Phil's passage repeatedly confuses noumena like "self", (external) "world" and "God" with our "ideas" or "products of intellect" pertaining to these noumena: Kant does not suggest "God" as noumena is the same as our idea of God, and indeed for Kant it is a fundamental confusion to suggest this. Noumena are the "objects" or 'things in themselves' that lie beyond the world of our phenomenal experience - they are not merely (or at all) to be confused with any ideas or "intellectual constructions" or "products of intellect" we might devise that pertain to these noumena. Among the fundamental questions Kant wants to address is what we might legitmately claim as knowledge of these noumena given the limitations of our phenomenal experience - he does not want to collapse these noumena (e.g. the existence of "God") into a set of mere "intellectual constructions" or "ideas" or "products of intellect" derived from phenomenal experience. >For Kant, noumena, of which the big three are the self, world and God, are products of intellect and therefore only ideas of reason. These are not things to which one relates, as though one could have experience of them, but rather schemata, or ways in which the intellect organizes experiences solely for practical purposes. Noumena do not provide knowledge or understanding, which are possible only through experience, but rather general guidance for action. We construct ideas about having a self, there being a world governed by natural laws, and a God who ultimately ensures the coherence of those natural laws with human freedom, in order to articulate the conditions for the possibility of acting morally. These ideas are constructed by human beings because they are useful, and perhaps necessary, but they are constructions. As Kant goes on and on about in both the Critique of Pure Reason and Religion Within the Limits of Reason, it is really quite important to distinguish between the constructive work that goes on within understanding to produce knowledge, and the constructive work that goes into ideas of reason to produce schematizations to serve practical reason. Because they are noumena, reason can neither affirm that they do or do not exist. And perhaps that is the confusion. For Kant, to assert that the self or the world is an imaginative construction does not imply that they do or do not exist.> On Saturday, 13 September 2014, 10:18, Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: For Kant, noumena, of which the big three are the self, world and God, are products of intellect and therefore only ideas of reason. These are not things to which one relates, as though one could have experience of them, but rather schemata, or ways in which the intellect organizes experiences solely for practical purposes. Noumena do not provide knowledge or understanding, which are possible only through experience, but rather general guidance for action. We construct ideas about having a self, there being a world governed by natural laws, and a God who ultimately ensures the coherence of those natural laws with human freedom, in order to articulate the conditions for the possibility of acting morally. These ideas are constructed by human beings because they are useful, and perhaps necessary, but they are constructions. As Kant goes on and on about in both the Critique of Pure Reason and Religion Within the Limits of Reason, it is really quite important to distinguish between the constructive work that goes on within understanding to produce knowledge, and the constructive work that goes into ideas of reason to produce schematizations to serve practical reason. Because they are noumena, reason can neither affirm that they do or do not exist. And perhaps that is the confusion. For Kant, to assert that the self or the world is an imaginative construction does not imply that they do or do not exist. On a different note, I find it difficult to see how one can deny the role of the imagination in Kant's thought. One may reject the "it's all constructed, so nothing is real" interpretation, but from its role in the possibility of experience to the schematization of ideas of reason, the imagination is crucial for Kant. Sincerely, Phil ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html