You’re missing a basic distinction, ‘phenomena’ being ‘what appears’, and the ‘noumenal’, coined by Kant, meaning something like ‘the object of intellect’ (derived from the stem nous, meaning intellect.) So that distinction is the distinction between appearance (phenomena) and reality, which is the classical distinction originating in Greek philosophy.

I think it’s also a false dichotomy to posit that ‘everything’ is either ‘only thought’ or ‘totally material’. Sensation and perception are organised by the mind in accordance with the categories, which is an act of synthesis, of bringing-together. Reality comprises that synthesis, within which the objective and subjective are poles, but neither of which exists in its own right, or completely independently of the other.

It seems that phenomena is noumena. — Gregory

If that is the case, why would an entire chapter be dedicated to distinguishing one from the other?

“...That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation is called an empirical intuition. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon...”

“...If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition (...) But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition....”

Whether object impossible for us to sense, or not an object we could possibly sense, either way, noumena mean absolutely nothing whatsoever to us as intelligences with intuitive rationality, for no intuition of one can ever be held by us.
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The exactly what of phenomena is unknown, for it has not yet met the necessary conditions for empirical knowledge. Hence the “undetermined object”.

The theoretical what of phenomena, that is, what part does this particular member of a speculative cognitive system play.....is limited to that which affects the human sensory apparatus:

“....For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses...”

Phenomena are the possibly determinable, but as-yet undetermined, representations of “the objects which affect our senses”.

Im confused by what Kant means when he says noumena is not "OF anything". My way of understanding Kant might be influenced by what I read from Heidegger on him, but I thought "thing-in-itself", "noumena", and "phenomena" are just different ways we perceive objects. The word "noumena" originally meant "that which is thought" and it seemed to me Kant choose this for a reason. Also Wikipedia says Kant referred to "the-thing-in-itself" as a transcendental object although "transcendental" refered to the structures of the mind elsewhere in CPR

I thought "thing-in-itself", "noumena", and "phenomena" are just different ways we perceive objects. — Gregory

We don't see any thing as it is in itself, but as it appears to us.

Noumena is the 'object of thought'. It has a slippery meaning, but it's not used interchangeably with 'thing in itself'. It is more like 'the ideal as distinct from apparent'.

Think about what happens when you see any object whatever.

According to evolutionary biology, H Sapiens' intellectual faculties are the culmination of millions years of evolution. For all these millions of years, our sensory and intellectual abilities have been honed and shaped by the exigencies of survival, through billions of lifetimes in various life-forms - fish, lizard, mammal, primate and so on - in such a way as to eventually give rise to the mind that we have today.

Recently, other scientific disciplines such as cognitive and evolutionary psychology have revealed that conscious perception, while subjectively appearing to exist as a steady continuum, is actually composed of a heirarchical matrix of interacting cellular transactions, commencing at the most basic level with the parasympathetic system which controls one’s respiration, digestion, and so on, up through various levels to culminate in that peculiarly human ability of rational thought (and beyond).

Consciousness plays the central role in co-ordinating these diverse activities so as to give rise to the sense of continuity which we call ‘ourselves’ - and also the apparent coherence and reality of the 'external world'. Yet it is important to realise that the naïve sense in which we understand ourselves, and the objects of our perception, to exist, is in fact totally dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, the bulk of which are completely unknown to us.

When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ the object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind organises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will (hopefully) recall its name, and perhaps know something about it ('star', 'tree', 'frog', etc).

And you will do all of this without you even noticing that you are doing it; it is largely unconscious.

In other words, your consciousness is not the passive recipient of sensory objects which exist irrespective of your perception of them. Instead, your consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality partially on the basis of sensory input, but also on the basis of of unconscious processes, memories, intentions, and on the basis of the ways in which the understanding categorises the phenomena of experience. This is what reality is - it's not simply 'out there' waiting for us to take it in, our taking it in is a constructive process.

Once you understand that, Kant becomes a lot easier to understand.

