Kant - mind creates actual reality or mind creates its own "realit

Metaphysics and Epistemology
1

I’m a little confused about Kant actually had to say about the relationship between the mind and reality/existence, specifically with regard to whether the mind has power over existence/reality.

 

In what sense does Kant hold the primacy of (human) consciousness as against the primacy of existence (reality)?

 

Does Kant

 

  1. Claim that the mind actually has influence over the “real” reality/existence (noumenal world) and hence has primacy over it or does Kant merely

 

2.Claim that the mind creates our conscious world (phenomenal reality) and hence it is only in regard to knowledge specifically that consciousness has primacy (is more important) as compared to existence/reality (the numenal world which is unknowable).

 

 

 

 

 

2

Kant was a transcendental idealist. He believed in the primacy of existence but thought that real noumenal existence is unknown in principle. We only could know its phenomenal appearance, which is perception of noumenal world.

 

"If by ‘noumenon’ we mean a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition, and so abstract from our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the 

negative

 sense of the term".

[20]

"But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensible intuition, we thereby presuppose a special mode of intuition, namely, the intellectual, which is not that which we possess, and of which we cannot comprehend even the possibility. This would be ‘noumenon’ in the 

positive

 sense of the term."

[21]

 

Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories can never extend further than to the objects of experience. Doubtless, indeed, there are intelligible entities corresponding to the sensible entities; there may also be intelligible entities to which our sensible faculty of intuition has no relation whatsoever; but our concepts of understanding, being mere forms of thought for our sensible intuition, could not in the least apply to them. That, therefore, which we entitle ‘noumenon’ must be understood as being such only in a negative sense.

[23]

“Further, the concept of a noumenon is necessary, to prevent sensible intuition from being extended to things in themselves, and thus to limit the objective validity of sensible knowledge”.

[25]

“What our understanding acquires through this concept of a noumenon, is a negative extension; that is to say, understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the contrary, it itself limits sensibility by applying the term noumena to things in themselves (things not regarded as appearances). But in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising that it cannot know these noumena through any of the categories, and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an unknown something”.

[26]

Critique of Pure Reason 

 A250/B307,P267(NKS) 

A250/B30,P2677(NKS) 

B309,P270(NKS) 

A253/B310 

A256/B312,P273

3

 

  1. Claim that the mind actually has influence over the “real” reality/existence (noumenal world) and hence has primacy over it or does Kant merely

 

Kant himself did not say this, but numerous philosophers inspired by Kant did. As Stephen Hicks explains in “Explaining Postmodernism,” Kant declared that reason could not enable one to access reality. The intellectual response was divided into two camps: those who tried to access reality through alternative means like pure will or faith (Nietzche, etc.) and those who dismissed objective reality entirely in favor of conscious primary (Foucoult, etc.).

4

I’m not well read on Kant really in terms of what he wrote, but I do have some idea about his ideas on perception. Kant believed that reality exists independently from the mind, and since your mind has to create any of its content, reality can never be seen as it truly is. That’s why Rand claimed that Kant would essentially be saying you’re blind because you have eyes. Of course, any philosopher like Kant uses really dense wording that I see more like mental gymnastics. So no, Kant didn’t say anything like the mind creates reality, it’s more like the mind can’t see reality as it “really is”.

5

I’m a little confused about Kant actually had to say about the relationship between the mind and reality/existence, specifically with regard to whether the mind has power over existence/reality.

 

In what sense does Kant hold the primacy of (human) consciousness as against the primacy of existence (reality)?

 

Does Kant

 

  1. Claim that the mind actually has influence over the “real” reality/existence (noumenal world) and hence has primacy over it or does Kant merely

 

2.Claim that the mind creates our conscious world (phenomenal reality) and hence it is only in regard to knowledge specifically that consciousness has primacy (is more important) as compared to existence/reality (the numenal world which is unknowable).

While Kant didn’t explicitly state that, anyone who claims that the world as it is in itself is unknowable except through faith and that the perceivable world is just appearance due to the operation of our means of perception (not any individual’s means but to human’s means as a species) clearly has dropped any attempt at objectivity and falls rapidly into subjectivity, as his philosophical children made explicit.  

6

On the face of it, what Kant says appear to be erudite, modern and wise - but as Rand repeatedly points out - it is horrifyingly just the opposite.  He is claiming that because the human mind filters and shapes our perception of what is “out there” that we can only ever have a distorted perception of reality.  He then goes on to suppose that knowledge can be gained through means other than perception.

 

This is the fundamental error that has affected so much of our modern world since Kant.  Once you understand this error, you can trace it’s impact on history.

7

Thank you for the answers.  It makes sense to me.

 

 

Are there then different species or levels of “primacy of consciousness”? i.e. in what sense and what magnitude consciousness (human or supernatural) are “primary”, and over what (existence or knowledge)?

