Then what is missing exactly if we know the way they see the world?We infer that they see things differently on the basis of observation and analysis of their different sensory setups. We can infer that they see different ranges of colour, or even only in black and white for example.
It's true that we can get the same or similar information from different sensory modalities, but the sensations themselves are different. All of that information falls inot the category of 'how things appear or present themselves to us'. — Janus
But I asked what a "thing in itself" even means. It sounds like a misuse of language. Does it mean to BE the thing in itself? If so, is there a BEING to a chair, table, house, car, or rock? If not then there is nothing missing.It seems natural to think that there must be more to things than just how they appear or seem to be. Of course we can never know more than that, but the fact that we are compelled to think of the 'in itself' has many ramifications for human life. Not in terms of something we know, but in terms of what we can never know. The knowledge here is just self-knowledge. — Janus
So the thing in itself includes all states of the thing in the past, present or future? We don't see an apple on the table in the future. We see it in the present. We are talking about the thing in itself at this moment. I'm talking about the right here and now. Do you have direct access to your mind in it's current state? Are you experiencing your mind as "the thing in itself" at this moment?As to our experience of mind I think this is a real minefield. If mind consists only in our experience and judgements would it follow that we know all there is to know about it? Psychedelics and altered states in general show that we have the potential for very different experiences, so it would seem presumptuous to imagine that we have explored all there is to know about what it is possible to experience. — Janus
Then what is missing exactly if we know the way they see the world? — Harry Hindu
But I asked what a "thing in itself" even means. It sounds like a misuse of language. Does it mean to BE the thing in itself? If so, is there a BEING to a chair, table, house, car, or rock? If not then there is nothing missing. — Harry Hindu
You just quoted the OP out of context, — Bob Ross
Kant begins with the presupposition that our experience is representational and proceeds to correctly conclude that knowledge of the things-in-themselves is thusly impossible. — Bob Ross
The way in which we know our own being, and the way we know the existence of other objects, is
different.
I think that Kant agrees with Descartes that knowledge of our own being is apodictic i.e. it cannot plausibly be denied, as it is a condition of us knowing anything whatever (cogito ergo sum)
– CPR: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/reason/critique-of-pure-reason.htm#:~:text=That%20the%20I%20or,mental%20representation%20of%20all.The proposition, “I think,” is, in the present case, understood in a problematical sense, not in so far as it contains a perception of an existence (like the Cartesian “Cogito, ergo sum”), ["I think, therefore I am."] but in regard to its mere possibility – for the purpose of discovering what properties may be inferred from so simple a proposition and predicated of the subject of it.
…
That the I or Ego of apperception, and consequently in all thought, is singular or simple, and cannot be resolved into a plurality of subjects, and therefore indicates a logically simple subject – this is self-evident from the very conception of an Ego, and is consequently an analytical proposition. But this is not tantamount to declaring that the thinking Ego is a simple substance – for this would be a synthetical proposition. The conception of substance always relates to intuitions, which with me cannot be other than sensuous, and which consequently lie completely out of the sphere of the understanding and its thought: but to this sphere belongs the affirmation that the Ego is simple in thought. It would indeed be surprising, if the conception of “substance,” which in other cases requires so much labour to distinguish from the other elements presented by intuition – so much trouble, too, to discover whether it can be simple (as in the case of the parts of matter) – should be presented immediately to me, as if by revelation, in the poorest mental representation of all.
An object with no definite properties is not an object at all. To be an object is to have properties.
Again, the key difference about knowledge of objects, and knowledge of your own faculties
Kant doesn't speak of brains, neuroscience, genetics, etc. when making his case.
…
Kant's arguments are based on "what must be necessary for thought to exist as such."
this is why the "paradox" shows up—it's the result of mixing Kant's conclusions with empiricist arguments about the way perception is shaped by biology, physics, etc.
Now, the other thing you get at is that Kant does seem to dogmatically assume that perceptions are of objects. That's Hegel's big charge, worked out in the Logic. Hegel agrees that perceptions are of objects, but he thinks that starting out by presupposing this is how Kant ends up with the noumenal and his dualism problem.
In other words, the conception alone is not knowledge.
If I see a ball, I don’t call it either of those you mentioned. I call it a ball iff I already know it as such, or, if you inform me that’s what that thing I see, is.
