A Question Concerning Kant

[Marc K.]

No, you see, that would only be a problem if the matter at hand was convincing me that objectivism was correct. I can assure that that is not what I am talking about here (and it's also not within the realm of possibilities, for reasons far outside the scope of this thread).

[...]

I guess it was kinda silly of me to consider the alternative as a possibility. I'm out of here.

[emphasis added]

You are a liar as demonstrated above, you never considered the alternative as a possibility. (This is all contained in the same post).

Hmmm, a contradiction wielding Kantian ... how unusual.

The contradiction indicated above not only demonstrates his devotion to, and acceptance of, Kant, but marks him as a troll as well. He also said earlier that there is no such thing as proof. He was rude, insulting and disrespectful.

I hope in the future, if he returns, the moderators will confine him to the debate forum and only allow him to ask questions about Objectivism.

Edited May 13, 2009 by Marc K.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

Right, but here you are just substituting in another proposition that means the same thing, let's apply your own test to that claim. "The senses give us reality directly, the one and only reality, the one that is observed with the senses or logically derived in a non-contradictory manner from sensory evidence." Can you prove /this/ claim empirically? (Note: I am not talking about the observations themselves, but rather about the proposition relating them to reality) (Obviously you can't for circularity reasons) And since you can't empirically prove this claim, doesn't that make it every bit as "mystical" as Kant's metaphysics? (where your definition of mystical is not based on empirical observations)

(BTW, of all this discussion, this is the question that has really peaked my interest (I'm just noting this, because you guys tend to only answer a few of my question, and if you are going keep doing that, pick this one as one of them))

This is the part that made me realize there was no sense in talking with this guy. If going by sensory evidence is considered mysticism, then there is no place to start in offering him any sort of evidence at all that Miss Rand is right. All he wanted were arguments on top of arguments --i.e. he was an extreme rationalist with no ties to reality.

Reminds me of the Maverick Philosopher who claims that Miss Rand and Objectivists are primitive savages because we point to things and then say, "This is what I mean."

So, Kant is absolutely right because he gives no evidence and Objectivism is completely wrong because it relies on evidence.

You really can't get much more philosophically corrupt than that. And therein lies the danger of Kant's philosophy -- it leads to a complete disconnect between one's mind and existence.

[Scott886]

Hello, everyone! I’m entering the debate a bit late, but I would like to respond to Tiberious’ queries concerning an Objectivist’s bone(s) of contention with Kant’s concept of the noumenal. One issue for me is his ontological denial that the noumenal can be spatio-temporal. Assuming you’re familiar with his Critique of Pure Reason, Tiberious, this position of Kant’s is known as the stronger version of transcendental idealism. I’m sorry to general readers out there if it sounds a bit technical—I swear I’m not trying for pretention—but I choose it because it is a clear case of Kant asserting something that is ridiculous, both from a rigorous philosophical standpoint and the common-sense BS detector. I’ll try to sum up some terms first, and then explain the inconsistency of Kant’s position.

Basically, Kant’s Critique talks about reason and what it can tell us about the world, i.e., ourselves and the objects outside of us. Kant says that there is a difference between things as we perceive them (phenomena) and the things-in-themselves (noumena). This distinction is called transcendental idealism—this is the idea that things are empirically real (phenomenal: we can perceive them) but transcendentally ideal (noumenal: things-in-themselves aren’t constituted the way we perceive them). In a nutshell, transcendental idealism means we can never know the noumenal, that is, things in themselves. (In all fairness, this isn’t as wacky as it sounds. But, as many have pointed out, Kant stacks the deck: because we can never know things in themselves by definition, it is impossible to prove that the noumenal aspect doesn’t exist.)

We can divide our perception of an object (as phenomenal) into two parts: 1) how an object is given to us and 2) how we can think about it. This argument only concerns the first part, so I’ll only talk about that. How an object is given to us is called an intuition, and the mechanism in humans allowing intuitions is called sensibility. An intuition is also known as a representation/appearance. Like, if you see a rose, the image you form of this specific instance of the rose is a representation (aka intuition aka appearance).

So, Kant says that the only things we can base our intuitions/representations/appearances on (or, said a different way, the limits of our sensibility) are space and time. On the one hand, this is reasonable, since it says concepts like God can never be known to reason (Kant, not wanting to ruffle feathers in his time, says this is where faith comes in). But here is where it gets inconsistent (read: ridiculous). Remember the phenomenal/noumenal distinction? Kant says that, while we know that the phenomenal aspect of an object is spatio-temporal (those are our limits of sensibility), we can KNOW—like, for certain--that the noumenal aspect of an object is NOT spatio-temporal. In other words, we can KNOW that things-in-themselves are not spatio-temporal, i.e., not grounded in space and time. This is known as the stronger version of transcendental idealism (as opposed to the weaker, which [more reasonably] states only that we cannot know things in themselves to be spatio-temporal—they might be, they might not. I swear that makes sense.) But the stronger version of transcendental idealism does not.

Kant significantly revised sections of his Critique, so much so that in certain parts, you refer to the A version and the B version. There are also standard paragraph demarcations. Using those references, Kant asserts in A23/B37, A26-8/B42-4, and A30/B45 that we can KNOW that things in themselves (that is, the true essence of objects, not merely how we perceive them) are not located in space and time (yes, it is as zany as it sounds). He also makes the argument again in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics in 290 (again, a standard paragraph marking).

I choose not to explain the several (weak!) arguments Kant makes to support this claim—this post has gone on long enough --but yeah: any guy who says we can KNOW FOR CERTAIN that objects are not located in space and time is wrong about some important things. And I would like to emphasize: Kant meant this, he meant this in the sense that he thought he was telling the truth about existence. If you want to pore through the arguments, I would check out the Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason by Sebastian Gardner (New York: Routledge, 1999).

Finally, the thing that I like about Rand is that she clearly understood all of this and was not afraid to call a spade a spade. Philosophers accuse her of a lack of rigor. It’s true; she doesn’t reconstruct Kant’s arguments on his terms (the way I did above, for instance) to prove her conclusions. But after reading Kant for myself, I’ll say it like this: Rand may give Kant an uncharitable reading. But it is uncharitable the way that calling a “sanitation engineer” a “janitor” might be seen as uncharitable. The term "janitor" is starker, but it’s still the truth. Similarly, Rand’s summaries of Kant’s positions may seem strident, but they hit the essence of it so that you don’t get lost in the (undeniably impressive) terminology and presentation of Kant’s prose.

[Mister A]

Also, lets say one of my peers decided to tint my glasses green while I was asleep one night, then I look at my wall the next morning, without knowing about my glasses new property, and say that it is green. Would that statement be illogical?

Assuming I'm too lazy and self-absorbed to bother taking off my glasses before going to bed, the first thing that would come to my mind upon waking is that my glasses had been tampered with because they are the first external obstacle between my eyes and the world around me. If upon removing my glasses I discover my vision still tinted green, I would get on the phone with an opthamologist double quick because the experience is an alarming aberration of consistency with implications to the health of my eyes and possibly my mental state. What I would never do is consider (much less accept) that the world had spontaneously acquired a universal green tint that can be observed by everybody else. If I did, then that would make me foam-at-the-mouth insane and unfit for continued survival on this planet (which is the underlying motive for me to engage in the previous line of thinking) without hospitalization.

To seriously present the original question as rhetoric concerning logic betrays a profound (and frightening) failure to discern consciousness from existence (i.e. what's in your head vis a vis what's all around you).

The OP's day-to-day life must really be fun...

Edited December 7, 2010 by Mister A