How do you know you have a world internal to your mind? — Corvus
Is it a real world? — Corvus
How do you know it is the real world or just a imagination? — Corvus
They are external. You can think about it, because you have the concepts in your mind.When you look at a world containing a street with cars and buildings, if this world was not internal to your mind, how would you be able to think about it? — RussellA
How do you know your pain is real? What if it were just itchy skin, and you might have mistaken the itch sensation for pain?Pain is real yet only exists in the mind, so why cannot your thought of a street with cars and buildings be real even though the thought only exists in your mind? — RussellA
It is dead simple. Close your both eyes totally and decidedly for 10 minutes, you will see nothing, but a total darkness. You are no longer perceiving the external world outside you. Therefore you have no perception of the external world. What you have at that moment is just total darkness. That is not a world. It is an empty mental space. It follows there is no such a thing as a world internal to yourself.Exactly, how do you know whether the street with cars and building only exists as a thought in your mind or exists outside the mind, when you only know about it through the senses? — RussellA
This isn't even a problem for Kant, it's a problem for you. — AmadeusD
They are external. You can think about it, because you have the concepts in your mind. — Corvus
How do you know your pain is real? What if it were just itchy skin, and you might have mistaken the itch sensation for pain? — Corvus
Close your both eyes totally and decidedly for 10 minutes, you will see nothing, but a total darkness. — Corvus
You are still seeing an object external to you when you see the bend stick in the water jug.Just because you have a concept of something in your senses does not mean that the something you have a concept of exists on the other side of your senses. For example, when you see a stick bent in water, are you saying that on the other side of your senses there must be a bent stick in water? — RussellA
You have a mental space which is total darkness without your visual perception — Corvus
The light reflected from the stick in the water, passes through the water with the refraction, so it looks like double or bent in the water of the jug. — Corvus
If X doesn't exist outside of RussellA, then X must exist inside of RussellA.You are correct to say that the stick that looks bent does not exist in any world outside me, but as I see a bent stick as clear as day, this means that if the bent stick doesn't exist in any world outside me, it must exist as a representation of a world that only exists inside me. — RussellA
I find this difficult to follow. It is like saying that you used your camera, and took a photo of the mountain across the field in your town, and then the camera thinks that it has a mountain in its memory card, because it cannot understand why the mountain is out there outside the camera.As the world I perceive is only a representation of any world outside me, the world I perceive is an internal world that is not necessarily the same as any world outside me. — RussellA
When you look at a world containing a street with cars and buildings, if this world was not internal to your mind, how would you be able to think about it? — RussellA
If X doesn't exist outside of RussellA, then X must exist inside of RussellA.
This sounds logically unsound. Groundless premise, and unsound conclusion. — Corvus
If X doesn't exist outside of RA? Under what ground do you claim that premise? — Corvus
What do you mean by "X exist"? — Corvus
It is like saying that you used your camera, and took a photo of the mountain across the field in your town, and then the camera thinks that it has a mountain in its memory card, because it cannot understand why the mountain is out there outside the camera. — Corvus
By virtue of drawing meaningful correlations between different things, some of which are not "internal to your mind". — creativesoul
Kant proposed that we have pure concepts of understanding prior to any possible experience. It would follow that it is the a priori Categories acting on the sensibilities that determine what we experience rather than our sensibilities alone determining what we experience.
For Kant, the experience of seeing a bent stick, the number two or a statue has been determined by the a priori categories acting on the sensibilities rather than by the sensibilities alone. — RussellA
A mountain could weigh a billion tonnes, so it is hardly surprising that the camera doesn't think it has a mountain in its memory card.
Even people only have a representation of a mountain in the minds, not the real thing. That really would be a load on their mind. — RussellA
What do you mean by "X exist"?
— Corvus
I see a bent stick. Seeing a bent stick is not proof that bent sticks exist in the world. The bent stick exists as an object in appearance whether or not a bent stick exists as an object in the world. — RussellA
Your claim that the external world is caused by your internal world is wrong then — Corvus
What Kant would have said is, that even if your sensibility sees a bent stick in the water jug, your category of concepts and understanding (followed by reading the scientific explanation on why the stick looks bent), would come to a proper reasoning on the experience, and judge the stick is straight in actuality, even if it looks bent. — Corvus
===============================================================================In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued the sum of all objects, the empirical world, is a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our representations.
Kant introduces the thing-in-itself as follows: And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something. Prolegomena, § 32
What you have been calling as your internal world is nothing more than a figment of representation of the world in your mind via your sensibility from the external world. — Corvus
What else do you need for proof that bent sticks exist in the world? — Corvus
It would be better if you could define "capable of conceiving" and "to access anything about the external world". What do you mean by these expressions and ideas? What is it for you to conceive something and access the external world?what you are capable or conceiving, is a result of your perceptions in aggregate. Therefore, you are actually entirely unable to access anything about hte 'external' world at all — AmadeusD
I understand Kant's Thing-in-itself, is not everything outside us in the world. If that was the case, Kant would be an extreme sceptic, who professes everything outside us is unknowable. That would render all our knowledge of external world impossible. In that case, Kant would have been rejected for being an extreme scpetic, and nobody would take him as a serious epistemologist or philosopher. To even suggest that would be a gross misunderstanding of Kant and his philosophy.For Kant, a stick in the world outside us is a Thing-in-Itself and therefore unknowable. Being unknowable, it is impossible to judge whether bent or straight. — RussellA
Isn't your perception of the sticks enough evidence they exist? Do you not trust your own visual perception?First it has to be proved that sticks exist in the world. — RussellA
When absence of human thought, the concept of proof cannot be an agenda. The fact that you have been mentioning about the word "proof" proves that you have been thinking about it, and also the object of your thought. The case that "even if no humans exist" also an idea in your mind, which proves that your thought was engaging in the thought.what determines when something in the world outside us is a stick or no longer a stick. A god or nature itself?
