My understanding is that a transcendental idealist would say of an object that it exists independently of a mind but that we can never know about it except through innate/ a priori concepts. So the mental representation of the object is what we know the properties of, not the object itself. But this epistemic issue is not the denial of objects independent of mental representation, but just the epistemic inability to know about them independently of our mental schemas.
The only way I can think to distinguish them from dualism is if they hold that there is is somehow simultaneously a reality with regularities we can make sense of, but our representations of it are what exist, and there is nothing outside of that. However, this seems incoherent to me. Does someone have a good answer for this?
Thank you
If you have any passages or papers you could recommend that would be great!
Edit: I was apparently significantly wrong in my interpretation of transcendental idealism, sufficiently so to topple the whole argument. This CMV can be considered thoroughly resolved.
Major caveat up front: I have read a good bit of Kant and Nietzsche, but can't guarantee that I accurately understood either concept above, not being a scholar of philosophy and having studied both without guidance. I am also unaware of any more recent developments that may be relevant. Could be some easy deltas there.
In the hopes of facilitating quick correction, I'll try to roughly summarize how I understand those two concepts.
- Transcendental Idealism: our comprehension of the world is dependent on certain fundamental conditions (e.g. causality). In any world we are capable of comprehending, we can assume those conditions to hold; however, since they are conditions of our comprehension and not of the world as such, we cannot generalize from our experience to the world as it truly is.
- Perspectivism: "There is no truth, only interpretation". Individuals experience the world through their own perspectives, without there necessarily being a singular correct one.
From these definitions, there's a fairly short argument from one to the other. I get the impression that Kant was working under the assumption that humans share the relevant conditions. However, if we do away with that assumption, then we get:
- Each individual's comprehension of the world is dependent on certain fundamental conditions, which can be guaranteed to be true of any world comprehensible to them but may not be shared between individuals. As before, these individual experiences cannot be extrapolated to reason about any underlying reality.
- Without being able to reason about underlying reality, we cannot identify any one correct package of conditions.
- Therefore, each individual's world (as they experience it) necessarily conforms to the fundamental conditions making up their own perspective, with no way to identify a correct perspective.
- Thus, perspectivism.
(Pardon the sloppy arguing.)
Could anyone point toward the points of major contention on this topic, particuarly with regard the problematic relationship between phenomena and Noumena? Initially I was gonna write on the possibility that there is an inchorence in the Noumena being presumed to exist but also being necasserily incognizable. Is there any validity in this? I know that Kant held that although Noumena is incognizable, it can be thought in its concept alone (perhaps this has some fault alone, given the unknowability of its object), but is this enough to prove its existence? Thank you, any advice is much appreciated :).
New to philosophy so apologies if this makes no sense. I’m struggling to see the difference between these schools of thought. To me transcendental idealism seems almost materialist. Kant says we live in a world of experience, experience of representations of ontologically real things in their self. Isn’t this world of the “Noumenon” materialist? Things happen, ultimately based on these real objects. I live my life according to representations of them, but what happens depends on that deeper reality beyond the representation.
Struggling to understand! Thanks for any info
Don't get me wrong, I think it's trivial that this doesn't imply Kant's not interesting at all. Obviously he wrote about a lot of things, there's historical relevance and so on.
What I find surprising is how huge the gap is. On the one hand, there seems to be an unusually strong agreement (for philosophy) that his project has indeed be significantly undermined. One the other hand, he continues to be not only "an" interesting philosopher but one of the most talked about, that apparently almost all undergrads formally treat in their education. By comparison, I think it can be interesting and maybe even helpful to learn about a project in science or math that ultimately wasn't a real success, such that it continues to live on as a practicable theory. But it would be weird to make it an obligatory course for all physics or math undergrads, have plenty of very active scholars dedicating their time to it, and so on.
Hello and welcome to Gerry and Philip's reading group, a SLOW reading and careful study of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason!
RSVP in advance for the Sunday, Aug. 1 session here - https://www.meetup.com/The-Toronto-Philosophy-Meetup/events/279555994/
[See the write-up for the first session for an introduction to this reading group: https://www.meetup.com/The-Toronto-Philosophy-Meetup/events/277446352/]
SESSION 6 READING. Sorry I lost track of time in our last session. I take that as a sign of a good discussion when you lose track of time. So you really don’t want to miss the next meeting where we will discuss Allison’s 19 page intro in his book (see Amazon link below) as well as the flip side of the Transcendental Aesthetics.
I know people always bought the record for the A side single, but in Kant’s case, his second edition is an improved explanation of time and space (fingers crossed). So also read in the Critique, pages 172-178, which will cover the second edition explanation of space. We’ll save the second edition explanation of time for the following meetup.
For Allison’s book: Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (Second Edition) by Henry E. Allison
Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Kants-Transcendental-Idealism-Interpretation-Enlarged/dp/0300102666/
US: https://www.amazon.com/Kants-Transcendental-Idealism-Interpretation-Defense/dp/0300102666/
https://preview.redd.it/9vyguh9ea2c71.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b941df7bdebedf988d46039824cd32c2b08745e9
About this Kant reading group:
We realize there are many other Meetups on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason out there. So what sets us apart?
