Kant claims that transcendental realism entails empirical idealism; which is basically an external world Cartesian skepticism. — darthbarracuda
The common prejudice of transcendental realism is that it confuses representations (appearances) with things-in-themselves. The transcendental realist takes the spatio-temporality of objects' externality to entail the independence of these objects from the subjective conditions of human knowledge; they hold that space and time are aspects of objects as they are in themselves. In other words, they conflate the transcendental sense of actuality with the empirical sense. — darthbarracuda
Thus transcendental idealism holds that objects in space and time have no independent existence from us in this manner (of space and time). It is not the claim that objects have no independent existence from us, but that such an existence cannot be attributed to them in the manner in which they are represented (in space and time, the forms or conditions of human sensibility). — darthbarracuda
Can you explain why Kant makes this claim? What is empirical idealism and why would transcendental realism entail it? Is empirical idealism the proposed "God's eye view"? — Marchesk
What is the justification for there being a confusion? I can imagine that naivie/direct realists would deny there was one, and say that of course appearances are how things are, taking into account the necessary details of the environment (lighting conditions or what not), and the limits of our sensory organs. — Marchesk
I've always wondered why there is a leap to saying the objects cannot have an existence as represented by us, such as extension in space and time. If the objects have an independent existence, and this existence is related somehow to human sensibility, then why can't that be some form of spacetime? — Marchesk
Transcendental realism entails empirical idealism because it doesn't give any good explanation as to how we possess any knowledge at all. As I understand it, this basically means the our representations could be arbitrary and have absolutely no ground. Kant introduces a priori forms and concepts and by doing so gives grounding to knowledge, not of the thing-in-itself but of a shared, intersubjective world of experience. — darthbarracuda
I take empirical idealism to mean that we are only acquainted with the private data of our own minds. — darthbarracuda
Empirical means from out in the material world — Corvus
The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience.
Not at all. Empiricism is a claim about the source of knowledge as primarily sensory (as distinct from say, first principles a la Descartes). It does not necessarily entail the existence of a 'material world'. Only that, whatever there 'is' - ideal or otherwise - we come to know it though the experience of our senses. It is about the relation between a knowing being, and that which is to be known, and not the relata themselves. In the SEP for example:
The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/#Empi — StreetlightX
If you say, the origin of knowledge is the sensory organs, then it would be like saying, the origin of photographic images are the lens of cameras, which may sounds not wrong, but not meaningful either. — Corvus
It's accurate — Gregory
"lies at the basis of these appearances". — Gregory
more common locution in Kant is ding an sicht selbst, translated as thing in itself as it is in itself, an addition that imo makes a difference! — tim wood
Imo, clarity. E.g., I might be considered a thing in itself: you might even consider me such. And the language might make you incautious as to what you think you might know about me - confusing what you think you know with something about me. But the "as it is in itself," one hopes, would stand as warning to take care as to what exactly the thing is, and exactly what might or might not constitute knowledge of it.What does "as it is in itself" add to the thing-in-itself? — Marchesk
But the "as it is in itself," one hopes, would stand as warning to take care as to what exactly the thing is, and exactly what might or might not constitute knowledge of it. — tim wood
.....the thing-in-itself can never conform to the mind; that is precisely what it cannot do. If it did, or if it could, the entire Kantian transcendental treatise drops headlong into the metaphysical crapper. It may stand in such relation in other doctrines, but not in this one. — Mww
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