. . . Nothing could be more damaging to an interpreter’s understanding of Kant’s theory than Weldon’s predication of the thing in itself as ‘the necessarily unattainable goal of empirical investigation’; for Kant not only maintains that the goal of empirical investigation is always and only the phenomenon, but also that this goal is, at least in principle, adequately attainable in experience. — S. R. Palmquist, Six Perspectives on the Object in Kant’s Theory of Knowledge
But it is not thereby a more profound investigation of reality so much as a shift or turn with the goal of putting knowledge in order—simultaneously criticizing rationalists by rejecting most metaphysics (we cannot know anything except in reference to objects of experience) and defending knowledge against empiricist sceptics by establishing a solid foundation for science (we can know things objectively). — Jamal
(we can know things objectively). — Jamal
To think about objects transcendentally is to think about our thinking about them, to investigate the conditions of our knowledge. — Jamal
The transcendental perspective does not mean the true perspective, such that the empirical perspective is false, illusory, defective or distorted, since in science we have no interest in noumena—mere objects of thought—anyway. — Jamal
I do not think the way he presents his thought, as being "Copernican" or so radically new, to be, neither as new as he presents, nor as radical as he claims it to be. One clearly sees very strong anticipations of the noumena in Locke's discussion on "substance". — Manuel
To my understanding Locke thought that we cannot represent the corpuscular microstructure of objects, but there's at least some sort of correspondence to the perceived secondary qualities. Nothing prevents us in principle to penetrate deeper and deeper to corpuscular microstructures, and thus learn about the reality with scientific method. So yes, in a way the ultimate structure is unreachable and "noumenon", but it is conceptually different kind of noumena from Kant's, in my interpretation. And yes, my knowledge of Locke is thin and based on entry level text books. — Olento
So in my interpretation Kant says that also the corpuscular microstructure (if there's such a thing for Kant - this is not clear in CPR) is also part of phenomenal world. We don't know if we ever reach the ultimate atomic structure of substances, and we don't even know if there is such a thing in the first place. Noumena for Kant is something totally outside all of this. (So I'm here following the metaphysical interpretation, I guess). Outside our representations, which include both primary and secondary qualities, there's nothing for us. For God, maybe. — Olento
It was mine too, until I read pre-Kantians, from Descartes to Hume, they are significantly richer than as they are usually presented. Part of the reason I have a slight "push-back" feeling to Kant, despite genuinely admiring him, is that once I did read the classics, I found them to be supremely rich. — Manuel
If upon transcendental contemplation we determine X,Y, and Z are the conditions for our knowledge, doesn't X,Y and Z become the lens upon which we view the noumenal and what we then actually perceive we refer to as the phenomenal?
I get that science will only concern itself with the phenomenal, but I don't see how you reject the suggestion that the phenomenal is a distortion of the noumenal. Isn't the phenomenal just the noumenal filtered through X,Y, and Z as you described it? — Hanover
What does "objectively" mean as you use it?
If we concede there are conditions for our knowledge and our knowledge is subject to those conditions and if those conditions are peculiar to the perceiver, how is our knowledge of anything objective? — Hanover
If upon transcendental contemplation we determine X,Y, and Z are the conditions for our knowledge, doesn't X,Y and Z become the lens upon which we view the noumenal and what we then actually perceive we refer to as the phenomenal?
I get that science will only concern itself with the phenomenal, but I don't see how you reject the suggestion that the phenomenal is a distortion of the noumenal. Isn't the phenomenal just the noumenal filtered through X,Y, and Z as you described it?
Your description of the transcendental was most helpful, but with Kant I'm always stuck with the meaning, purpose, and relevance of the noumenal and the difficulty in saving him from idealism. — Hanover
If . . . I suppose there to be things that are merely objects of the understanding and that, nevertheless, can be given to an intuition, although not to sensible intuition . . . then such things would be called noumena (intelligibilia). — A 249
The noumenon is the concept of a purported thing beyond possible experience, and as such cannot be distorted.
That is to say, there is nothing there to be filtered or distorted. Simply to be an object of knowledge is for a thing to be known via the senses and understanding. If there is no possible disembodied, unperspectival way of apprehending a thing, then the idea of distortion has no meaning. — Jamal
Isn't this just a vacuous concept by definition then? — Pantagruel
The noumenon? It’s a critical concept: philosophers like Leibniz built systems around noumena, and Kant is diagnosing this disease. He also thinks he can’t just ignore it, because he regards it as an unavoidable product of the understanding. — Jamal
By “universal” he means it holds for all rational creatures, and it's based on a priori structures of knowledge that are independent of experience (though they only produce knowledge when applied to experience). — Jamal
Objectivity is not transcendent, but immanent... It might be fair to interpret Kant as establishing objectivity only by downgrading it to a feature of the subjective. — Jamal
Real objects, objects we can know, are objects in space that are given to us in perception; these phenomena are beings of sense, whereas noumena are beings merely of understanding. — Jamal
I'd like to think you've been checking back daily for a response for the past decade like a spurned lover only to feel the relief now of a reply.I posted a long response to you on the old forum, attacking your notion of distortion and attempting to show that it was incoherent. Looking back, it might have been badly written--you never did reply--but I'd still want to make the same point. — Jamal
Going back to the article I cited above, where it describes the information (and I don't know a better term for this because I think I'm describing the noumena) brought in through the senses that is then registered as being in space and time and then it is formed into a concept of my understanding and then I have what we call "phenomena."Only a signal can be distorted. That is, only one's perception is subject to distortion. The object perceived cannot itself be distorted by its perception.* The noumenon is the concept of a purported thing beyond possible experience, and as such cannot be distorted.