We are aiming for a balance between two things:
On the one hand, this Meetup will be welcoming and accessible towards people who are absolute beginner's when it comes to studying the First Critique (which is another name for the Critique of Pure Reason). But on the other hand, we will be doing real Philosophy in this Meetup. The goal will be to achieve a real understanding and this will not be a place for mere chit chat. We will be digging deep and really trying to get at
... keep reading on reddit ➡Having focussed on the B Deduction to the expense of its predecessor in my Kant studies, I didn't feel very well up on the notion of the transcendental affinity so decided to seek out secondary lit. on the subject. I came across Westphal's *The Transcendental, Formal and Material Conditions of the ‘I Think’*. He makes the point that insofar as transcendental affinity consists in a material and not formal affinity that can't be captured conceptually or by the sensibility, and yet is a necessary condition of the possibility of experience. On transcendental idealism, the material of experience is contributed by things-in-themselves and the form by the subject. And yet, Kant says at A113–4, 4:85.10–28 that the transcendental affinity can only be explained on transcendental idealism, contradicting the view that the matter of sensation is given to us 'ab extra'. If we take the other fork of the dilemma, it seems that Kant can't explain regularities in nature any better than Hume. Is there any Kantian response that can save the great man's statement that transcendental affinity can be explained on transcendental idealism?
Thanks!
It seems to me that the indirect proof of TI provided by Kant in the solution to the Mathematical Antinomies requires a phenomenalist reading (which I think is highly undesirable). I'll use the second mathematical antinomy as my example, but I'll cite the Prolegomena as being very clear, since the very quote appears in an article I've just been reading and since its representative of his most pointedly anti-Feder-Garve views:
'For [...] appearances are mere representations, and the parts exist only in the representation of them, hence in the dividing, i.e., in a possible experience in which they are given, and the dividing therefore proceeds only as far as possible experience reaches. To assume that an appearance, e.g., of a body, contains within itself, before all experience, all of the parts to which possible experience can ever attain, means: to give to a mere appearance, which can exist only in experience, at the same time an existence of its own previous to experience, which is to say: that mere representations are present before they are encountered in the representational power, which contradicts itself[.]' (Prol 4:342)
We can draw the following conclusions from this passage:
(1) The parts of an appearance exist only 'in the dividing'.
(2) From the perspective of TI, it would be a mistake to hold that an appearance contains all its parts 'in itself', since the existence of parts depends on them being represented.
We can give a similar story for the resolution first Antinomy, but with synthesis proper substituted for decomposition. Why does either follow from TI (which I take to be the the conclusions of the Aesthetic) alone? It seems to me like Kant is instead appealing to the conceptions of synthesis and experience advocated in the Deduction/System of Principles more broadly. If he isn't, then it seems he's forced to say that things don't exist outside our *currently experiencing/having experienced* them in saying that his solution to the Antinomies vindicates TI. This would put him far closer to Berkeley / phenomenalism than, say, Allison wants TI to be.
Is TI a broader term than I thought (i.e. simply referring to the conclusions of the Aesthetic *and* the Logic)? If not, is there any way of reconciling the solution to the mathematical Antinomies with a two-aspect/epistemic conditions account of TI?
Thanks!
The beginning of the IEP article about Kant reads: "At the foundation of Kant’s system is the doctrine of “transcendental idealism,”..." I was wondering how literal I need to take "doctrine" here, after all Kant's main mission seems to be to set the foundation of metaphysics as a science and not a dooctrine.
The shared focus on things as they appear makes the two perspectives appear extremely similar to me, but I only have a superficial knowledge of either. Are these similarities minor, or does Husserl's conception of phenomenology draw heavily upon Kant? In what ways do the two perspectives differ?
Hello,
I'll add the disclaimer that I am not a philosopher; I am from a natural sciences background, and, for some unknown reason, we were never taught any philosophy. I apologise, therefore, if the following is a little incoherent.
I am interested to know if it is reasonable to be an ontological realist and an epistemological idealist, whilst also being somewhat of a post-positivist and pragmatist.
As an ontological realist, the universe is objective and mind-independent (to some extent). It has certain properties that exist independently of perception by conscious beings.
An epistemological idealist would accept ontological realism, but would recognise that the representations that we form of the external world would be at least partially determined by the structure of the nervous system that is doing the perceiving and representing. For example, wave-particle duality: an electron is neither a particle nor a wave, but we can represent it as either depending on the situation; we cannot, however, conceive of an electron as both simultaneously, or understand fundamentally what an electron 'is'. Rather, we represent it in ways familiar to us (i.e., as either a particle or a wave).
Some areas of knowledge seem better justified from a post-positivist (positivism with blurry edges) perspective. These would be areas of knowledge more typical to the natural sciences. For example, knowledge regarding the chemical composition of DNA.