Thank you. You've been very helpful. I think we shouldn't read Kant like he is Descartes or Aquinas. He is more modern. To illustrate, Nietzsche is a good example. Although he spoke of "will to power" in nature, I think he was trying to get a point across without being an idealist. He may have been simply a materialist, and Kant as well. Kant's idea that time and space are our internal intuitions solved his First Antimony at least ( i think)

"In this reinterpretation the Kantian 'a priori' is indirectly connected with experience in so far as it has been formed through the development of the human mind in a very distant past. Following this argument the biologist Lorentz has once compared the 'a priori' concepts with forms of behavior that in animals are called 'inherited or innate schemes." Werner Heisenberg in Physics and Philosophy

Kant abhorred materialism.

Hmm. I was thinking in terms of Christian atheism, which is a real thing. On the other hand Karl Rahner in the last century built a vibrant Christian theology on Kantian thought. I'm still learning on this issue

Side note: I notice that there is no mention of conatus in the Critique of Pure Reason. I probably will have to read the Critique of Judgement for anything relating to that. The Critique of Pure Reason feels mechanistic to me

On the other hand Karl Rahner in the last century built a vibrant Christian theology on Kantian thought. — Gregory

There is a school of thought called analytical thomism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Thomism . I too have hardly dipped a toe, but there's a lot about it that is of interest to me. It's just that to even start to learn it you would have to read it for years. I have dipped into Maritain.They're predominantly Catholic in orientation and I am not Catholic, although I think philosophically they have interesting ideas, not least because they preserve elements of the philosophia perennis which has almost completely died out in modern philosophy generally.

The Critique of Pure Reason feels mechanistic to me — Gregory

I don't see how you can describe it as 'mechanistic'. Descartes' thought was explicitly mechanistic, in that he used the metaphor (was it a metaphor?) of the machine for every aspect of organic life. That has had far-reaching consequences.



The foundations of Kantian epistemology are the categories, the intuitions, judgement, and the other elements of his vast repertoire. I don't recall a passage where Kant compares thought to a mechanical operation or where he appeals to mechanism as a metaphor for beings.

The word "noumena" originally meant "that which is thought" and it seemed to me Kant choose this for a reason. — Gregory

He probably did, perhaps because, in the interest of a complete metaphysical system, and after positing that the understanding is the faculty of thought, he then forced himself into.....

A.).....saying just what it is that the understanding thinks,
B.).....the understanding is the source of concepts which arise spontaneously merely from the thought of them,
C.).....thus he must, to be consistent, acknowledge the understanding can think what it wants, but some of what it thinks has no application in the metaphysics he was creating from scratch with respect to human knowledge,
D.)....he couldn’t call that which the understanding thinks that is itself outside the system of knowledge “illusory” or derivatives of it, because that term had already been used against pure reason as a whole,
E.)....he couldn’t call what the understanding thinks ding an sich because that had already been assigned to real objects external to us,
F.).....he couldn’t regulate spontaneity without contradicting the validity of our conceptions’ origin,
G.)....he settled on granting the understanding the capacity to think “objects in themselves”, and called them noumena.

“...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. Now as the understanding possesses no other fundamental conceptions besides the categories, it takes for granted that an object considered as a thing in itself*** must be capable of being thought by means of these pure conceptions, and is thereby led to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible existence, a something out of the sphere of our sensibility, for a determinate conception of an existence...”

***considered as a thing in itself does not mean objects in themselves are the same as things in themselves. It means only that understanding considers phenomena in the same way sensibility considers real external objects. First, real external objects are given to the faculty of representation initially as a sensation, which imagination synthesizes with intuitions to generate phenomena. Second, phenomena are given to the faculty of understanding as undetermined objects, or, as an “object in itself”. Third, understand thinks to determine what the “object in itself” is, by the only means available to it, the categories, but the categories do not have the power to determine what any kind of object is, but only sets the conditions under which real physical objects external to us, are possible.
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”thing-in-itself", "noumena", and "phenomena" are just different ways we perceive objects. — Gregory

The only way to perceive objects is by means of the sensations by which the cognitive system is given something to work with. None of those three listed conceptions/notions/ideas affect our sensory apparatus, only the “thing” of the “thing-in-itself”, does.
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there is no mention of conatus in the Critique of Pure Reason. — Gregory

The Critique is a treatise on knowledge, which presupposes whatever being it is possible to know about. While he grants ontology as one of four major domains of metaphysics in general, he has no use for it in a speculative transcendental theory of human empirical knowledge.

