Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Gertie
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Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Post by Gertie »

[Disclaimer - I have no education in philosophy and find Kant's jargon hard to keep in my head while reading him, I'd rather read more accessible interpretations, which is piecemeal and incomplete in my case. So I miss and might misunderstand stuff.] 

Here's  part of wiki's entry on Kant's transcendental idealism -
The salient element here is that space and time, rather than being real things-in-themselves or empirically mediated appearances (German: Erscheinungen), are the very forms of intuition (German: Anschauung) by which we must perceive objects. They are hence neither to be considered properties that we may attribute to objects in perceiving them, nor substantial entities of themselves. They are in that sense subjective, yet necessary, preconditions of any given object insofar as this object is an appearance and not a thing-in-itself. Humans necessarily perceive objects as located in space and in time. This condition of experience is part of what it means for a human to cognize an object, to perceive and understand it as something both spatial and temporal: "By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition…"[7] Kant argues for these several claims in the section of the Critique of Pure Reason entitled the "Transcendental Aesthetic".
Almost everybody today would agree I think, the world isn't exactly as we see it, because we are subjects with a limited and flawed specific point of view. Physicalism offers a good explanation for us being representational  model-makers (from the experiential act of observation itself, to theories which arise from observations) rather than perfect and limitless knowers of reality - the nature of being a subject 'designed for' evolutionary utility. Which doesn't necessitate abandoning space and time. But evolutionary theory, and physicalism itself, is undermined by this recognition Kant would surely point to - evolution theory is itself part of the model.  Fair enough.

But does Kant's transcendental idealism also undermine itself?   I see two probs -

- If I  do abandon space and time as real, I don't think the logical next step is to consider it as part of OUR' (human minds in general) intuitive' human way of creating experiential models.  Rather the correct inference is surely that I must  also abandon the knowable reality of others beings I call humans with minds like mine - which also only exist as part of my experiential model, located in space and time as part of the overall package of my experience.   In which case how does Kant avoid reverting to solipsism, without making unjustified assumptions about other minds (only knowable via observing bodies), which Kant isn't prepared to make about space, time and everything physical. Incidentally, I think any idealist who invokes the existence of other minds must surely run into the same issue issue of solipsism. 

  -  As I understand it, instead Kant invokes some sort of mind of god of which we are all expressions/instantiations (as I understand it).  Which somehow our human moral intuition and reason can get us to, even though in every other respect we're incapable of intuiting ultimate 'objective' reality.


Regarding my second objection, Kant believes -
In the theoretical philosophy of the Critique of Pure Reason, the idea of God as Unconditioned, as a being that is absolutely necessary, is seen as a transcendental ideal determined through an idea as a prototype of perfection necessary to everything that is contingent and determined in our sensible world: what we can do to conciliate sensible experience with the Absolute Being is to presuppose an extra-phenomenal reality designated as transcendental object: we presuppose its existence but we cannot get to know it. Later, in Critique of Practical Reason, God is postulated (together with soul's immortality) as a condition of the supreme value of moral life, the Sovereign Good (union of virtue with happiness). Since in the sensible world moral conduct does not warrant proportional happiness, the virtuous ones has strong reasons to believe in the reparatory intervention of a superior power: God, as moral ideal and warranty of moral order. “Morality leads, inevitably, to religion, through which it (morality) extends over a moral Lawgiver” claims Kant.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 2814064088

I'm struggling to parse even the author's interpretation here, but the transcendental argument for god takes the following form (wiki version), which I don't personally find as persuasive as the logical inference of solipsism -
The TAG is a transcendental argument that attempts to prove that God is the precondition for logic, reason, or morality. The argument proceeds as follows:[6]

1. God is a necessary precondition for logic and morality (because these are immaterial, yet real universals).

2. People depend upon logic and morality, showing that they depend upon the universal, immaterial, and abstract realities which could not exist in a materialist universe but presupposes (presumes) the existence of an immaterial and absolute God.
3. Therefore, God exists. If He didn't, we could not rely upon logic, reason, morality, and other absolute universals (which are required and assumed to live in this universe, let alone to debate), and could not exist in a materialist universe where there are no absolute standards or an absolute Lawgiver.

