On Aug 13, 5:37 am, Michael Gordge <mikegor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Being objective.
>
> Space, time, area, duration, nothing, something, distance and weight
> are but a minute fraction of the number of concepts used by man to
> help construct his knowledge and to communicate facts of matter
> existence and events etc clearly with other humans.
>
> A concept is a trigger word and words are just man made recognition
> symbols used to link and explain / communicate existence.
>
> Concepts are used to trigger in man's mind a mental image, i.e. an
> abstraction of existence including matter object/s and or a sensory
> event or events etc etc.
>
....nothing intuited in space is a thing in itself, that space is not a
form inhering in things in themselves as their intrinsic property,
that objects in themselves are quite unknown to us, and that what we
call outer objects are nothing but mere representations of our
sensibility, the form of which is space. The true correlate of
sensibility, the thing in itself, is not known, and cannot be known,
through these representations; and in experience no question is ever
asked in regard to it.
Critique of Pure Reason Page 73
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
Kant: Appearances and Things in Themselves ...what Kant understands by
'empirical idealism' is basically Berkeley's view (as well as the view
of the others mentioned above) - i.e., the claim that the mind has
immediate access only to its own ideas or representations.
'Transcendental realism,' by contrast, is the view that "mere
representations" are "things in themselves" (A490-1/B518-19), i.e.,
that things are as our sensibility maintains them to be.
In Kant's view of the history of philosophy, these two views are
frequently associated. If the mind knows only its own ideas, and
things are just what they seem to be, then Berkeley's conclusions seem
unavoidable: things are the ideas in our own minds. Total skepticism
is avoided only by identifying the "real" with the immediate objects
of consciousness.
The distinction between appearances and things in themselves occurs in
both empirical and transcendental forms, and Kant thinks it crucial to
keep from running these two sets of distinctions together.
Suppose I say, in a given context, that "The stick looks straight to
me." Typically, I would say that it "looks" this way to distinguish my
perception of it - the appearance of the stick to me ("appearance" in
the empirical sense, or my "idea" of it, as the empiricists would say)
- from how it might appear to you or someone else. (We ordinarily
would not say that the stick merely "looks" straight unless there was
some reason to doubt it's straightness, e.g. if you had just claimed
it to be curved.) But suppose I'm right about the stick. Then its
straightness is a property of the stick-in-itself, but here the "in-
itself" is purely empirical. In this way, the empirical appearance/
thing-in-itself distinction corresponds to the difference between
mental states and the physical or material thing. This holds,
however, only in the ordinary language of experience (which includes
both common sense and science).
In a transcendental sense, however, the situation is quite different.
Here, to say that something is an "appearance" (or "mere
representation" - the thing as it appears to us) is to say that its
properties are reflective of the necessary and universal conditions of
human cognition in general (the synthetic a priori). (Qua appearance
in this sense, the stick is spatially extended and exists through
time, for example.) To call it an "appearance" is principally the
acknowledgement that we cannot claim to know things independently of
the nature of human cognition itself, which would amount to having a
knowledge gained by "stepping outside of ourselves," so to speak, an
impossibility. But this is not to say, crucially, that appearances
are mere ideas. To do so would be to confuse appearances in the
transcendental sense with appearances in the empirical sense. It
would be tantamount to denying that external objects are spatial,
something Kant thought obviously absurd.
Another way to put the point is that for Kant, empirical idealism,
transcendental realism, and the tempting association between them
involve a confusion or equivocation about what it means for something
to be "outer" (Kant's ausser or ausser uns) In the transcendental
sense, something is "outer" if its properties are completely
independent of the nature of human cognition (the synthetic a
priori). In the empirical sense, for something to be "outer" is just
for it to independent of this or that person's thoughts - e.g., for
the table to be in the room, and not in my mind. The key mistake that
results in empirical idealism and transcendental realism is a sort of
slide: I conceive the table to be in space and time and to continue
existing independently of myself, and hence as "outer" in the
empirical sense. The temptation is then to suppose the table can be
known to exist in space and time independent of all conditions of
human cognition. But if this the way we expect to be able to know the
table, then either the skepticism of Descartes results (we don't know
it at all), or skepticism is avoided only by restricting our knowledge
to the idea of the table in our minds (Berkeley). Kant suggests in
one place that Berkeleyanism is not unreasonable as a response to
Newton's view of the absolute (transcendentally real) nature of space
and time. (Given Newton's view of "two infinite things, which are not
substances, nor anything actually inhering in substances, [yet must]
have existence, nay, must be the necessary condition of the existence
of all things, and moreover, must continue to exist, even although all
existing things be removed, - we cannot blame the good Berkeley for
degrading bodies to mere illusion." CPR B70-71 Newton's problem, to
Kant's way of thinking, is that he mistook the transcendentally ideal
and empirically real nature of space and time for its transcendental
reality. In different terms, he mistook an epistemological necessity
for an ontological one.)