Some forms of knowledge seem better justified from a pragmatist perspective. These would be areas of knowledge more typical to sociology and social psychology. For example, explaining the role of cultural capital in social inequality. Sociological systems are big and complex and do not lend themselves easily to the 'traditional scientific approaches'; despite this, knowledge generated from sociological studies may have important and effective practical applications, and as such would perhaps constitute a valid form of knowledge. It seems to me that this position is further reinforced if one is an epistemological idealist: knowledge of the external world is a subjective representation in the human mind, anyway, some of these representations may closely approximate reality (a post-positivist position?), some may be further removed (acceptable to a pragmatist?), but they are fundamentally subjective either way.
I feel like both ontological realism and epistemological idealism are consistent with Kant (transcendental idealism). Kant
... keep reading on reddit ➡I’m pretty convinced that transcendental idealism is true. However, it is by now more than 200 years old and I would be surprised if there wouldn’t be any good or even defeating arguments against it.
What is the difference between Kant’s transcendental idealism and cartesian idealism he talks about in chapter 3 of his Prolegomena? How is it relevant to the question regarding perminence of soul?
It's pretty clear that Schopenhauer had a very large influence on philosophy proceeding himself (Nietzsche, Cioran, along with a lot of artists), but that's mostly though his pessimism and aesthetics.
From what I know the only other philosopher who built on the idea of will as an ontological principle is Phillip Mainlander. And I don't know if his influence on neo-Kantianism extended just to his critiques of Kant or if it also extended to his actual system of theoretical philosophy.
So are there more thinkers Schopenhauer has influenced in a concrete (meaning, regarding metaphysics and epistemology) way? And if so, in what precise things do they have that are alike to Schopenhauer's theoretical philosophy?
I recently came across an excerpt from Keith ward's book 'More than Matter' in which he talks a lot about idealists, empiricists and determinists, entailing their shortcomings. In this excerpt he talks about Kant's theory of compatibilism:
>"Kant says that the conceptual categories we use only have theoretical meaning within the reality of sense-experience. Yet he also holds that there is a reality beyond sense-experience, of which the sensory world is an appearance. But how can he even say that there is a reality beyond sense-experience, which is the hidden cause of our sense-experiences? He is using the categories of substance (things-in-themselves are described as things, after all), existence, and causality, which should have no meaning. He is even describing the things-in-themselves as noumenal (which means "mind-like" or "only apprehensible by mind"), intelligible or conceptual as opposed to sensory. Although the freedom of the self cannot be proved by induction or by empirical methods, it must, he says, be postulated as a condition of moral action. The ideas of reason do not have theoretical meaning, but we must act as if they are true of the noumenal world, and the justification for this is that they must be used to achieve unity in our knowledge and underpin the moral action. It is far from satisfactory, however, to hold that we must act as if something is true, when we know it is not, and when we have no idea, theoretically speaking, of what is true. To say that this is a totally rational procedure stretches the meaning of rationality beyond any reasonable limits. The trouble is that Kant provides a wholly mechanistic and deterministic view of phenomena, while free action and the judgements of understanding and reason are allocated to a non-mechanistic and non-determininistic (but also non-temporal and non-spatial) realm. This means that I must regard my moral actions as free and undetermined - but only in a noumenal realm beyond space and time. >For most of us, however, free acts take place in time. I am free when I perform a specific action. It is not really much help to say that all my specific actions in time are determined, but that there is some sort of non-temporal freedom as well. The attempt to make sense of this even leads Kant at one point to say that perhaps the place where I am born is freely chosen by me in a non-temporal sense, and that is dangerously near to say that I am poor and oppressed because I choose to be. I do not
... keep reading on reddit ➡Please excuse any misinterpretations—my reading of the First Critique was quite some time ago.
...I Kant
Someone is about to explain to me how I'm wrong about that but it feels so true.
Hi there, /r/askphilosophy!
This is my first time posting here, so I'm sorry if asking for essay advice is taboo or frowned upon. I will take the post down immediately if this is the case. I am finishing a university survey course on 17th and 18th century philosophy (focused on the continental rationalists, British empiricists, and Kant), and am writing my term paper on the philosophers most influential to the Critique of Pure Reason. I have decided to claim that Hume and Descartes were the most influential philosophers to the critique, as taking empricism and rationalism to their extremes exposed their flaws and demonstrated the necessity for the conjunction of concepts and intuition.
Do you think this is an adequate claim? Also, any suggested positions from Descartes and Hume that I should highlight to illustrate this point?
Kant discusses how space and time are mere representations of our minds. Can any amount of empiricism undermine this assertion though? What about our mathematical theories of spacetime? Is that considered a priori, and thus a sufficient reason for rejection of Kant's idealism?
How do the results of the first Critique hold up today? One relevant issue is Einstein's theory of relativity as a challenge to the Transcendental aesthetic. Does the notion of spacetime as:
- singular, inseparable entity
- affected (curved) by bodies
put in question Kant's doctrines?
Furthermore, is there any research in psychology that touches upon the Transcendental analytic and how it explains the faculties of understanding and imagination?
Lastly - would it even matter? Kant's philosophy is entirely a priori, so is it possible that empirical evidence against it should actually be interpreted in order to conform to it, rather than posing a challenge?
Mendicant: mend I. Kant, men decant
Other times I think a manual can't.
>Trans con tin ent'll answer transcontinental ants or trans Kant and end all "and... sir?"
This post was in part inspired by u/spamking64's post here