And I didn’t say whatever our brain says it is; I said whatever our understanding says it is, insofar as the faculty of understanding, in its full procedural operation, thinks, judges and cognizes….all those systemic artifices which are grounded in logic as opposed to being grounded in external reality and externally affected physiology, and internal reproductive imagination, re: intuition, the sum of which is called sensibility.
but does presuppose nonetheless, that the human individual is of such a nature as to have representational faculties imbued in a system by which any knowledge at all is possible.
I do not see all these claims as being about the world as it is in itself.
Could it be that the biggest problem for indirect realists, is being called indirect realists?
There is no doubt in my mind that this visual experience has been caused by something external to the visual experience itself
…
It seems part of the a priori structure of the brain to expect that everything that happens has a cause. This cause may be called the thing-in-itself.
I do not believe 1+1=2 is apriori for example.
IE, that people are capable of doing logic is innate, but the practice of classical logic specifically must be learned.
Close, but not quite. A dog can experience a thing as well, but it cannot come up with the idea of "a thing in itself". That requires language, thinking, debate, etc. It is not an innate conclusion, but one of applied reason.
Since we can only observe representations, how do we know there's something under those representations? We only know because sometimes, the world contradicts our interpretations. Therefore the only logical thing we can conclude is that there must be something beyond our perceptions and interpretations that exists. Its not a proof of "I see the thing in itself" its a proof of, "Its the only logical conclusion which works."
Its not necessarily about trust, its about experience. You and I have both had instances in our lives where our perceptions and beliefs about the world were contradicted in unexpected ways. Thus we conclude that there is something that exists apart from our understanding and perceptions.
Good discussion as usual Bob! I always like how you drill in. I'm heading out on vacation this week to Yellowstone park with some friends, so I won't be available to reply for a while. I'll read your reply when I get back for sure. Until then, stay great and I hope the discussion is interesting!
The problem is that you have hidden the paradox, but it is there in your example. Either you trust the evidence you are using to infer whether or not there is such a thing under your bed, and what it is, or you do not. If you do, then you are trusting that evidence to give you accurate information about the "under the bed as it is in-itself": if you deny that have any such trustworthy evidence, then you have not reason to believe you can infer, other than blindly and absurdly, what is under there. — Bob Ross
if we can trust our experience to tell us that we exist with other things in a reality — Bob Ross
So, the paradox again arises such that I cannot trust even my own internal sense to give me information about what I am in in-itself and yet I can trust it enough to know that I am at all—seems problematic, no? — Bob Ross
Hopefully the above helps clarify why this does not resolve the paradox. Viz., if you can trust your internal sense enough to give you accurate enough information to know you exist [with representative faculties], then you necessarily can know some information about how the world really is. — Bob Ross
Assuming by thing-in-itself we mean the object qua itself (independently of our experience of it), it sounds like you are denying that you cannot have any knowledge of the things-in-themselves; which cannot be true if there is an a priori structure by which your brain intuits and cognizes objects (which you equally affirmed). This doesn’t seem coherent to me. — Bob Ross
===============================================================================In medieval philosophy, direct realism was defended by Thomas Aquinas. Indirect realism was popular with several early modern philosophers, including René Descartes, John Locke, G. W. Leibniz and David Hume.
There’s one part of the whole transcendental idealism which poses a threat to the entire enterprise and of which I would like to explore with this forum: the paradoxical and necessary elimination of knowledge of the things-in-themselves via particular knowledge of thing-in-themselves — Bob Ross
Theorem. The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.
To me, I would agree that the best explanation, given experience, is that there are objects impacting our senses: but that is derived from empirical data from (ultimately) our experience itself. — Bob Ross
Sorry for the belated response! — Bob Ross
The metaphysical underpinnings for “1 + 1 = 2” is that our brains construct our conscious experience according to math insofar as the plotting of objects in space is inherently mathematical. — Bob Ross
Of course, the other alternative would be just say that math is a way that our over-arching faculty of reason nominally parses our conscious experience—which is the strongest version of mathematical anti-realism. — Bob Ross
That logic is a priori does not entail that we can perform, intellectually, logic properly since birth. — Bob Ross
The point is that a thing-in-itself is the thing as it is in-itself: of course, it is a separate note that one may not have any self-reflective knowledge of it. — Bob Ross
Knowledge is, though, a requirement for cognition: your brain has to know how to do things and how to apply concepts and what not in order to construct the conscious experience you are currently having. — Bob Ross
Nothing about what we think is going to happen, self-reflectively, nor its contradiction entails that there is an object which impacted our senses (and of which we are experiencing). — Bob Ross
You seem to be conflating the faculties which produce our experience with our self-reflective knowledge of that experience. Viz., I may be wrong that this object next to be is red, but that my experience contradicts me is not the same as reality contradicting me. — Bob Ross
To me, I would agree that the best explanation, given experience, is that there are objects impacting our senses: but that is derived from empirical data from (ultimately) our experience itself. E.g., I experience getting knocked out by a ball, I experience an optical illusion, I study biology, etc. This is not inherently a process of reality contradicting me: it is me confirming hypotheses through empirical study. — Bob Ross
Wouldn’t you agree that you have to trust your experiences, to some degree, to even posit that reality sometimes contradicts your perceptions? — Bob Ross
The concept of an apple is knowledge of what an apple is—that’s part of the whole idea of having a concept of an apple. — Bob Ross
……wouldn’t you agree the brain is the representational knowledge of those faculties? — Bob Ross
…..you have to concede that you have to trust your conscious experience to derive that that experience is representational—no?….. — Bob Ross
…….Otherwise, you are just blindly presupposing that objects affect our senses—there’s nothing, without the aid of experience, that can be used transcendentally to determine that. — Bob Ross
Or referring back to my original example, your reasoning would entail that it is irrational to believe that there is something moving under my bed covers.