How can you prove that "sticks" exist in the absence of human thought without using human thought? — RussellA
Where humans don't exist, of course, there is no perception, no thoughts. But we can still make logical inference (from the human world), that things keep exist as they have done.Humans can judge when something is a stick and when something is no longer a stick, but in the absence of humans, in the absence of any definition of stick, in the absence of anyone to judge when something is a stick or no longer a stick, what determines when something in the world outside us is a stick or no longer a stick. A god or nature itself? — RussellA
Kant makes it clear here that we are free to infer, with some certainty, that objects in themselves exist and exert some 'causal lineage' with out phenomena….. — AmadeusD
Your claim that the external world is caused by your internal world is wrong….
— Corvus
I think the point, and I completely missed this with Mww, is that what you are capable or conceiving, is a result of your perceptions in aggregate. — AmadeusD
I understand Kant's Thing-in-itself, is not everything outside us in the world. If that was the case, Kant would be an extreme sceptic, who professes everything outside us is unknowable. That would render all our knowledge of external world impossible. In that case, Kant would have been rejected for being an extreme scpetic, and nobody would take him as a serious epistemologist or philosopher. To even suggest that would be a gross misunderstanding of Kant and his philosophy. — Corvus
Isn't your perception of the sticks enough evidence they exist? — Corvus
Even when no humans exist, all the material things must exist as they have been...............................Where humans don't exist, of course, there is no perception, no thoughts. But we can still make logical inference (from the human world), that things keep exist as they have done. — Corvus
Agreed. It sounds like an extreme subjectivism or solipsism.The claim that the external world is caused by the internal world is wrong, but that has nothing to do with the capacity for conception. — Mww
As long as one's sensibility and understanding works with concept, categories and intuition, one must be perceiving the external world, and making sense of the them acquiring knowledge of the world.The aggregate of perception, technically**, is how we come by objects of sensation, which just is the totality of intuition, not conception. The capacity of conception is unlimited, or, more correctly, is limited by productive imagination, which is itself unlimited. Remember “…..I can think whatever I wish…..”.
If you like, you could with justice say what you are capable of knowing is the result of your perceptions in aggregate, insofar as any and all empirical knowledge is of things perceived. — Mww
There are different interpretations on this point.On the one hand, Kant held that we can never know about Things in Themselves, we can never have knowledge of Things in Themselves. — RussellA
This part seems totally wrong interpretation. Things-in-themselves are for the objects we have concepts, but not the matching physical objects in the empirical world. We can think about it via concepts, but we don't see them in the phenomena. They belong to Thing-in-itself.Things in Themselves include everything outside us in the world, meaning that there are not some Things in Themselves that we do have knowledge of whilst there are other Things in Themselves that we cannot have knowledge of. — RussellA
If you believe in the existence of invisible particles and forces in space and time, then why do you deny the existence of the physical objects such as the bent stick in the empirical world?My belief is in Neutral Monism, in that what exists in the absence of humans are fundamental particles and fundamental forces in space and time. — RussellA
I am not sure what the fundamental particles actually means in the empirical world objects. It is another big issue for debating whether particles and atoms must be regarded as existence in Metaphysics, or are they just bunch of nonsense terms invented by the SciFi people.If the fundamental particles are thought of as "material things", then I agree that "material things" exist in the absence of humans. — RussellA
In the absence of humans, sounds a condition that you must clarify before progressing further. Is it the case of humans never existed in history? Or are you talking about the case where humans existed, but one day they have all vanished and disappeared into non-existence? Depending on which case you are talking about, the arguments would go different ways. Which case did you mean?However, I don't agree that "sticks" if thought of as a material thing exists in the absence of humans. I agree that a human can judge whether or not something is a "stick", but in the absence of humans, who or what judges that something is or is not a "stick"? — RussellA
Where does "if something cannot be judged" come from? It cannot only be judged because you have brought a highly unlikely, suspicious and groundless condition "in the absence of humans", which you must clarify as to what exact the condition means, and your motive for brining the condition into your conclusion.And if something cannot be judged to be either a stick or a branch, then how is it possible to be either a stick or a branch? — RussellA
The claim that the external world is caused by the internal world is wrong….
— Mww
Agreed. It sounds like an extreme subjectivism or solipsism. — Corvus
As long as one's sensibility and understanding works with concept, categories and intuition, one must be perceiving the external world, and making sense of the them acquiring knowledge of the world. — Corvus
There are various types and levels of knowledge. — Corvus
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