 

 

Would these be proponents of different species of the “primacy of consciousness”: Plato, Kant, Hegel, Foucoult?

8

Heinrich Heine on Kant

 

"What a strange contrast between the outward life of the man and his destructive, world-crushing thoughts!

Truly, if the citizens of Koenigsberg had had any premonition of the full significance of his ideas, they would have**  felt a far more terrifying dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, an executioner who merely executes people. But the good folk saw in him nothing but a professor of philosophy, and as he passed by at his customary hour, they gave him a friendly greeting and perhaps set their watches by him."**

 

“Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,” Heinrich Heine, Selected Works, trans.

Helen M. Mustard (New York: Random House, Inc., 1973).

http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/resources/files/On%20Kant.pdf

 

And they said Ayn Rand was too harsh on Kant.

9

Kant misidentified interaction with distortion. You’re familiar with the heisenberg uncertainty principle, how you change whatever you observe; Kant basically applied that to the entire scope of the human experience.

That’s why “man is blind because he has eyes”. Since my eyes might be different from yours, both of us are blind to the unfiltered truth.

Now, as everyone has pointed out, this doesn’t necessarily equate to prime. Of con. On the perceptual level, but he also applied it to the conceptual.

He explicitly said that concepts also distort their referent percepts; that my knowledge of photosynthesis warps my subsequent observations of plants. Every new idea is one step further from this “truth.”

And since concepts are formed volitionally, that does translate into the poc.

So if you want to imagine Kants epistemology, try to apply the uncertainty principle to everything you’ve ever seen or thought. If you want another example of the damage he’s caused, see the space treaty.

10

I do think there are different species of the POC, definitely.

A Hindi, for example, who believes that karma will bring the consequences of his actions back around to him (for good or evil- as observed and judged by the universe) is different from a Christian, who believes that the universe will reward or punish him based on his thoughts. Both are different from a satanist who believes his thoughts directly affect reality.

But honestly i find Kants variety the most contemptible; the only thing he left permission to witness this “true reality” would be a blind deaf vegetable in a vat- and note the specific form of damage he’s caused.

11

Kant misidentified interaction with distortion. You’re familiar with the heisenberg uncertainty principle, how you change whatever you observe; Kant basically applied that to the entire scope of the human experience.

That’s why “man is blind because he has eyes”. Since my eyes might be different from yours, both of us are blind to the unfiltered truth.

Now, as everyone has pointed out, this doesn’t necessarily equate to prime. Of con. On the perceptual level, but he also applied it to the conceptual.

He explicitly said that concepts also distort their referent percepts; that my knowledge of photosynthesis warps my subsequent observations of plants. Every new idea is one step further from this “truth.”

And since concepts are formed volitionally, that does translate into the poc.

So if you want to imagine Kants epistemology, try to apply the uncertainty principle to everything you’ve ever seen or thought. If you want another example of the damage he’s caused, see the space treaty.

True. As Heine said " he is suspicious of ideas, calls it criticism." I n other words he denied the very concept of knowing anything with objective certainty. He wanted to perform an intellectual lobotomy to man. And if one looks on our modern culture and society, one may easily see that he succeeded.

12

Thank you. :slight_smile:

13

you are welcome

14

Just skimming through wikipedia’s summary of Proglema to Any Future Metaphysics when I ran across something interesting:

Kant said that the application of pure logic to the experienced world, on the premise that things-as-they’re-seen are identical to things-in-themselves, leads to four fundamental contradictions.

These four theses he said were true of the “real” world in itself; the antitheses were true of the “phenomenal” world which scientists study.

  1. Thesis: The world has a temporal and spatial beginning or limit.

Antithesis: The world does not have a temporal and spatial beginning or limit.

. . .

  1. Thesis: There are causes in the world that are, themselves, free and uncaused.

Antithesis: There are no causes in the world that are, themselves, free and uncaused.

  1. Thesis: In the series of causes in the world, there is a necessary, uncaused being.

Antithesis: In the series of causes in the world, there is not a necessary, uncaused being.

Which means:

  1. Causality SEEMS universal, but it actually isn’t.

1 & 4. The universe as a whole SEEMS infinite, but it was actually created in seven days.

I think Rand was right; he did it deliberately, with full awareness of what he was doing.

15

Right there he specifically pointed out the pivotal contradictions between Christianity and reality and then, with the distinction between existence and consciousness firmly in hand, declared that neither axiom has anything to do with the other; in fact that consciousness contradicts reality.

To top it off he granted consciousness to science and reality to religion so that, by definition, all blasphemers are insane.

16

“The fourth antinomy is solved in the same way as the third. Nowhere in the world of sense experiences and appearances is there an absolutely necessary being. The whole world of sense experiences and appearances, however, is the effect of an absolutely necessary being which can be thought of as a thing–in–itself which is not in the world of appearances.”

-The Absolutely Unnecessary Being