 Thoughts? 
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Post by Good_Egg »

Hi Gertie.

If you're looking for someone to explain Kant, you'll have to look elsewhere. But the ideas you're discussing are worth a response.

You're talking about human minds holding ideas which purport to correspond with objective reality (i.e. be true ideas) whereas in fact we perceive imperfectly and reason imperfectly.

Our interior thoughts are in some way dependent on language, which is social.

So all our thinking is a mix of three fundamental categories. It is influenced by ourselves, by the culture and language we think within, and by signals from objective reality which get through our filters of partial imperfect perception. And error in philosophy consists of attributing to one category - reality, culture or self - an aspect which in truth originates in another.

Solipsism attributes everything to self - we're dreaming it all. Idealism, as I understand it, denies that there is an objective reality. So solipsism goes further in also denying the reality of society, the existence of other minds.

The commonsense view puts both the physical universe and reason/logic (e.g. mathematics) in the objective category.

Philosophy assumes that we perceive/intuit reason/logic accurately enough to make reasoned discourse worthwhile. Similarly, solipsists aren't worth talking to; the act of talking to them presupposes that they're wrong.

All I've time for today...
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Post by Gertie »

good-egg
If you're looking for someone to explain Kant, you'll have to look elsewhere. But the ideas you're discussing are worth a response.
Well, know enough to address my objections. I doubt I'm the first person to raise them, unless I'm completely misunderstanding him. I appreciate you having a thoughtful go anyway, like I am.
You're talking about human minds holding ideas which purport to correspond with objective reality (i.e. be true ideas) whereas in fact we perceive imperfectly and reason imperfectly.
Right, Kant talks about ''ideas'', which I assume means the 'thinky' cognitive aspect of experiential consciousness, and he talks about ''sensible'' refering to our sensory experience/observations. I see our role as model makers beginning with the way our sensory experience represents reality to us as subjects with a flawed and limited specific pov, and continues with the reasoning we use to create more expansive theoretical models - eventually resulting in today's physicalist model of the universe, what it's made of and how it works.
Our interior thoughts are in some way dependent on language, which is social.
The way I think of it is the linguistic thinky voice in our heads gives a running commentary on our experience, helping to create a coherent ongoing internal narrative of our selves and the world we interact with. I think it's also key to how we reason, and abstract thought. (Reason imo is therefore rooted in this process of creating a coherent moment by moment narrative out of our sensory perceptions, memory, sensations, emotions, imaginings, fears, desires, etc). That thinky voice acts in a somewhat analogous way to the homunculus mini-me watching the Cartesian Theatre of experience play out, and explaining the plot as we go along.

As you say, that thinky voice's toolkit is language, which is taught to us as a bundle which includes a structure and coded symbols for specific things. Again, imo, a descriptive representation of not just what we perceive, but the grammar reflects our human understanding/modelling of how the world works. Subjects, objects, verbs and adjectives/adverbs, with inherent (causal) relationships reflected through sentence structures. That is 'social' in as much as that's how humans construct models and agree about the way the world is. And there are variations which add nuance and reflect local conditions, including culture. We're taught our local version of language, but translating to another is remarkably easy. Partly because cultures are so co-mingled now, but when we come across some ancient text with a new language, it's generally comprehensible to us, we can break the code. Because language reflects how we humans experience the world.

Never-the-less it is a further layer of encoding, on top of the representational nature of our experience. And while it reflects how we experience the world, it also feeds back into the experience, itself becoming part of the modelling process, its structure and referential meaning. And adding an additional representational layer for limitation and error to arise, even in the case of universal (human) grammar.
So all our thinking is a mix of three fundamental categories. It is influenced by ourselves, by the culture and language we think within, and by signals from objective reality which get through our filters of partial imperfect perception.
I think most physicalists would roughly agree with that.
And error in philosophy consists of attributing to one category - reality, culture or self - an aspect which in truth originates in another.
That's a nice neat way of boiling it down. I agree with Kant, that there is an even more fundamental epistemological v ontological issue which has to be addressed, because Knowing itself is an aspect of the nature of conscious experience. This is where Kant's distinction between 'noumena' and 'phenomena' comes in. Here's a nifty explanatory quote about that I came across - ''The empirical or phenomenal is known by the senses, and the theoretical or noumenal is known by the mind because it cannot be known through the senses, only evidence for it can be so known.''. Presumably tying in to his distinction between ''idea'' (thinky) and ''sensible'' (sensory). Language in Kant's context would lie in experiential realm of - idea/mind/theoretical/noumenal. What I call 'thinky'.
Solipsism attributes everything to self - we're dreaming it all. Idealism, as I understand it, denies that there is an objective reality. So solipsism goes further in also denying the reality of society, the existence of other minds.
Right. There is no ''we'' in solipsism, there are no other minds. There's only my experience, it doesn't represent anything beyond itself.