“....Its principles are merely principles of the exposition of phenomena, and the proud name of an ontology, which professes to present synthetical cognitions a priori of things in general in a systematic doctrine, must give place to the modest title of analytic of the pure understanding...”.

Here he is saying ontology doesn’t do what its proponents attribute to it, that is, his peers and the immediately antecedent philosophy from which his peers ground theirs. It bears remembering that Kant instituted a paradigm shift in the philosophical thinking of his day, which he then used to refute everybody. Still, in the interest of keeping his job, he had to play nice.....somewhat.....because his peers also held their own respect, which required great care in besmirching indiscriminately. It is within this perspective, including the controversy between Jacobi and Mendelssohn with respect to pantheism, a form of dogmatic determinism itself grounded by Spinozianism that the Kantian transcendental aesthetic found its primary use. It was, in effect, the philosophical politics of the day, that Kant even got involved in the pantheism debate in the first place, and some literature even suggests the use of the first edition of the critique to support one side or the other inspired the second edition, with its changes eliminating, or at least clarifying, pertinence.

“...It is hard to comprehend how the scholars just mentioned [Mendelssohn and Jacobi] could find support for Spinozism in the Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique completely clips dogmatism's wings in respect of the cognition of supersensible objects, and Spinozism is so dogmatic in this respect that it even competes with the mathematicians in respect of the strictness of its proofs....”
(Essay, “What Does It Mean.....”, fn#6, 1786)

Dating makes explicit the debate could only have used the 1781 edition, in which was included an entire section of the specifics of realism vs idealism. The 1787 edition completely eliminates that entire section, replacing it with a much shorter and less controversial rendering.
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Lastly,

The Critique of Pure Reason feels mechanistic to me — Gregory

As well it should, with a nod to wayfarer. It took 800 pages to create a theory, in which every possible tenet relevant to it, is named and given its place, and then, how all the tenets operate as a whole in order to arrive at something irrefutable. Knowledge.

Because of this, then necessarily that, is quite mechanistic, yes. Nevertheless, to grasp Kantian metaphysics as a complete system, rather than each as its own system, all three critiques need be understood together. Kant was, for better or worse, the ultimate dualist.

All the above, except the quotes, is my understanding alone, and I make no claim for academic standing.

I didn't mean that the Critique was mechanistic like Descartes. Kant does believe in substance underlying quantity and quality. I think he got this from Locke. Descartes regarded objects as extension, as simply the total of their accidents. Objects are dead for Descartes, having no "will to power" (conatus?) in them.

Lots of great thoughts in your post

My edition of the Britannica Encyclopedia says that some in Kant's time said he had merely rehashed Leibniz. Now Leibniz had put forth the "relational" theory of time and space. Is it possible that when Kant says time and space are our intuitions, he is ultimately saying they don't exist except as relations? That seems like a more materialist understanding of Kant. I think Hume really disturbed Kant and the three critiques can be seen as his attempt to heal his faith and psychology

some in Kant's time said he had merely rehashed Leibniz. — Gregory

Perhaps in some respects, but the “REMARK ON THE AMPHIBOLY OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF REFLECTION“ , A261/B316, is a 20-page destruction of Liebnitz’s monadology. Amphiboly being Kantian transcendental-speak for, “don’t mistake a noumena for a phenomena, dammit!!!!!”. And the major condition of doing so is by attributing space and time as properties of objects, not where they properly belong, as the pure a priori forms by which objects are presented to us. In other words, space and time belong to the thinker, not the object thought.

From that, it is clear a materialist understanding of Kant, with respect to space and time at least, doesn’t work. Materialism for Kant is the acknowledgement of the reality of material things, but such acknowledgement does not extend to our empirical knowledge of what those things actually are. We do not and cannot know things; we can only know the representations of things.
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I think Hume really disturbed Kant and the three critiques can be seen as his attempt to heal his faith and psychology — Gregory

Yeah, one could say he was disturbed. Hume said of pure reason, “consign it to the flames”, while Kant based his entire epistemology on the very thing Hume declared worthless. I’d be disturbed, too. Although I’d likely use a rather stronger word for it.

Kant’s faith didn’t need healing, and he rejected psychology as a doctrine, having “...its origin in a mere misunderstanding....”.