That is to say, there is nothing there to be filtered or distorted. Simply to be an object of knowledge is for a thing to be known via the senses and understanding. If there is no possible disembodied, unperspectival way of apprehending a thing, then the idea of distortion has no meaning. — Jamal
How would we as humans comprehend any intelligence, other than the one by which humans comprehend anything? — Mww
he regards it as an unavoidable product of the understanding — Jamal
)he saw the limits of espistemology — Jack Cummins
Assuming I got all that right . . . — Hanover
. . . my next question is whether your comment that "By 'universal' he means it holds for all rational creatures," is itself a priori true or a posteriori true, meaning must #1 and #2 logically exist for a creature to be rational or does it just happen to be the case that rational creatures on planet earth have #1 and #2 and that makes them rational, but one could be rational with other a priori structures? — Hanover
I ask this because if Kant can say that these faculties we have are the only faculties that can yield rational results, then he could possibly escape idealism because he'd be saying we have that which we must have in order to have true knowledge.
I don't like that solution. It feels like Descartes' injection of God into the mix by just declaring that there's no way we'd see things in a wrong way and that the way we see things must be right. — Hanover
Real objects, objects we can know, are objects in space that are given to us in perception; these phenomena are beings of sense, whereas noumena are beings merely of understanding. — Jamal
I don't follow this. What would be an example of a noumenal being of the understanding? It would not be something we could sense for sure, but what is something just in my understanding? This almost sound like Plato's forms. — Hanover
Is it not correct to describe the phenomenal state as a modification of whatever that primordial mass was that that preceded the formation of the phenomena? I use modification and distortion interchangably here, unless you think that's not a fair move for some reason. — Hanover
203. . . . What does this agreement consist in, if not in the fact that what is evidence in these language games speaks for our proposition?
214. What prevents me from supposing that this table either vanishes or alters its shape and colour when on one is observing it, and then when someone looks at it again changes back to its old condition? - "But who is going to suppose such a thing?" - one would feel like saying.
215. Here we see that the idea of 'agreement with reality' does not have any clear application. — Wittgenstein, On Certainty
I also enjoy pre-Kantians very much! At the moment I'm especially interested in Leibniz, who is definitely one of the "bad guys" in CPR and a huge influence. There seems to be some connection between Cudworth (which I haven't read at all) and Leibniz, so it is going to be very interesting to find out something about this as well. These people worked as little in vacuum as we do, but the literary practices were much more liberate, at least compared to academic philosophy of today. — Olento
To sum it up, Kant is a metaphysician without knowing it (and therefore is an incomplete metaphysician). — LFranc
"The essences of light and colours (said Scaliger) are as dark to the understanding, as they themselves are open to the sight.—Nay, undoubtedly so long as we consider these things no otherwise than sense represents them, that is, as really existing in the objects without us, they are and must needs be eternally unintelligible. Now when all men naturally inquire what these things are, what is light, and what are colours, the meaning hereof is nothing else but this, that men would fain know or comprehend them by something of their own which is native and domestic, not foreign to them, some active exertion or anticipation of their own minds…" — Cudworth, quoted by Manuel
(Critique of Judgment 54)... a judgment of taste involves the consciousness that all interest is kept out of it, it must also involve a claim to being valid for everyone, but without having a universality based on concepts. In other words, a judgment of taste must involve a claim to subjective universality.
It’s been quite common in interpretations of Kant to identify the thing in itself or the noumenon with the reality that lies behind appearances, that which is hidden from us by the veil of perception, and the ultimate but unattainable goal of scientific investigation. — Jamal
Is it not correct to describe the phenomenal state as a modification of whatever that primordial mass was that that preceded the formation of the phenomena? I use modification and distortion interchangeably here, unless you think that's not a fair move for some reason. — Hanover
The transcendental dialectic will therefore content itself with uncovering the illusion in transcendental judgments, while at the same time protecting us from being deceived by it; but it can never bring it about that transcendental illusion (like logical illusion) should even disappear and cease to be an illusion. For what we have to do with here is a natural and unavoidable illusion a which itself rests on subjective principles and passes them off as objective, whereas logical dialectic in its dissolution of fallacious inferences has to do only with an error in following principles or with an artificial illusion that imitates them.
Hence there is a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason, not one in which a bungler might be entangled through lack of acquaintance, or one that some sophist has artfully invented in order to confuse rational people, but one that irremediably attaches to human reason, so that even after we have exposed the mirage it will still not cease to lead our reason on with false hopes, continually propelling it into momentary aberrations that always need to be removed. — Critique of Pure Reason, Kant, B355, A298
* The unity of the world-whole, in which all appearances are to be connected, is obviously a mere conclusion from the tacitly assumed principle of the community of all substances that are simultaneous: for, were they isolated, they would not as parts constitute a whole, and were their connection (interaction of the manifold) not already necessary on account of simultaneity, then one could not infer from the latter, as a merely ideal relation, to the former, as a real one. Nevertheless we have shown, in its proper place, that community is really the ground of the possibility of an empirical cognition of coexistence, and that one therefore really only infers from the latter back to the former, as its condition. — ibid. A215
For science, phenomena are more than enough, and they are by no means inferior to the noumena (on the contrary). — Jamal
Indirect realism is broadly equivalent to the scientific view of perception that subjects do not experience the external world as it really is, but perceive it through the lens of a conceptual framework.[3] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism
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