Your reasoning as it stands applies to believing in anything that one cannot directly perceive, and so would call into question almost all of science (especially particle physics).
Even the direct realist (if also a scientific realist)
A thing in itself is not 'an object'. Its a logical concept.
Belief is a requirement for cognition. Knowledge is a potential result of cognition.
do you think gives you accurate enough information to make an inference about reality as it is in-itself? — Bob Ross
t’s affect is called sensation and its representation is called phenomenon, but the particular object itself, hasn’t yet been exposed to that part of the system which assigns conceptions. Which is to say, we don’t know yet what to think of that particular object impacting our senses.
So even though the conscious subject to which experience belongs has no need to call the particular object that appears to the senses anything, insofar as he isn’t even conscious of the synthesis producing phenomena anyway, and to which Kant gives the term “…the undetermined object of empirical intuition…”, the system itself does need to call it something, in order for that which follows from it, to be a valid logical inference. As far as the system itself is concerned, then, to which being conscious or not has no meaning, that thing is called a transcendental object.
Try thinking of phenomena as the signal traveling along nerves, say, output of the eye to the input to the brain. There is a signal, we have no awareness of it, but it is something, which we call intuition, and the information the signal carries represents whatever it was that impacted the sensory device to which the nerves connect, and that is called phenomenon.
The whole idea of having, the only reason to have, a concept, is to represent that thing perceived, by a name. The name apple merely indicates how the thing perceived is to be known, which is called experience.
I may be misunderstanding, but assuming I do, no, I would not agree. Faculties are function-specific members of a system described in a metaphysical theory. There’s no possible method by which those faculties can be found in a brain, they being merely logical constructs, and by the same token, there’s nothing empirically provable, hence nothing falsifiable, in a metaphysical theory. All that can be said, insofar as empirical verifications for non-empirical theories are out of the question, is the brain has nothing to do with abstract conceptions authorized by such theory.
Why do I have to presuppose that objects effect my senses, when my sensations apodeitically prove my senses have been affected? If I can see a mosquito bite me, if I can smell the bacon I hear frying, why do I have to presuppose either one of those objects?
And on the other hand, why subject myself to the absurdity of supposing what just bit me, or that stuff I’m about to consume, wasn’t an object at all?
Wouldn’t you agree, though, that the brain is the representation of the thing which has those faculties? It’s two sides of the same coin. — Bob Ross
The indirect realist believes the same thing, but just adds things like apples and chairs to the list of things that cannot be perceived directly, and can only be inferred by the effects that they have on the things that can be perceived directly (which for them is something like qualia or sense data).
It's the same reasoning for everyone, they just disagree on where the line is drawn. — Michael
How do we reconcile these problems as indirect realists that accept that our conscious experience is representational? If we do trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent (as a necessity and way out), then how do we determine the limits of what we can know about the things-in-themselves? If we don’t trust our conscious experience to tell us about the things-in-themselves to some extent, then what grounds do we have to accept Kant’s presupposition (that our experience is representational)? — Bob Ross
But who will doubt that he lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges? For even if he doubts, he lives. If he doubts where his doubs come from, he remembers. If he doubts, he understands that he doubts. If he doubts, he wants to be certain. If he doubts, he thinks. If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. If he doubts, he judges that he ougth not rashly to give assent. So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji, Self, 2006, p.219
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.