That is precisely the import of A J Ayer’s ‘Language, Truth and Logic’, the seminal text of logical positivism. It too is one of the expressions of the predicament of modern culture and society. — Quixodian
What is the "referent" for the term "noumenon"?
Can it have a referent? — jancanc
if it is a concept, is it not then an object of thought? but if the noumenon is not an object, then we have contradicted ourselves... — jancanc
As regards the intuition of the colour red, which is procedural knowledge, the brain knows how to perceive the colour red when presented with a wavelength of 700nm. — RussellA
Kant was in a bind because his reason could not prove there was something besides appearance and his intuition was locked unto the empirical. — Gregory
I've been consulting ChatGPT on Kant's conception of the phenomenal-noumenal distinction — Quixodian
What epistemic grounds can Kant have for the proof of such noumena that don't rely on presuppositions—on dogma? He can't have any empircal support for such things, by his own admission. — Count Timothy von Icarus
This makes no sense to me. There are many different shades of red, produced from many different combinations of wavelengths. We learn how to perceive the colour red by learning how to correctly apply the word "red". Without learning the word "red", we would perceive many different shades of colours without knowing any of them as "red". — Metaphysician Undercover
Kant is not an Idealist. In the Prolegomena Kant wants to distinguish his view from Berkeley's Idealism. — RussellA
I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. (This is Kant's doctrine - Q). To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which 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
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. — A370
ChatGPT's comment that Kant's things-in-themselves are entirely beyond our capacity to experience or comprehend is incorrect for the same reason — RussellA
that is just what language is, whether "ordinary" lingo or mathematical or formal logical. — Janus
I never would regard ChatGPT as an authoritative source. — Quixodian
That concluding phrase ('that space itself is in us') should torpedo any suggestion that Kant was a realist tout courte. — Quixodian
That things are not percieved as they are in themselves is fundamental in the Critique — Quixodian
Apparently you have a more nuanced definition of the terms "phenomena", noumena", "objective" and "subjective" than mine. As usual, you have a much greater mastery of philosophical literature than I do. My knowledge of Kant is superficial. So my usage of his terminology is more like common knowledge, and does not pretend to know the Mind of God. For me, "objective" is perceived Reality, while "subjective" is conceived Ideality.Phenomena are objective, but Noumena are subjective. — Gnomon
Disagree. Going back to the pre-Kantian idea of noumena as ‘object of mind’, the noumenal might be understood as something nearer the original meaning of the idea, form or principle (bearing in mind that ‘form* *is nothing like* ‘shape’ :brow: ) The way that I interpret it (me, not Kant!) is in terms of principles that can only be grasped rationally, but which are independent of your or my particular mind. . . . . That’s why such principles are taken as subjective, or ‘in the mind’ - but they’re not in any individual mind. Bertrand Russell describes it exactly: ‘they are not thoughts, but when they are known they are objects of thought’. — Quixodian
The Critique constantly maintains that bodies exist in space and time, and maintains that we have immediate non-inferential knowledge of them.
Kant is not a strong phenomenalist, in that his position is that there are objects outside the mind.