My argument here is that the reasoning which gets Kant to idealism, that only minds exist, if rigorously applied leads to solipsism. If experience can't be relied on to tell me trees, gravity and human bodies exist, even time and space itself, on what basis can I infer other minds exist? I experience other minds as part of that whole experiential model, and not even as directly as I experience the bodies I can see and understand within my experiential model. I additionally have to infer those bodies have minds and aren't just p-zombies.

So how does Kant get around that? After sceptically reducing the world to experience, he keeps in other minds by creating an additional existent - God. I don't understand his concept of god, if that's a genuinely logical next step, but adding an existent via reason alone seems to be a complete reversal to how he reduced the world to other minds. How he reconciles reason and 'intuition' might be part of it, not sure?

The commonsense view puts both the physical universe and reason/logic (e.g. mathematics) in the objective category.

Philosophy assumes that we perceive/intuit reason/logic accurately enough to make reasoned discourse worthwhile. Similarly, solipsists aren't worth talking to; the act of talking to them presupposes that they're wrong.
Heh true, but escaping solipsism is necessarily a leap of faith. How Kant gets from solipism to other minds or anything else is imo a leap of faith, not reason. And once you start relying on 'intuition' (whatever that means to Kant), bias comes in as to what you wish to view as significant and why it must be real.
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Gertie wrote: March 5th, 2023, 4:44 pm In which case how does Kant avoid reverting to solipsism, without making unjustified assumptions about other minds (only knowable via observing bodies), which Kant isn't prepared to make about space, time and everything physical.
In short, he doesn't.
Gertie wrote: March 5th, 2023, 4:44 pm Incidentally, I think any idealist who invokes the existence of other minds must surely run into the same issue issue of solipsism. 
Of course, but they'll deny it even in the face of unbearable torment.
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Gertie wrote: March 5th, 2023, 4:44 pm Here's  part of wiki's entry on Kant's transcendental idealism -
"By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition…"
At least at this point in his thinking, Kant is not saying that only minds exist. He seems to be saying that, in the context of minds perceiving objects, more of the apparent properties of the object originate in the mind than the naive realist would suppose.

For example:

There is a tree in my back garden. My neighbour and I might agree that it is a tall tree and a pretty tree. What's at issue is how far the tallness and the prettiness are properties of the tree and how far they are properties of my and my neighbour's perspective (and how far they are properties of our shared culture).

Not whether the tree and my neighbour really exist - that much is taken for granted.

Some might think that the tallness is an objective property and the prettiness a subjective one.

I'd argue that both involve our reaction to objective properties of the tree. I judge it tall because its height greatly exceeds my own; I judge it pretty because it has a mix of regularity and asymmetry to its form which I find pleasing because of associations in my mind. On that view these properties arise from the interaction of subject and object.

(Aesthetics is even harder than epistemology...)

Kant appears to be doubting whether its height - spatial extent - is a property of the tree. Not sure from this quote what his reasoning for that is.

The connection with the second argument - that God necessarily exists because morality exists and morality is like law and law requires a lawgiver - is not clear to me.