Here's the succinct way Graham Bird puts it: consider two claims, a)
that there are external objects of which we have knowledge, and b)
that we are immediately aware only of our ideas, representations or of
appearances. For Kant, the first claim is transcendentally false, but
empirically true; the second claim is transcendentally true, but
empirically false.[1] For Berkeley, though, the former is
(empirically) false (unless we allow Berkeley to understand 'external'
in his own strange way), and for this reason Kant calls him an
empirical idealist. Berkeley would say the latter is (empirically)
true, and this is the source of his idealism. For Kant, tables,
sticks, etc. are transcendentally ideal (their a priori necessary
features can be asserted only relative to our mode of knowledge), but
empirically real (in space and time outside our minds). Or to put it
more positively, Kant is a transcendental idealist because our
knowledge of such objects is not limited to ideas in the empiricists'
sense.(Since the synthetic a priori extends our knowledge beyond the
data given by the senses.) Hence, Kant and Berkeley disagree
fundamentally.
A different way to make some of these points comes courtesy of Henry
Allison.[2] To Kant's thinking, his predecessors in modern philosophy
had a theocentric model of knowledge. (Theocentrism here is the
strategy of analyzing human knowledge in terms of its conformity, or
lack thereof, to the standard of cognition achievable by an "absolute"
or "infinite intellect," i.e. God. And God, of course, knows things
"as they are in themselves.") Spinoza's theocentrism is pretty
obvious, since the goal of human knowledge is to know things sub
specie aeternitatis ("under the aspect of eternity"). But Leibniz too
was theocentric. He thought that in God's mind, one finds "the
pattern of the ideas and truths which are engraved in our souls." (New
Essays 4.2.14) Leibniz of course did not claim that we know all that
God knows; much of the latter is for us only "confused" and limited.
But this is a difference of degree, not kind. Consider also Leibniz's
containment theory of truth, which makes all truths analytic. God
knows them all, and knows them in their analyticity, since He has an
intuitive grasp of the infinite and can thus grasp the infinite number
of steps of analysis required to "demonstrate" the contingent truths
(reduce them to a simple identity, x = x). We can't, but it's as
though our failures here are more the result of our lack of cognitive
horsepower rather than a fundamental divide in the way we know things,
as compared to God. What we do know, though, is as God knows it - as
it is in itself. Hence, Kant complains that Leibniz "took the
appearances for things in themselves" and "intellectualized
appearances." He overlooked the essentially sensible (spatiotem****al)
aspects of our knowledge.
