Dissertation Information

Seite 1

Kant's Noumenal world:

In the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant noumenon, thing in itself and transcendental object are nearly synonymous expressions used to refer to the unknowable, indescribable reality that, in some way, lies "behind" the world of observed phenomena.

The reason for this:

1. The world has a beginning in time and is limited as regards space

2. The world has no beginning and no limits in space

We cannot have knowledge of things as they are in themselves, independent of the conditions of our experience because metaphysical mistakes exist. Therefore, Transcendental Knowledge is ideal, not real, for minds like ours.

Transcendental Idealism:

The Transcendental Deduction is Kant's attempt to demonstrate against empiricist psychological theory that certain a priori concepts correctly apply to objects featured in our experience.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the Critique, Kant argues that sensibility is the understanding's means of accessing objects. The reason synthetic a priori judgments are possible in geometry, Kant argues, is that space is an a priori form of sensibility. That is, we can know the claims of geometry with a priori certainty (which we do) only if experiencing objects in space is the necessary mode of our experience. Kant also argues that we cannot experience objects without being able to represent them spatially. It is impossible to grasp an object as an object unless we delineate the region of space it occupies

The mind makes rational thought of the object which leads to an experience and feeds back to the mind through the senses.

Empiricism:

We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience.

Empiricism about a particular subject rejects the corresponding version of the Intuition/Deduction thesis and Innate Knowledge thesis. Insofar as we have knowledge in the subject, our knowledge is a posteriori, dependent upon sense experience. Empiricists also deny the implication of the corresponding Innate Concept thesis that we have innate ideas in the subject area. Sense experience is our only source of ideas. They reject the corresponding version of the Superiority of Reason thesis.

Hume:

Hume argues that adequate philosophy would have to be built upon ordinary sense impressions. Hume took empiricism to be inconsistent with the existence of material and spatial substance - sense impressions do not yield knowledge of any kind of substance, it only gives us probable knowledge (this is good enough).

Problem: what about maths? what about substance?

Hume's solution: The tendency of the imagination to construct unobserved entities to explain sequences of impressions ought not to be accepted by philosophers because no experiment can demonstrate or refute the existence of substance or other metaphysical notions, since they are by their construction compatible with every observation.

In other words, impressions are obtained through previous experiences, at which we can remember and use in situations where that experience may no longer physically exist.

Hume says that a metaphysical idea cannot be analysed into impressions and is consequently either useless or meaningless, thus metaphysical ideas cannot serve as contributions to human knowledge.

Rationalism:

The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions.

Intuition is a form of rational insight. Intellectually grasping a proposition, we just “see” it to be true in such a way as to form a true, warranted belief in it. Deduction is a process in which we derive conclusions from intuited premises through valid arguments, ones in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. We intuit, for example, that the number three is prime and that it is greater than two. We then deduce from this knowledge that there is a prime number greater than two. Intuition and deduction thus provide us with knowledge a priori, which is to say knowledge gained independently of sense experience.

The Innate Knowledge Thesis: We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature.

Like the Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis asserts the existence of knowledge gained a priori, independently of experience. The difference between them rests in the accompanying understanding of how this a priori knowledge is gained. The Intuition/Deduction thesis cites intuition and subsequent deductive reasoning. The Innate Knowledge thesis offers our rational nature. Our innate knowledge is not learned through either sense experience or intuition and deduction.

Problem: What about colours? Shapes?

Possible solution: Blindsighters?

Kant:

The rationalist projects was doomed to failure because it did not take note of the contribution that our faculty of reason makes to our experience of objects. Their a priori analysis of our ideas could inform us about the content of our ideas, but it could not give a coherent demonstration of metaphysical truths about the external world, the self, the soul, God etc.

Another way to understand Kant's point here is that it is impossible for us to have any experience of objects that are not in time and space. Furthermore, space and time themselves cannot be perceived directly, so they must be the form by which experience of objects is had. A consciousness that apprehends objects directly, as they are in themselves and not by means of space and time, is possible—God, Kant says, has a purely intuitive consciousness—but our apprehension of objects is always mediated by the conditions of sensibility. Any discursive or concept using consciousness (A 230/B 283) like ours must apprehend objects as occupying a region of space and persisting for some duration of time.

