Schopenhauer and all our contemporary talk of automaticity.

I’m mostly in that camp with your friends. He does well to make clear some of Husserl’s ideas, but overall he narrows the phenomenological interest to language alone. — I like sushi

Regarding the last part: you could argue, maybe, that later Heidegger narrows himself to language (and poetry), but earlier Heidegger certainly not. HIs interest then, and I'd argue even later, was ulitmiately being, not language. Hardly too narrow.

In phenomenological terms the whole subject/object issue isn’t much of an issue at all. — I like sushi

True enough.

Yes I've read his lectures on Aristotle and Hegel. I didn't find Blattner's book all that convincing. I haven't heard of "The Young Heidegger." — Xtrix

Nice. I like The Concept of Time, first draft of B&T, if I had to pick just one. The big picture is squeezed into < 100 pages. I have the red & white little paperback translated by Farin and Skinner. Thankfully they don't capitalize 'being,' which used to put me off of Heidegger. It's more clearly an extension of Dilthey and Von Wartenberg (and about the historicity of human existence as opposed to more general questions about being --while including the classic analytic in abbreviated form.)

The problem with Blattner is maybe that he intentionally ignored the early stuff, as he says in the intro. You mentioned Dreyfus, whose Being-in-the-world is great. Maybe Dreyfus and others downplay the early stuff because it's inspired by Christian thinkers and also morbid-angsty. Anyway, what Dermot Moran writes in the essay linked to agrees with the much more detailed treatment in Van Buren.

https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Choosing%20a%20Hero%20Heidegger%20on%20Authentic%20Life%202010.pdf

Although Heidegger is aware of Rudolf Otto’s analysis of religion as centred on the idea of the “holy” or the “numinous”, in fact, for Heidegger, the key to an understanding of religion in general and the Christian religion in particular is not so much the numinous as what he calls “the historical” (das Historsiche) (GA60: 323). The “core phenomeon” (Kernphänomen) (GA60: 31) or “founding sense-element” (GA60: 323) of religion is “the historical” (GA60: 31) : “Factical life 13 emerges out of a genesis and becomes in an entirely special way historical (enacted)” (GA60: 141). The religious way of being in the world is as a kind of historical consciousness. Unfortunately, in his 1920-21 Phenomenology of Religious Life course, Heidegger is not particularly forthcoming about what precisely he means by “the historical”. For Heidegger, history is not something that can simply be made an object of study. Rather, we are cast in history, we live it: “History hits us, and we are history itself” (Die Geschichte trifft uns, und wir sind sie selbst) (GA60: 173). Factical life and the experience of the historical add up to being the same thing; the manner human beings are concerned, worried or preoccupied by time and by the temporal aspects of their lives. In later lecture courses Heidegger will be more explicit about the manner that Dasein occupies history and is highly critical of inauthentic ways of understanding the process of history. — link

For context, I'm an atheist, but I like what Heidegger cooked up.

Interesting. It does seem he's getting at that when speaking of "de-worlding." But yes, that the subject-object dichotomy is just a "founded" mode of seeing the world I get out of him as well. And I have to say that prior to reading Heidegger, I never had quite considered things in this way, despite reading Freud and Schopenhauer and all our contemporary talk of automaticity. — Xtrix

I also never encountered the notion of 'deworlding' in the same way as in Heidegger. Maybe what really brings it home is the analytic of everyday dasein, the usually ignored network of equipment, Dreydegger's 'one', 'interpretedness,' etc. Inherited frameworks of interpretation, a past that leaps ahead!

And then there's the gap between 'science space' (geometric space) and 'lived' space --the familiar path down the stairs or around the block. And in The Concept of Time he imaginatively reconstructs the public time of the clock that we all take for granted. For me, grasping being-in-the-world and being-with-others and (what I call ) being-in-language as 'phenomena' just obliterated certain epistemological issues that I could once take more seriously.

So even if a person jettisons the death and authenticity stuff, the unveiling description of all the structure of the mundane that we usually ignore as too close to us is a game changer. Being-with-others is primary. Can't start with the beetle in the box.

Yeah, one of the most enduring legacies of phenomenology is - or should be - it's usurpation of the subject/object dichotomy as a primary point of investigation. Heidegger was entirely right to inject time into any analysis of things, even though he tethered that injection to (a certain conception of) death in a way I find problematic.