On the empiricist side, Berkeley's theocentrism is pretty obvious, but
Locke also stands accused. One passage where it comes out is in
Locke's attempt to distinguish real and nominal essences. (The
nominal essence, recall, is the basis on which we classify something,
e.g. gold - it's weight, color, malleability, fusibility, etc. The
real essence is the "constitution of the insensible parts of that
body, on which those qualities and all other properties of gold
depend." Consider the following passage, which occurs after Locke has
discussed the nominal essence of man:
The foundation of all those qualities which are the ingredients of our
complex idea, is something quite different: and had we such a
knowledge of that constitution of man, from which his faculties of
moving, sensation, and reasoning, and other powers flow, and on which
his so regular shape depends, as it is possible angels have, and it is
certain his Maker has, we should have a quite other idea of his
essence than what now is contained in our definition of that species,
but it what it will: and our idea of any individual man would be as
far different from what it is now, as is his who knows all the springs
and wheels and other contrivances within the famous clock at
Strasburg, from that which a gazing countryman has of it, who barely
sees the motion of the hand, and hears the clock strike, and observes
only some of the outward appearances. (Essay)
Here Locke clearly equates knowledge of real essences with knowledge
that our "Maker has." With regard to his theocentrism, the key is
that Locke regards God's knowledge as perceptual. (In a telling
passage early in the Essay, he alludes to God's "microscopical
eyes".) As for Leibniz, for Locke our knowledge differs from God's
only in the sense that He has more of the same. For Locke, this means
God has greater perceptual abilities, while for Leibniz it means God
has infinite reason. But as it was for Leibniz, for Locke the
difference is one of degree, not of kind. Locke and Leibniz thus both
agree that "genuine" knowledge - the goal for us, which God achieves -
is of things in themselves. Hence Kant's complaint is that Locke
"sensualized all concepts of the understanding" and regarded
sensibility "as an immediate relation to things in themselves." (CPR
A271/B327) In other words, as did Leibniz, Locke commits the mistake
of transcendental realism. Berkeley's empirical idealism is the
result of drawing the appropriate conclusions from Locke's
assumptions.
http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~sbruton/Appearances.htm
> Distance, as a concept, is specific in meaning / defintion but is also
> not limited at the same time, it can be used and or triggers in the
> mind an explanation of a fraction of inch or zillions of miles.
>
If we remove from our empirical concept of a body, one by one, every
feature in it which is [merely] empirical, the colour, the hardness or
softness, the weight, even the impenetrability, there still remains
the space which the body (now entirely vanished) occupied, and this
cannot be removed. Again, if we remove from our empirical concept of
any object, cor****eal or incor****eal, all properties which experience
has taught us, we yet cannot take away that property through which the
object is thought as substance or as inhering in a substance (although
this concept of substance is more determinate than that of an object
in general). Owing, therefore, to the necessity with which this
concept of substance forces itself upon us, we have no option save to
admit that it has its seat in our faculty of a priori knowledge.
Time is not an empirical concept that has been derived from any
experience. For neither coexistence nor succession would ever come
within our perception, if the representation of time were not
presupposed as underlying them a priori. Only on the presupposition of
time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at
one and the same time (simultaneously) or at different times
(successively).
Time is a necessary representation that underlies all [A31/P075]
intuitions. We cannot, in respect of appearances in general, remove
time itself, though we can quite well think time as void of
appearances. Time is, therefore, given a priori. In it alone is
actuality of appearances possible at all. Appearances may, one and
all, vanish; but time (as the universal condition of their
possibility) cannot itself be removed.
Time itself does not alter, but only something which is in time. The
concept of time thus presupposes the perception of something existing
and of the succession of its determinations; that is to say, it
presupposes experience.
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr/
http://www.bright.net/~jclarke/kant/index.html
http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html
http://www.4literature.net/Immanuel_Kant/Critique_of_Pure_Reason/
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/reason/ch01.htm
That space and time are only forms of sensible intuition, and so only
conditions of the existence of things as appearances; that, moreover,
we have no concepts of understanding, and consequently no elements for
the knowledge of things, save in so far as intuition can be given
corresponding to these concepts; and that we can therefore have no
knowledge of any object as thing in itself, but only in so far as it
is an object of sensible intuition, that is, an appearance...Thus it
does indeed follow that all possible speculative knowledge of reason
is limited to mere objects of experience. ...though We cannot know
these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in position at
least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be
landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without
anything that appears.
> Even mystics imagining their concept called god, are required to try
> and imagine it as something existing in some form of existing sensory
> matter.
>
> That's so as to make the image as real in their minds as possible. The
> more use of sensory existents that the mystics use, to visualise that
> mental image, then the more real their god becomes to them.
>
> Soooo how can the Kantian's claim man's knowledge of the concepts
> space and time arrived or exist for man (innately) i.e. before man is
> able to form mental images of the existing matter / substance / event
> giving rise to the concepts of area and duration?
>
> The answer is, man doesn't do anything of the sort. Man doesn't have
> any such thing as innate concepts / innate knowledge, its utter
> invented Kantian trash.
>
> Its the stuff of mindless morons who also believe in gods and fairy
> tales or who dont through nothing but sheer fluke or accident.
>
> Michael Gordge
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