Subjecting sensations to the a priori conditions of space and time is not sufficient to make judging objects possible. Kant argues that the understanding must provide the concepts, which are rules for identifying what is common or universal in different representation

The Categories of Perception:

You recall the little binary computers discussing whether the world out there really is made up of only ones and zeroes? They thought it must be because everything they experience actually is in the form of ones and zeros. However, the real reason they experience the world that way is because those are the only two categories their processors are capable of recognizing.Kant believes that we humans have more categories of perception than the binary computers have, but that we still perceive everything in terms of our particular categories because our minds can register only what our minds are capable of registering.

a.) Let's consider time, one of the primary categories that Kant believes shapes all our perceptions, just as ones and zeroes shape the perceptions of binary computers. (The category of time includes such notions as now and then, earlier and later, before and after, fast and slow, duration, and so on.) Time shapes all our perceptions because our minds are simply incapable of having any perceptions except those that are conditioned by time. We are, of course, capable of having perceptions in which time acts in some very strange and unusual ways. We've all experienced time as seeming to slow down or speed up, but none of us, says Kant, has ever had an experience that is not conditioned by time.

This fact alone, viz., that every single actual experience we have ever had, without exception, has occurred in time, ought to make us suspicious that time is a human construct, something our minds must add to experience in order for the experience even to register with us. (As the bumper sticker says: Time is the mind's way of arranging things so that everything doesn't happen all at once.) So the fact that the entirety of our actual experience occurs in time ought to make us suspicious that time is something in us rather than out in the world.

But even more important, our minds are incapable of even imagining what a time-less experience would be like. The fact that we cannot even imagine a non-time-conditioned perception ought to make us even more suspicious that time is a condition our minds add to perceptions. The way Kant says it is this: the fact that all of our actual and all of our possible experience is conditioned by time is an indication that time is one of the mind's necessary categories of perception.

b.) The situation is similar with regard to the concept of space. Space conditions every experience we have ever had. (Space includes notions such as here and there, large and small, near and far, up and down, high and low, around, proximity, and so forth.) The fact that every actual experience we have ever had has been conditioned by space ought to make us suspicious that space is a human construct, something our minds must add to experience in order for it even to register with us. (I've never seen a bumper sticker that says this, but there should be one: Space is the mind's way of arranging things so that everything doesn't happen all in the same place.)

But even more important, our minds are simply incapable of even imagining what a space-less experience would be like. The fact that we cannot even imagine a non-space-conditioned perception ought to make us even more suspicious that space is a condition our minds add to perceptions. The way Kant says it is this: the fact that all of our actual and all or our possible experience is conditioned by space is an indication that space is one of the mind's necessary categories of perception.

Kant considers space and time to be the two primary conditioners of all our experience, the two "transcendental forms of perception."

In addition to these two transcendental forms of perception, twelve other categories also condition our experience:

Of Quantity: Unity, Plurality, Totality

Of Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation

Of Relation: Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, Community

Of Modality: Possibility - Impossibility, Existence - Non-Existence, Necessity - Contingence

You will recall that Kant had said that reading Hume woke him from his "dogmatic slumbers." He fully agreed with Hume's discovery that we never directly experience cause and effect. That is, we never experience the actual causing happening, but instead experience only the regular contiguity of two events that are juxtaposed with each other in time (e.g., flipping the switch up, and then seeing the light go on). Kant says that Hume was right about that: we do not experience causing. But we human beings do need to think in terms of cause and effect because it is simply one of the categories of our mind. Just as binary computers think in terms of ones and zeroes, so we think in terms of space, time, cause and effect, etc. It's just the way we're built, says Kant.

In any case, what this all means for Kant is that our entire experienced world, i.e., our entire phenomenal world as it appears to us in our daily experience, is conditioned by space and time, by cause and effect, and by all the other eleven categories of our minds.

We can thus say that the whole multiplicity of the phenomenal world - what Buddhism refers to as the ten thousand things - is "the temporal, spatial, causal manifold."

This phrase -- "the temporal, spatial, causal manifold" -- becomes significant in Schopenhauer's thought, because he pretty much buys most of what Kant says here about the categories of perception. So the question for Schopenhauer becomes, is it possible for us to know what is ultimately real beyond the appearances, beyond the temporal, spatial, causal many-fold multiplicity of our experience? Schopenhauer believes the answer to this question is yes it is possible, and that the ultimate noumenal reality which lies behind all the appearances is Der Wille.

New Page

New Page