Idealism assumed that the only immediate experience is inner experience, and that from that outer things could only be inferred, but, as in any case in which one infers from given effects to determinate causes, only unreliably, since the cause of the representations that we perhaps falsely ascribe to outer things can also lie in us. Yet here it is proved that outer experience is really immediate, *
(The following footnote goes to this sentence)
* The immediate consciousness of the existence of outer things is not presupposed but proved in the preceding theorem, whether we have insight into the possibility of this consciousness or not. The question about the latter would be whether we have only an inner sense but no outer one, rather merely outer imagination. But it is clear that in order for us even to imagine something as external, i.e., to exhibit it to sense in intuition, we must already have an outer sense, and by this means immediately distinguish the mere receptivity of an outer intuition from the spontaneity that characterizes every imagining. For even merely to imagine an outer sense would itself annihilate the faculty of intuition, which is to be determined through the imagination. — Critique of Pure Reason, B276
Appealing to a notion of Kantian things in themselves in discussions of realism vs. idealism overlooks the fact that for Kant himself, the things-in-themselves to which we do have access in a positive sense are not the objects that physics describes. — Thomas Neenan
Another way to think about this, using terminology I don't believe was available to Kant: Objectivity would be universal intersubjectivity. — J
The specifically novel element here is that objectivity itself, that is, the validity of knowledge as such, is created by passing through subjectivity — by reflecting on the mechanisms of knowledge, its possibilities and its limits. In this system the subject becomes if not the creator, then at least the guarantor of objectivity. — Adorno, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
In this move to an anthropocentric model of cognition, Kant proposes to investigate the world as it is given from a perspective, and this perspective is, for us, the human standpoint, the only one we know of (though we can conceive that other creatures have theirs). Hence, Kant introduces a radically finite perspective to human cognition . . . insofar as a standpoint puts limitations on experience: I cannot simultaneously see an object from the front and from the back. — Sebastian Luft, From being to givenness and back: Some remarks on the meaning of transcendental idealism in Kant and Husserl (PDF)
For, the point of Kant’s entire critical project is precisely to justify the belief that despite our subjective perspective on things, we can have objective, a priori cognition. As a priori, it is a-perspectival. Cognition exists, as human cognition, but it is a priori cognition.
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
... 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.
(Critique of Judgment 54) — Fooloso4
The indirect realism* which the empirical sciences confirm—
... it's the part on teleological judgment i still get lost in ... — Moliere
V. The Principle of the Formal Purposiveness of Nature Is a Transcendental Principle of Judgment
VI. On the Connection of the Feeling of Pleasure with the Concept of the Purposiveness of Nature
VII. On the Aesthetic Presentation of the Purposiveness of Nature
↪javra
The indirect realism* which the empirical sciences confirm—
Do they? — Count Timothy von Icarus
↪javra
I like it. — AmadeusD
A tentative comment i'd make, at risk of upsetting some of the more stringently critical here, is that its entirely possible we in fact do have an electrical sense of some kind, — AmadeusD
I think the upshot is that I was wrong to respond to Hanover by saying that according to Kant, the human understanding, like human perception, is not the only one possible: human understanding is the only knowledge-generating mechanism possible (although it might not be only human; rational extra-terrestrials could have the same understanding), but it could apply to different kinds of perception.
The picture we're left with is something like this: whatever kind of subjective perspective rational creatures might have on things, their understanding allows them to achieve the same knowledge of those things, which are thereby the very same things, even though they are "for us". — Jamal
Although all of this is a summery of sorts, I do take it to evidence that our scientific knowledge confirms that, for one example, the yellow flower which all of us humans can effortlessly agree occurs out there in the world independently of our senses and concepts is, in fact, fully contingent on our senses and concepts—this in all, or at least nearly all, respects other than its spatiotemporal properties (neither of which are phenomena in Kantian terms). To some other species of life, the very same spatiotemporal object which can be apprehended by all coexistent sentience will then be neither yellow nor a flower. — javra
and do not necessarily provide consistent representations of the noumena, as in a bat might see things differently from us, but we clear up the evil genius' deceptions with the clarity of our reasoning, then we're neither deceived about reality nor are our subjective limitations ultimately limiting.