....another whole metaphysical can of transcendental worms.

Kant does believe in substance underlying quantity and quality. — Gregory

?

However, Kant with his refutation of idealism, argues that change and time require an enduring substrate.- ‘ All determination of time presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanent cannot, however, be something in me…" — Wikipedia.

I see, thanks guys for your replies. I was introduced to Aristotle before Kant. Aristotle had material potency bonding with an immaterial nature to make an object composed of accidents and substance. Accidents reveal something about the substance, which in turn reveals matter and nature. This is a far-cry from Kant's world

You write:

Malebranche defended the theory that we don't really see material objects through perception, but instead, because our minds are so connected to the divine source — Gregory

Then you go on to write:

So there are several different forms of idealism. I think it's easy to at least understand what is being said when one is told "everything around you is really only thoughts". Materialism makes sense to me too. — Gregory

Quite a combination in historiology to arrive to that idea.
Idealism? Where did you get the idea that Malebranche was an idealist? Pop dogma? He was an Oratorian, not just a philosopher. A believer, and from experience so.
I think Malebranche and french philosophy should be seen like this: a clock does not mark time, it is spiritual power and time in which a set of gears exists for an observer, gears made up by a man; Malebranche was known for morals. There is a question about man capable of machine making socially as opposed to biological time: "Perhaps this is when time began to feel as a constraint and used to get other men to follow along?" “Vulnerant omnes, ultima necat.”

Which gets me to remark:

"your consciousness is an active agent which constructs reality"-Wayfarer
"This is what reality is"-Wayfarer
Obviously false.
Something can be real and me, it can be real as me, or it can be real and not me: all 3 being different things. If real and me is rejected, there is spiritual collapse; if real and not me collapses, there is physical collapse.

Something can be real and me, it can be real as me, or it can be real and not me: all 3 being different things. If real and me is rejected, there is spiritual collapse; if real and not me collapses, there is physical collapse. — Claude

All of which are judgements concerning what is real. There is obviously a whole universe of objects and beings that I personally will never encounter or have any knowledge of; they all exist independently of me. However that doesn’t nullify the fact that whatever knowledge and experience I have relies on the constructive power of the mind, which is accordance with what Schopenhauer argues in the first part of World as Will and Idea.

Hardly. They're not judgments but 3 different experiences in themselves that include not only your own cousciousness or biological construct to make up reality.
Reality is transmited, not constructed.
What you construct can be called a reality, but hardly the same as physical reality on the outside.

To follow up on Malebranche:

whatever knowledge and experience I have relies on the constructive power of the mind — Wayfarer

Quite an abrupt statement: you don't control or construct every experience and knowledge that is registered as real within you or that imposes itself upon you. As with life's needs, social needs, etc. you can try to modify and construct otherwise, but it still imposes itself, and the protest, especially if habitual, results in physical deformation/ characterial rigidity / unbalance and inflexibility resulting in a criminal and confused disposition.

A judgement would rather be like: this feels esthetically right, emphatic, therefore I know it is good: a criminal looks like a criminal; a dangerous person like a dangerous person, say he blushes with a red face, you know he is prompt to anger, characterial rigidity leaves fixated traits that are recognized and influence social interactions.

In any case you seem pretty certain of your well researched comments, just wanted to post a participation on here, I don't think I can add anything more interesting that would not be just confusing. Humanely, I find this biological or logical approach dichotomic and unconstructive or degrading: like life was nothing or calculable as a whole, enslavable.

In any case you seem pretty certain of your well researched comments, just wanted to post a participation on here, I don't think I can add anything more interesting that would not be just confusing. — Claude

Welcome to the conversation. I do understand your perplexity, as you can see from my profile, I have been posting here for some time, so there's a 'back-story' to my comments.

IN the post you commented on, I was essentially arguing for a perspective that is broadly described as constructivism: 'The collective term “constructivism” covers theories of cognition which particularly emphasize the active contribution of the subject in the process of cognition. Thus, “constructivism” is used to group together various epistemological views in philosophy, psychology, sociology, theory of sciences, etc., which maintain that cognition or knowledge is not, or not so much, passively received, but actively built up and constructed.'