I doubt the merit of that argument, but maybe that's not what you want to discuss...
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Post by Gertie »

Count Lucanor wrote: March 7th, 2023, 9:11 pm
Gertie wrote: March 5th, 2023, 4:44 pm In which case how does Kant avoid reverting to solipsism, without making unjustified assumptions about other minds (only knowable via observing bodies), which Kant isn't prepared to make about space, time and everything physical.
In short, he doesn't.
Gertie wrote: March 5th, 2023, 4:44 pm Incidentally, I think any idealist who invokes the existence of other minds must surely run into the same issue issue of solipsism. 
Of course, but they'll deny it even in the face of unbearable torment.
OK. It seems like such an obvious prob I'm surprised Kant doesn't directly address it.
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

Post by Gertie »

good egg
Gertie wrote: ↑March 5th, 2023, 9:44 pm
Here's part of wiki's entry on Kant's transcendental idealism -

"By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition…"

At least at this point in his thinking, Kant is not saying that only minds exist. He seems to be saying that, in the context of minds perceiving objects, more of the apparent properties of the object originate in the mind than the naive realist would suppose.
I read it as him going further than that - the experiential ''appearances'' (phenomena) are what is known to exist. Mind stuff. Where-as the noumena (underlying reality) can't be reliably known. Even to the point that time and space ( and everything in it) are constructs of minded subjects. What, if anything, independantly exists beyond the observable ''appearance'' we have no direct access to. My point is that radical scepticism, if followed through, leads to solipsism as being the point at which untestable assumptions (leaps of faith) have to made.


For example:

There is a tree in my back garden. My neighbour and I might agree that it is a tall tree and a pretty tree. What's at issue is how far the tallness and the prettiness are properties of the tree and how far they are properties of my and my neighbour's perspective (and how far they are properties of our shared culture).

Not whether the tree and my neighbour really exist - that much is taken for granted.
Dunno. But looks to me like he's discarded space and time and stuff (physicalism) including neighbours and trees and actions/change over time as mental constructs - ''sensible forms of our intuition'' - aka conscious experience.

In your example of a convo with a neighbour about the qualities of a tree, then surely imo not just the tree, but your convo over time, and each other too are ''sensible (sensory/experiential) forms of our intuition''. I'm saying even the mind you're interacting with when discussing the tree logically lies in the same category of something you only know as another ''sensible (sensory/experiential) form of intuition'' - the ''our'' intuition referred to (eg assumed other mind of your neighbour) can't be established any more than the tree, sounds of words, or time and space.
The connection with the second argument - that God necessarily exists because morality exists and morality is like law and law requires a lawgiver - is not clear to me.

I doubt the merit of that argument, but maybe that's not what you want to discuss...
I haven't come across how Kant makes the connection to god, the TAG might be related. But I think Kant sees god as explanatory in terms of us having moral intuitions and reason, as fundamental to mind. This is the knowable fundamental nature of reality - that it has meaning to minds in terms of moral intuition and reason. (The rest of our experience is a construct or representation with an unrecognisable relationship to reality. But our reason and morality are real. And can be accounted for by our relationship with god.

Maybe...
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Gertie wrote: Here's part of wiki's entry on Kant's transcendental idealism -

"By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition…"
good egg wrote: At least at this point in his thinking, Kant is not saying that only minds exist. He seems to be saying that, in the context of minds perceiving objects, more of the apparent properties of the object originate in the mind than the naive realist would suppose.
Gertie wrote: March 8th, 2023, 7:39 pm I read it as him going further than that - the experiential ''appearances'' (phenomena) are what is known to exist. Mind stuff. Where-as the noumena (underlying reality) can't be reliably known. Even to the point that time and space ( and everything in it) are constructs of minded subjects. What, if anything, independantly exists beyond the observable ''appearance'' we have no direct access to. My point is that radical scepticism, if followed through, leads to solipsism as being the point at which untestable assumptions (leaps of faith) have to made.
Forgive me for butting in here, but I have a question about your final sentence — why is it there? It seems to me that what you call "radical scepticism" leads to a recognition of widespread uncertainty in the real world, but I'm unclear as to how it leads to solipsism (the assumption that life, the universe, and everything is a figment of my imagination)?
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Pattern-chaser wrote: March 9th, 2023, 9:45 am
Gertie wrote: Here's part of wiki's entry on Kant's transcendental idealism -