In a way, the introduction of the distinction (b/t subject and object) into philosophy ought to be seen as a kind of abberation, a wrong turn taken that we've had to devote entire generations of philosophy in order to get over. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Exactly correct. So you're right, why bicker about whether noumenon means the same thing or something else -- it doesn't negate the above, which is all I'm really concerned with in this thread. — Xtrix

Because it makes a difference as to what kind of thing the transcendental subject is. Collapsing the noumenon into the thing-in-itself idealizes the thing-in-itself in a way that makes Kant... Fichte. It makes all the difference in the world.

↪David Mo
https://youtu.be/pYRLapWBqJY — Wayfarer

Thank you.

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

I'm afraid I don't understand the example of the toast. This raises a question about your conception of the thing in itself (noumenon). The face on the toast is just a phenomenal illusion. Things in themselves refer to objects such as substance, God, cause, soul, etc. that have no appearance. This is what defines noumenon by opposition to phenomenon.

Obviously not an easy subject, so many distinctions to keep in mind. — waarala

It should be noted that Kant wrote in Old German. This leads to different translations. The one from Cambridge University Press (available online) seems particularly clear to me, but English is obviously not my mother tongue.

In a way, the introduction of the distinction (b/t subject and object) into philosophy ought to be seen as a kind of abberation, a wrong turn taken that we've had to devote entire generations of philosophy in order to get over. Hopefully sooner rather than later. — StreetlightX

There is perhaps a reasonable version of it. Already in Democritus, we have a theory of the substratum of atoms and void and a (crude) theory of sensation/appearance. Feynman said that he would choose “atomic hypothesis” among all others if all scientific knowledge were to be lost in a cataclysm and he could only save one idea. Democritus had to consider that his sense organs weren't sensitive enough to see the atoms that were plausibly there due to more abstract considerations.

For me the problem with the subject-object distinction is about private language. Certain philosophers forget the social-historical nature of talking-thinking, that self-consciousness depends on the other, etc.

Heidegger was entirely right to inject time into any analysis of things, even though he tethered that injection to (a certain conception of) death in a way I find problematic. — StreetlightX

I agree that the death theme is a distraction. It's as if Heidegger was trying to work his home-grown religion into an otherwise neutral analysis. A better approach to authenticity is perhaps in contrast to chatter or idle talk in the sense of pre-interpretedness that blocks access to a genuine grasp of a text, for instance. Gadamer's Truth and Method strikes me as sober and impressive application of Heidegger's insights on time.

Outward objects in themselves are perceived. — Mww

Your mistake was here. Things in themselves are not perceived, only thought.Let us see the whole paragraph:

"The aim of this remark is only to prevent one from thinking of illus-
trating the asserted ideality of space with completely inadequate exam-
ples, since things like colors, taste, etc., are correctly considered not as
qualities of things but as mere alterations of our subject, which can even
be different in different people. For in this case that which is originally
itself only appearance, e.g., a rose, counts in an empirical sense as a
thing in itself, which yet can appear different to every eye in regard to
color. The transcendental concept of appearances in space, on the con-
trary, is a critical reminder that absolutely nothing that is intuited in
space is a thing in itself, and that space is not a form that is proper to
anything in itself, but rather that objects in themselves are not known
to us at all, and that what we call outer objects are nothing other than
mere representations of our sensibility, whose form is space, but whose
true correlate, i.e., the thing in itself, is not and cannot be cognized
through them, but is also never asked after in experience". (B45)

Underlined is mine.

What calls you to confusion is probably the expression of what is in itself "in empirical" sense. Kant is not defending here his own doctrine, but he is exposing English empiricism that he will criticize in the following lines: Sens data are always subjective ("different" for each of us) and cannot give account of the very thing in itself. "What we call objects" (a pencil, a wolf) are only representations of sensibility (that is to say, phenomena). But thing in itself cannot be "cognized" so.

Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there? — mask

In my opinion what makes Kant attractive is that he stands between subjective idealism and dogmatic realism. The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind.

The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? — mask

There is a part of Kant's theory of mathematics that is fully valid: mathematics are constructions that are imposed a priori and then justified by experience. There is another part that is outdated: mathematics is universal. Since the emergence of non-Euclidean mathematics and its use in modern science, this is unsustainable.