I am arguing that this approach, which broadly speaking is identified with the philosophy of Kant, is also quite congruent with evolutionary psychology. The original post which quoted was titled 'how science supports idealist philosophy'. 'Scientific materialism' is, after all, a commonplace in today's world, but I'm arguing that there is also such a thing as 'scientific idealism', which calls attention to the role of the percieving subject in the organisation of knowledge. This is actually a counter to scientific materialism while being nevertheless compatible with science. In my post on Kant and cognitive science, I took the liberty of arguing that recent discoveries about evolutionary psychology were anticipated by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason while acknowledging that Kant pre-dated modern evolutionary science.

This is what reality is - it's not simply 'out there' waiting for us to take it in, our taking it in is a constructive process. — Wayfarer

:up:

I have read the original post by Gregory at least like 10 times and feel it is like brutishness, as opposed to elaborating artistically or esthetically, yet it is very well writen and complete, which is the challenge in that context, as it is a marginal aproach, a reducto ad absurdum. I was trying to explain that esthetic judgments are a posteriori. I haven't read much, but have shifted my approach from this kind of sky abstracting self-arbitrary melting down and up brutishness to a more optimistic impetus.
It would be fun if you could explain how calling attention to the role of the percievng subject in the organisation of knowledge can be an ideal if such knowledge itself is just materialistic.

Is phenomenon noumena: that was what Gregory was asking insights about if I understand well.
Noumena: "what is beyond the experience that is made of it, in the voluntarily diverted sense of Emmanuel Kant."
Phenomena: observable fact.
So is phenomenon noumena: I would say it depends on the observer.
I would add: what produces biological phenomena is best not always becoming noumena or be shared if it is in a protected biological process. That is also an argument against knowledge taken from opening things up that shouldn't be opened, like the inside of a body: it produces misleading/superfluous/harmful knowledge.

I would say it depends on the observer. — Claude

Yes, it would, insofar as we have no warrant to stipulate that the human intuitive, representational system is the only possible means to experience. It follows that an observer operating under the auspices of a system not intuitive or representational, may include what we think as noumena to be as necessary a constituent as phenomena are for us. Still, our system immediately precludes any possibility of understanding such differentiated methodology, at least according to this particular theory.

I've read the articles on Malebranche from the Sanford encyclopedia twice. Sure, he was coming from a semi-esoteric perspective, but he was also a priest. He explicitly said that all we experience with the senses are God's ideas, and even objects in themselves move by divine power in his Occasionalism. I think that what's has been settled on this thread is that Kant believed phenomena was part idea and seemingly part material, although we don't know noumena in itself and can't say that it is material or something else. It was as if Kant took Malebranche, doubted God, and then watched the system invert on its own

I wanted to tell the story that Freud mentionned in the past: "Freud was going to his apparment on a certain floor of a building and when he wanted to open the door he found out that he did not have his keys, reflecting upon this, he realised that the reason he did not have his keys was in fact that he shouldn't go into his appartment but do something else instead, and that this had been hidden from his consciousness." This gave him the idea that there was much more to searching than what we are aware of and he set out to explore the unconscious. But my take on this is: the explanaination is that the real and not me part collapsed: the healthy part remained real and sent Freud wandering to his apartment, it is the same as when wanting to think harmfull thought or harmful things are brought up to consciousness: a dream is produced or a blockage happens, in spite of the human intuitive, representational system and if a rejoinder if not made there is death. This contradicts:

the objects of our perception, to exist, is in fact totally dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness, the bulk of which are completely unknown to us.

because it is also conscious, and yet should be discarded as a real valuable experience if taken just by itself.

To follow up on this: the reason he was not healthy was his thought process was eronous biologically and had too much of a hold on him: his process wasn't sound biologically but intrusive and it turned against him.

Gregory:
And how has your own understanding or insights advanced after these finding about Kant's beliefs? Couldn't somebody have asked him instead of having to discuss that here? Are you his disciple? I've never read Malebranche, it's not the core of what I was writing. I'm not a librarian. Did you find any usefull insights yet?

Did you find any usefull insights yet? — Claude

Yes, I understand what phenomena is better. Malebranche would have told me in the confessional that it's a sin to doubt God. But I think it is necessary for spiritual growth. Belief in God is much more often than not based on bad archetypes coming into consciousness