"By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition…"
good egg wrote: At least at this point in his thinking, Kant is not saying that only minds exist. He seems to be saying that, in the context of minds perceiving objects, more of the apparent properties of the object originate in the mind than the naive realist would suppose.
Gertie wrote: March 8th, 2023, 7:39 pm I read it as him going further than that - the experiential ''appearances'' (phenomena) are what is known to exist. Mind stuff. Where-as the noumena (underlying reality) can't be reliably known. Even to the point that time and space ( and everything in it) are constructs of minded subjects. What, if anything, independantly exists beyond the observable ''appearance'' we have no direct access to. My point is that radical scepticism, if followed through, leads to solipsism as being the point at which untestable assumptions (leaps of faith) have to made.
Forgive me for butting in here, but I have a question about your final sentence — why is it there? It seems to me that what you call "radical scepticism" leads to a recognition of widespread uncertainty in the real world, but I'm unclear as to how it leads to solipsism (the assumption that life, the universe, and everything is a figment of my imagination)?
My understanding is that Kant is saying that all we can know of reality is our experience, or phenomenal appearance. Space, time and the universe are just that - experienced apparearances. With a couple of notable exceptions - he believe we can intuit and/or reason our way to knowing some things - specifically that other minds exist and god exists.

My point is that if he's right that space, time and the universe we phenomenally experience are only appearance rather than substance, how can we can know other minds aren't part of that universe of appearance which we mistake for ontological reality? We experience other minds as people with bodies who talk and behave as we do, as part of the space-time world wiich contains trees, gravity, etc - there is no special knowledge or access we have to the existence of other minds. So why isn't Kant just as sceptical of the existence of other minds as he is of the existence of trees, gravity, space and time and everything else? That looks illogical to me.
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Pattern-chaser wrote: March 9th, 2023, 9:45 am Forgive me for butting in here, but I have a question about your final sentence — why is it there? It seems to me that what you call "radical scepticism" leads to a recognition of widespread uncertainty in the real world, but I'm unclear as to how it leads to solipsism (the assumption that life, the universe, and everything is a figment of my imagination)?
Gertie wrote: March 9th, 2023, 4:52 pm My understanding is that Kant is saying that all we can know of reality is our experience, or phenomenal appearance. Space, time, and the universe are just that - experienced appearances. With a couple of notable exceptions - he believes we can intuit and/or reason our way to knowing some things - specifically that other minds exist and god exists.

My point is that if he's right that space, time, and the universe we phenomenally experience are only appearance rather than substance, how can we can know other minds aren't part of that universe of appearance which we mistake for ontological reality?
We can't, I don't think. But does that lead us directly to solipsism, rather than mere (🤔) uncertainty?
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Pattern-chaser wrote: March 10th, 2023, 9:40 am
Pattern-chaser wrote: March 9th, 2023, 9:45 am Forgive me for butting in here, but I have a question about your final sentence — why is it there? It seems to me that what you call "radical scepticism" leads to a recognition of widespread uncertainty in the real world, but I'm unclear as to how it leads to solipsism (the assumption that life, the universe, and everything is a figment of my imagination)?
Gertie wrote: March 9th, 2023, 4:52 pm My understanding is that Kant is saying that all we can know of reality is our experience, or phenomenal appearance. Space, time, and the universe are just that - experienced appearances. With a couple of notable exceptions - he believes we can intuit and/or reason our way to knowing some things - specifically that other minds exist and god exists.

My point is that if he's right that space, time, and the universe we phenomenally experience are only appearance rather than substance, how can we can know other minds aren't part of that universe of appearance which we mistake for ontological reality?
We can't, I don't think. But does that lead us directly to solipsism, rather than mere (🤔) uncertainty?
I think it's a fuzzy distinction in Kant's framing.  As I understand it Kant's claim  is that there is an unknowableness about the ontological reality of the physical universe (all that is knowable to exist  is the experiential ''appearance'' which we construct in our minds). 

But in contrast he claims the existence of other minds is knowable, as well as the existence of his concept of god.  