That bats and humans might experience a rock differently does not entail that no part of their experience might be tied to the properties of the rock in a direct manner. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Spaciotemporal properties are aspects of the phenomena for Kant, or aspects of what we intuit. — frank
The most basic type of representation of sensibility is what Kant calls an “intuition.” An intuition is a representation that refers directly to a singular individual object. There are two types of intuitions. Pure intuitions are a priori representations of space and time themselves (see 2d1 below). Empirical intuitions are a posteriori representations that refer to specific empirical objects in the world. In addition to possessing a spatiotemporal “form,” empirical intuitions also involve sensation, which Kant calls the “matter” of intuition (and of experience generally). (Without sensations, the mind could never have thoughts about real things, only possible ones.) We have empirical intuitions both of objects in the physical world (“outer intuitions”) and objects in our own minds (“inner intuitions”). — https://iep.utm.edu/kantview/#SH2c
I don't disagree with anything you wrote. However, contemporary versions of direct realism, intentionality theories, and phenomenological theories all explain the same phenomena. Each of these have their own problems, but it doesn't seem readily apparent that some have significantly worse problems than others. The result is that I would tend to say that "indirect realism can be made consistent with the empirical sciences," rather than "the empirical sciences confirm indirect realism," which would seem to imply that we can eliminate competing theories based on the empirical sciences. — Count Timothy von Icarus
2.3.3 Direct Realism
Proponents of intentionalist and adverbialist theories have often thought of themselves as defending a kind of direct realism; Reid (1785), for example, clearly thinks his proto-adverbialist view is a direct realist view. And perceptual experience is surely less indirect on an intentionalist or adverbialist theory than on the typical sense-datum theory, at least in the sense of perceptual directness. Nevertheless, intentionalist and adverbialist theories render the perception of worldly objects indirect in at least two important ways: (a) it is mediated by an inner state, in the sense that one is in perceptual contact with an outer object of perception only (though not entirely) in virtue of being in that inner state; and (b) that inner state is one that we could be in even in cases of radical perceptual error (e.g., dreams, demonic deception, etc.). These theories might thus be viewed as only “quasi-direct” realist theories; experiences still screen off the external world in the sense that the experience might still be the same, whether the agent is in the good case or the bad case. Quasi-direct theories thus reject the Indirectness Principle only under some readings of “directness”. A fully direct realism would offer an unequivocal rejection of the Indirectness Principle by denying that we are in the same mental states in the good and the bad cases. In recent years, direct realists have wanted the perceptual relation to be entirely unmediated: we don’t achieve perceptual contact with objects in virtue of having perceptual experiences; the experience just is the perceptual contact with the object (Brewer 2011).This is the view that perceptual experience is constituted by the subject’s standing in certain relations to external objects, where this relation is not mediated by or analyzable in terms of further, inner states of the agent. Thus, the brain in the vat could not have the same experiences as a normal veridical perceiver, because experience is itself already world-involving. — https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/perception-episprob/#DireReal
Lower animals certainly have the second type of concept, but it seems doubtful they have the first. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I just wanted to illustrate that theories all have significant problems AND can be made consistent enough with empirical evidence that none of particularly "confirmed" above others — Count Timothy von Icarus
I then take the highlighted portion of this text to imply that the yellow flower's uniformity of hew as seen by humans is (for emphasis) the one true reality of the object - this such that a bee's experience of the flower as having a pattern of different hews is then incorrect / bad / illusory ... if not also somehow hallucinatory.
There's plenty of scientific evidence that some of them do.
My use of the term "confirmed" was likely inappropriate. I meant in the sense of "strengthened" rather than of of "having an assured accuracy". That mentioned, contingent on the issue of what "direct realism" entails, as previously expressed, our scientific knowledge does contradict our human perceptions being the be-all and end-all to what the objective world consists of. In this sense, I then yet find our scientific knowledge to evidence, hence support, the view that direct realism as just described in this post is erroneous. Be it "quasi-" or otherwise, this then results in science supporting an indirect realism.
IMO, the comparison case for all these theories should be the best/most popular theories in other camps, not naive realism, which is more a strawman than a real position. — Count Timothy von Icarus
In recent years, direct realists have wanted the perceptual relation to be entirely unmediated: we don’t achieve perceptual contact with objects in virtue of having perceptual experiences; the experience just is the perceptual contact with the object (Brewer 2011).This is the view that perceptual experience is constituted by the subject’s standing in certain relations to external objects, where this relation is not mediated by or analyzable in terms of further, inner states of the agent. — https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/perception-episprob/#DireReal
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