I would like the debate to shift to Heidegger. I tried to read Being and Time and found it too cumbersome, so I stopped. I only know about him through third parties too involved in controversies against or in favour of him.

In my opinion what makes Kant attractive is that he stands between subjective idealism and dogmatic realism. The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind. — David Mo

I also like indirect realism, which is what I think you are getting at. But why not Locke? Locke should get more play. And then Hobbes is one of the great writers in English. The fact that he doesn't dwell very long on this or that detail is perhaps to his credit. He steams ahead to the social nature of the human being. He also anticipates Heidegger by emphasizing that human beings are future oriented, in terms of fear and hope, and that they want to understand in order to predict and control.

There is a part of Kant's theory of mathematics that is fully valid: mathematics are constructions that are imposed a priori and then justified by experience. — David Mo

Have you considered that Kant (seems to) implicitly assume that all human subjects have some kind of core structure of cognition in common? Let's say that I am convinced by a mathematical proof, but that no one else finds the proof convincing. Where is mathematics then? It seems to me that as a matter of experience mathematics is relatively uncontroversial. We all agree that there are an infinity of primes. It seems we infer a shared hard-wired mathematical faculty from this consensus.

I would like the debate to shift to Heidegger. I tried to read Being and Time and found it too cumbersome, so I stopped. I only know about him through third parties too involved in controversies against or in favour of him. — David Mo

Being and Time is cumbersome indeed. I recommend the first draft, which is less than 100 pages and written in a much friendlier style:
https://www.amazon.com/Concept-Time-Contemporary-European-Thinkers-dp-144110562X/dp/144110562X/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

That one will cost you.

Or you can read for free an even shorter lecture here that has (confusingly) the same name: https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pages-from-21501-the_concept_of_time.pdf

That shorter lecture is nice, but it is so short that it's more of an appetizer than the thing itself. As someone who hesitated about Heidegger for a long time and ended up thinking he was great, I insist that you just gotta read some more Heidegger. He was famous among those in the know for 10 years before B&T came out. B&T is to Heidegger like Nevermind is to Nirvana (made him famous for outsiders). And also over-produced.

Here's a free anthology of his earlier stuff. The style is plain Jane accessible. About half way through I start to recognize the exciting Heidegger.

https://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj5946/f/1_becoming_heidegger_2nd_revised_edition.pdf

The world of phenomena is somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure reality. It exists outside the mind, but it does not exist apart from the mind. — David Mo

...something which I think is exactly correct. The whole point is, the advent of Galilean science combined with Cartesian dualism posited a complete separation of mind and matter (as is common knowledge). But along with this, there was also the posit that the observing mind was identified with the secondary qualities - in effect, subjectivized, understood to be something that only existed in an individual sense as your mind or mine. So the mind was in effect 'bracketed out' of consideration, and then with the advent of Darwinian biology, reduced to basically an evolutionary adaptation - according to the likes of Dennett, a by-product of the selfish gene.

But really Kant is the antidote to that, although I don't think many scientists understand that, because it takes a kind of critical self-awareness which is among the things that have been bracketed out. This ‘bracketing out’ actually culminates, not in a philosophy, so much, as a stance or a way of being or state of mind. (See Bas van Fraasen Science, Materialism and False Consciousness..)

Although Heidegger is aware of Rudolf Otto’s analysis of religion as centred on the idea of the “holy” or the “numinous”, in fact, for Heidegger, the key to an understanding of religion in general and the Christian religion in particular is not so much the numinous as what he calls “the historical” (das Historsiche) (GA60: 323). — link

'Historically, theater has been understood in terms of character and narrative, but really it's about the sets'.

To give a stock example, the Earth orbited the Sun long before humans came on the scene to construct a theory of heliocentrism. It seems that we can talk about that in ordinary language (introducing scientific or mathematical language where relevant). What does Kant's system, or subject/object dualism generally, contribute here? — Andrew M

transcendental realism...regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding.

CPR, A369

What you're not seeing is the way the mind - not just your mind, or my mind - constructs the entire stage within which perspective and judgements of the age of the Universe exist.

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.