Hamann argued that Kant’s entire project labored under a mistaken abstraction, a vain attempt to liberate reason from history, experience, and language. Kant postulated a self-sufficient noumenal realm set apart from everything belonging to the phenomenal realm; one concept generated another, creating arbitrary dualisms: “Receptivity of language and spontaneity of concepts! From this double source of ambiguity, pure reason draws all the elements of its doctrinairism, doubt, and connoisseurship.” Hamann was sarcastic, but also penetrating. He protested that when Kant was finished abstracting, he was actually proud to have nothing but a purely formal transcendental subject, which Hamann called “a windy sough, a magic shadow play, at most.” Hamann countered that Kant’s object, a special faculty called reason, does not exist. What exists are rational ways of thinking and acting in specific languages and cultural contexts. Kant’s Platonism, however, stood in the way of dealing with anything real. This critique was not published until 1800, after Hamann had died; he was sensitive about offending Kant in public. But it had a significant subterranean influence, as Jacobi and Herder mined it for insights.99
But to explain the reality of the external world, one has to establish some kind of dualism between subject and object; otherwise objects are not really independent of our subjectivity. Kant’s rich, twisting, turgid, and conflicted wrestling with this problem yielded what Beiser aptly calls “a synthesis of subjectivism and objectivism in transcendental idealism” and a wide array of competing interpretations of what he said, yielding similar readings about the post-Kantian alternatives that succeeded him…
In both editions Kant described the noumenon as the idea of a thing-in-itself that is not an object of the senses and is not positive in any way. Essentially it signified the thought of something in general, in which one abstracts from everything belonging to sensible intuition. A noumenon is a thing so far as it is not an object of sensible intuition. But what kind of thing is that? How can it signify a true object by Kant’s principles? In the first edition, Kant reasoned that for a noumenon to signify a true object distinct from all phenomena, it is not enough to free one’s thought of all conditions of sensible intuition: “I must likewise have ground for assuming another kind of intuition, different from the sensible, in which such an object may be given. For otherwise my thought, while indeed without contradictions, is none the less empty.” Kant admitted that he could not prove that sensible intuition is the only possible kind of intuition. On the other hand, he also could not prove that another kind of intuition is possible: “Consequently, although our thought can abstract from all sensibility, it is still an open question whether the notion of a noumenon be not a mere form of a concept, and whether, when this separation has been made, any object whatsoever is left.”68
In the second edition he wrested more control over his most elusive concept by eliminating the transcendental object, at least in the most relevant sections. Any suggestion that the noumenon has a positive content or sense must be eliminated, he urged. To apply the categories to objects that are not appearances is to assume that some type of intellectual intuition exists. But sensible intuition is the only type that we know, and the Transcendental Analytic made no sense if the categories extended beyond objects of experience. Kant allowed that perhaps there are intelligible entities to which human sensible intuition has no relation. But since the concepts of understanding are forms corresponding to our sensible intuition, it is pointless to speculate on the subject; there is no knowledge. Kant realized that his critics would say the same thing about the thing-in-itself, but he needed the idea of the noumenon to account for the given manifold and the ground of moral freedom. The idea of a thing-in-itself that is not a thing of the senses is not contradictory, he assured. It is crucially important, wholly negative, and a thing of pure understanding.69
This idea cast a long, ironic shadow over modern theology. Kant conceived his unknowable Ding an sich as a brake on metaphysical speculation in philosophy and theology, which it did for Kantians. Yet his dualism of known and unknown worlds also sparked an explosion of high-flying metaphysical systems claiming that the world exists as the externalization of consciousness.
-Houlgate - The Opening of Hegel's LogicOn the surface Hegel’s charge that Kant simply assumes that understanding is judgment appears to be too hasty. But closer examination of Kant’s position in the Critique of Pure Reason proves Hegel to be right. Indeed, one of Kant’s strongest advocates, Reinhard Brandt, confirms Hegel’s view. In the First Critique, Brandt writes, “it is assumed as obvious that the understanding is a faculty of knowledge through concepts, [and] that concepts can be used to obtain knowledge only through judgments.”8 Hegel is also right to claim that Kant simply takes over the various kinds of judgment with which he is familiar from formal logic and does not derive them from the nature of understanding itself. Indeed, Kant states explicitly that such a derivation is impossible to provide:
...for the peculiarity of our understanding, that it is able to bring about the unity of apperception a priori only by means of the categories and only through precisely this kind and number of them, a further ground may be offered just as little as one can be offered for why we have precisely these and no other functions for judgment or for why space and time are the sole forms of our possible intuition. (CPR 254/159 [B145–6])
All Kant can say, therefore, is that “if we abstract from all content of a judgment . . . , we find (finden) that the function of thinking in that can be brought under four titles” (CPR 206/110 , my emphasis)…
So far I have suggested that what motivates Hegel in the Logic is the desire for necessity. Like Fichte, Hegel wants to find out how basic categories have to be understood, not just how they have in fact been understood. This can only be discovered, he believes, if we demonstrate which categories are inherent in thought as such, and we can only do this if we allow pure thought to determine itself—and so to generate its own determinations—“before our very eyes” (to use Fichte’s expression).
