[lit-ideas] Re: consider once again the
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 20:51:05 -0400
In a message dated 9/12/2014 4:29:01 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>A phenomena is anything subject to empirical verification. To some, a
noumenon is the intellectual conception of the thing in itself; others define
it as anything beyond the realm of direct empirical verification.>
Leaving aside the highly problematic character of "empirical verification"
(which does not exist in the traditional inductive sense), and accepting
that a "phenomenon" is something connected with experience and our "internal
world", it is not at all right to posit that "a noumenon is the
intellectual conception of the thing in itself".
A noumenon is, especially for Kant, not the "intellectual conception" of
the thing in itself but a term for a thing in itself. Perhaps the simplest
way to understand 'things in themselves' is as those objects in the
"external world" to which pertains at least some of our "internal world" of
'experience': it is Kant's view that the character of these objects in the
external world is fundamentally unknowable, whereas it is Popper's view that
they
may be known by way of conjecture - but even Popper would accept Kant's key
thesis that our knowledge of such objects is a product of how our
cognitive apparatus is disposed to respond to properties of those objects and
is
never an unmediated reflection of the objects themselves. So even for a
metaphysical realist like Popper, Kant is correct in denying such objects are
ever "knowable" in the fully God-like sense where "knowledge" is something
like a full reflection of the object untainted by the subjectivity of the
knower. There is a permanent screen between us and the "external world", and a
permanent distinction between the screen of our "internal world" of
phenomenal experience and the "external world" of objects to which that
experience may pertain.
The "intellectual conception" of a 'thing in itself' is therefore (a) not
a thing in itself (and thus not a noumenon) (b) something that belongs to
the phenomenal and not the noumenal world - or, in other terms, something
that belongs in our "internal world" and not in the "external world".
>Since all we can discuss are phenomena, everything else (the world
without us to perceive it) is an intellectual construct, hence an act of
belief
or imagination.>
The comment that, given the above, we can discuss only "phenomena" is also
highly problematic, even to Kant. But, as indicated, it is a mistake,
especially in Kant's philosophy, to think that "everything else" (e.g.
everything apart from "phenomena") is "an intellectual construct": as
indicated,
the noumena or 'things-in-themselves', that exist beyond our phenomenal
experience of them, are not "an intellectual construct" at all (if they were
then Kant would not argue they are fundamentally unknowable [for "an
intellectual construct" cannot be fundamentally unknowable in this sense]).
Though admittedly the positing of a distinction between "phenomena" and
"noumena" may be "an intellectual construct" of sorts, it is not a mere
"intellectual construct" but a fact of reality that there are both phenomena
and
noumena. In other words, noumena exist 'noumenalogically' and not at all
as an "intellectual construct" of any sort (the idea that Kant's noumena are
an "intellectual construct" would be to collapse Kant's "transcendental
idealism" into "idealism" in something like the Berkleyan manner: and it may
be suggested that the term "transcendental idealism" is here unfortunate -
itself misleading given the realist elements in Kant's philosophy).
Donal
Still waitg to hear where Socrates suggests intentional wrong-doing is
impossible or where Popper makes an anti-Cartesian point about connoiseurs.
Ah, the silence.
On Friday, 12 September 2014, 19:48, Eric <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> nobody knows what is the "own" noumena? what the fuck are you talking
about?
A phenomena is anything subject to empirical verification. To some, a
noumenon is the intellectual conception of the thing in itself; others define
it as anything beyond the realm of direct empirical verification.
Since all we can discuss are phenomena, everything else (the world without
us to perceive it) is an intellectual construct, hence an act of belief or
imagination.
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