I'm saying that these things he claims to know can't logically be known using the reason he gives for his  epistemological scepticism about the physical universe.  If the world is just an experiential appearance he, as a mind, constructs, then why aren't the other  minds which he only knows of as part of that world of appearance he constructs any different?  But maybe Kant explains this...
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Yes, confusing, I agree.
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Gertie wrote: March 10th, 2023, 11:26 am
Pattern-chaser wrote: March 10th, 2023, 9:40 am
Pattern-chaser wrote: March 9th, 2023, 9:45 am Forgive me for butting in here, but I have a question about your final sentence — why is it there? It seems to me that what you call "radical scepticism" leads to a recognition of widespread uncertainty in the real world, but I'm unclear as to how it leads to solipsism (the assumption that life, the universe, and everything is a figment of my imagination)?
Gertie wrote: March 9th, 2023, 4:52 pm My understanding is that Kant is saying that all we can know of reality is our experience, or phenomenal appearance. Space, time, and the universe are just that - experienced appearances. With a couple of notable exceptions - he believes we can intuit and/or reason our way to knowing some things - specifically that other minds exist and god exists.

My point is that if he's right that space, time, and the universe we phenomenally experience are only appearance rather than substance, how can we can know other minds aren't part of that universe of appearance which we mistake for ontological reality?
We can't, I don't think. But does that lead us directly to solipsism, rather than mere (🤔) uncertainty?
I think it's a fuzzy distinction in Kant's framing.  As I understand it Kant's claim  is that there is an unknowableness about the ontological reality of the physical universe (all that is knowable to exist  is the experiential ''appearance'' which we construct in our minds). 

But in contrast he claims the existence of other minds is knowable, as well as the existence of his concept of god.  

I'm saying that these things he claims to know can't logically be known using the reason he gives for his  epistemological scepticism about the physical universe.  If the world is just an experiential appearance he, as a mind, constructs, then why aren't the other  minds which he only knows of as part of that world of appearance he constructs any different?  But maybe Kant explains this...
So many simians throughout history have assumed that, since they were very clever apes, then there must be an even cleverer ape behind everything. It is bonkers reasoning, based on what I think of as species-wide solipsism.

Still, his phenomena/noumena observation was an important addition to philosophy, IMO. It's good to be aware that, no matter how hard we try, we will never being able to perceive reality in its entirety. It's just as well too, because we perceived everything we would be so overwhelmed we could not survive for any length of time, and nor would we want to. To perceiving everything is to be assailed by blinding light and deafening white noise.

Brains don't generate anything. Rather, the brain and senses filter the chaos around them, shaping it like a sculptor shapes a block of stone. Tinker with the brain and you have a whole different reality, as users of entheogens, psychedelic drugs and extreme rituals have known for millennia. It is interesting that realities can be generated that include God, gods or godlike entities. Are those gods ontic, belonging to other dimensions that are tapped into, or are they distorted reflections of ourselves or aspects of nature?
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Sy Borg wrote: March 10th, 2023, 3:13 pm Are those gods ontic, belonging to other dimensions that are tapped into, or are they distorted reflections of ourselves or aspects of nature?
That question answers itself since nothing 'ontic' has ever been discovered or noticed regarding gods or god! The probability of any such ontological being is nearly nil when regarding its status at any level. The one thing history makes clear, we have created all these distortions ourselves, all the gods having received a proportional endowment of human nature in their creation.

If we ever discover a god ensconced in some other dimension it won't be like anything we have created or imagined. Theism, in its beliefs, succumbs to scripture, our scripture! But such an inter-dimensional abstraction remains without scripture of any kind; therefore any belief in it would be regarded as atheist by any theist whose motives are perpetuated by personal interests.
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Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism

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Tegularius wrote: March 10th, 2023, 3:54 pmIf we ever discover a god ensconced in some other dimension it won't be like anything we have created or imagined.
Yes. Any access to such hypothetical phenomena via entheogens, trances etc will be filtered like everything else. That filtering will naturally reflect us and our interests. Deities created in our image, so to speak.

Tegularius wrote: March 10th, 2023, 3:54 pmTheism, in its beliefs, succumbs to scripture, our scripture! But such an inter-dimensional abstraction remains without scripture of any kind; therefore any belief in it would be regarded as atheist by any theist whose motives are perpetuated by personal interests.
I hadn't thought of that. I suppose the interdimensional aspects could be captured under "mysterious ways", which is a splendid catch-all, much used by apologists during debates when backed into a corner. Ancient people who lived on a flat Earth covered by a dome sky believed that God existed outside of the dome, which seems to be an early attempt to think about other dimensions of reality.

Today the "dome" around our spherical planet exists in time rather than space, stretching out as far as the Big Bang, with "mysterious ways" lying beyond.
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