(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271)

No wonder that Heidegger is interested in Kant and regards him highly important if one reads the following (in the chapter on noumena and phenomena there is a passage where Kant "demonstrates" categories i.e their temporal-empirical and not metaphysical-noumenal usage) (this could be also an example of the kantian subject/object mediation):

"No one can define the concept of magnitude in general except by something like this: That it is the determination of a thing through which it can be thought how many units are posited in it. Only this how-many-times is grounded on successive repetition, thus on time and the synthesis (of the homogeneous) in it. Reality, in con­trast to negation, can be defined only if one thinks of a time (as the sum total of all being) that is either filled by it or empty. If I leave out persistence (which is existence at all times), then nothing is left in my con­cept of substance except the logical representation of the subject, which I try to realize by representing to myself something that can occur solely as subject (without being a predicate of anything). But then it is not only the case that I do not even know of any conditions under which this logical preeminence can be attributed to any sort of thing; it is also the case that absolutely nothing further is to be made of it, and not even the least consequence is to be drawn from it, because by its means no object whatever of the use of this concept is determined, and one therefore does not even know whether the latter means anything at all ..." (A243, B301)

For Kant being is basically temporality. Being is mediated through the schematism of temporality. Being is real or actual in so far as it is something mediated through the schemes of temporality.

Does Kant really think there are basketballs out there? — mask

Linguistic convention says there are basketballs out there; transcendental idealism says there are objects out there only called basketballs because the human represents the object to himself as such.
———————

.....ordinary reality is a kind of intersubjective representation.... — mask

Correct. Given that all humans incorporate the same rational system, all reality in general should be consistent among them. A basketball is such for me as it is such for you. Even if I have no experience of them, if you tell me about one, I should understand what you’re talking about and form a representation of it a priori for myself. This is for the most part because of the categories, which permits conception of an object in general without all the the necessary intuitions given from perception.
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A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? — mask

My doctrine of the ideality of space and of time..... — Kant

I can’t find this passage. To tell the truth, I don’t even recognize it, my keyword searches don’t lead me to it, and because I’m too lazy to peruse all my literature even after thumbing through some of it, would you please refer me to its source? I’m not sure what geometry is having to be saved from, unless you meant illusory appearance. That has an affirmative answer, but I’m going to withhold it because I don’t want to confuse the contexts.
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The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. — mask

Synthetic propositions of geometry indeed require practice to prove their truth, consistent with their specific objects. Analytic propositions of logic, on the other hand, do as well, but require only objects in general be given to them.

The science of relativity is grounded in Galileo’s mind alone, isn’t it? Einstein may or may not have thought SR and GR on his own, even if there never was a Galileo, but he didn’t.

A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? Does Kant not need to assume that we all intuit space the same way? And how can he see anyone's beetle in their box? The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? I still think Kant is great. — mask

This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.

The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction. AND we only able to know deductive reasoning because of inductive reasoning.

From therein Kant proceeds to cut and slice away at these ideas arrives at the categories and the terminological application of ‘noumenon’ and ‘phenomenon’ to better represent these initial points (a priori and a posteriori).

Perhaps the most baffling step is getting past ‘a priori knowledge’ not being known - see introduction to deal with that point. He’s more than worth a read.

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

I'm afraid I don't understand the example of the toast. This raises a question about your conception of the thing in itself (noumenon). The face on the toast is just a phenomenal illusion. — David Mo

Agreed. The point being, the manner it which it became an illusion.

I categorical reject the symbolism implicating the thing-in-itself should equate to noumenon.
I find it telling that it is so difficult to fathom, that the discursive faculty of understanding is the sole originator of any kind of likeness between them, and then only because they are misunderstood. They are utterly and completely different in form and matter, they are differently logically and they are different conceptually. The only commonality shared between them is knowledge and the lack thereof.
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Things in themselves refer to objects such as substance, God, cause, soul, etc. that have no appearance. — David Mo

Yes, things in themselves and all those “such as” are the same as far as the faculty of sensibility is concerned, because none of them appear to us, but they all can still be thought by us. That does not mean the thing in itself refers to them, or, that those “such as” are even objects, in the manner in which a thing in itself is an object.

Because it makes a difference as to what kind of thing the transcendental subject is. Collapsing the noumenon into the thing-in-itself idealizes the thing-in-itself in a way that makes Kant... Fichte. It makes all the difference in the world. — StreetlightX

No, it doesn't. As I said above -- does it negate the conception you mentioned? No. And that's all I care about.

Try as I did I still don't see your interpretation as being coherent, or supported textually. But really whatever else one wants to say about noumena is irrelevant to me at this point.