-Houlgate - The Opening of Hegel's LogicFichte maintains that Kant himself “does not derive the presumed laws of the intellect from the very nature of the intellect,” but abstracts these laws from our empirical experience of objects, albeit via a “detour through logic” (which itself abstracts its laws from our experience of objects).16 In Fichte’s view, therefore, Kant may assert that the categories and laws of thought have their source in the spontaneity of the intellect, but—because of the way he proceeds—“he has no way to confirm that the laws of thought he postulates actually are laws of thought and that they are really nothing else but the immanent laws of the intellect.” The only way to confirm this, Fichte tells us, would be to start from the simple premise that the intellect acts—that the intellect is “a kind of doing and absolutely nothing more”—and to show how the laws of thought can be derived from this premise alone.
What is objective vs subjective? :
Here's a trick to help you remember the difference between subjective and objective. Subjectivity is self-centered and based on speculations, sentiments, and experiences. Objectivity is outward-focused and based on observable facts and data that can be proven true. — Gnomon
….is Kant actually progressing critically and undogmatically as he claims? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Ahhhh…..of course you’re quite right. I got stuck on language = ordinary lingo. (head explodes) — Mww
Yes - I think that's a good way of saying it. — T Clark
And I think if it is understood in that spirit, it is still a perfectly understandable principle. "We do not see things as they truly are, but only as they appear to us". — Quixodian
Kant's contemporary Jacobi, in his famous Letters on Spinoza (1785), wrote: "Through faith we know we have a body, and that other bodies, and other thinking beings are present outside us." I believe he was in line with Kant except that he uses the word "faith" instead of "intuition". If they are distinct that would be too many faculties — Gregory
The English speaking world has determined that not only is the wavelength of 700nm named "red", but also the wavelengths 620 to 750nm are also named "red". — RussellA
It is not true that we learn how to perceive the colour of the wavelength 700nm by knowing its name. I don't need to know the name of the wavelength 700nm in order to perceive it. — RussellA
Your examples are just an attempt to avoid the issue because explaining what it means to perceive one specific type of red does not explain how we perceive red in the general sense. — Metaphysician Undercover
On the other hand, while stipulating what those “sure principles a priori” actually are, he doesn’t say how reason comes into possession of them. — Mww
Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble (Emrys Westacott). And I think if it is understood in that spirit, it is still a perfectly understandable principle. "We do not see things as they truly are, but only as they appear to us". — Quixodian
Do you think space and time are real independently of the mind? — Quixodian
How would that have mattered? — Quixodian
Catastrophically irrelevant. — Mww
Also: being a realist does not preclude being an idealist — Count Timothy von Icarus
Dorrien: Kant postulated a self-sufficient noumenal realm set apart from everything belonging to the phenomenal realm — Count Timothy von Icarus
Dorrien: Kant’s Platonism, however, stood in the way of dealing with anything real — Count Timothy von Icarus
Kant realized that his critics would say the same thing about the thing-in-itself, but he needed the idea of the noumenon to account for the given manifold and the ground of moral freedom. The idea of a thing-in-itself that is not a thing of the senses is not contradictory, he assured — Count Timothy von Icarus
Like Fichte, Hegel wants to find out how basic categories have to be understood, not just how they have in fact been understood. This can only be discovered, he believes, if we demonstrate which categories are inherent in thought as such, and we can only do this if we allow pure thought to determine itself—and so to generate its own determinations—“before our very eyes” — Count Timothy von Icarus
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