Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 5:51 am
Given that VA, as usual, has already decided to dig in his heels and continue to deny the obvious conclusion about what Kant's thought entails regarding perceptual illusions, I've lost interest in his responses. He doesn't interact with other people's ideas and at best just finds ways to reword his knee jerk reactions, generally thinking he is defending Kant, while often not even understanding Kant's thought.
Calling the perceptual illusion and illusion and the other perceptions of objects real necessarily includes a claim, if only implicit, that one has access to noumena.
Immanuel Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena affects the way we see perception, particularly in cases often referred to as "illusions." According to Kant, phenomena are the objects of our experience as they appear to us through the lens of our senses and cognitive faculties, while noumena represent the things-in-themselves—reality as it exists independently of human perception and if they exist we can have no knowledge of them. None. All human knowledge is limited to the realm of phenomena.
This framework challenges the common understanding of perceptual illusions. Take, for example, the well-known case of a straight stick appearing bent when submerged in water, due to refraction. This phenomenon is often labeled an "illusion" because it deviates from how the stick appears when it is seen in air, without the "distorting effect" of light bending as it passes between media. Yet, from a Kantian perspective, both the straight stick in air and the bent stick in water are equally real phenomena. One can say one is more common. But one cannot say one is more real. And even the argument from how often one perceives the stick fails. It may not even have better predictive values - I will come to this later.
Kant emphasizes that knowledge is confined to appearances, stating in the *Critique of Pure Reason*, "We can only cognize the appearances of things, not things in themselves" (A369). Since the stick is only known to us through its appearances—whether bent in water or straight in air—it would be incorrect to claim that one appearance is more "real" than the other. Both are legitimate perceptual experiences produced by the interaction of light with different media, and both reflect how the stick appears to us under different conditions - and even that is realist-speak. We don't even get to argue that it is the same stick. In fact, VA spent many posts saying that we cannot know if something is the same object. He also dug in his heels around that one - but of course has forgotten that. One of the many ironies of VA's participation here is that he knows his own positions less well than many of us do.
Again, he spent pages arguing that objects that we see again, may not be the same objects. He mixed science and his antirealism arguing this. Given the inconvenience of this or his lack of seeing forest for the trees when posting here, he happily contradicts this and cannot even connect the dots when this is pointed out.
If one were to imagine a culture that primarily lived near bodies of fresh water and gathered food from aquatic environments, they would regularly encounter plants and stems appearing bent due to refraction. In this context, the bent-stick phenomenon would be far more common in daily experience than the straight-stick phenomenon. However, the frequency with which this culture experiences the bent-stick phenomenon would not make it more real. It would not make the bent-stick perception (a phenomenon) more real that the straight stem perception (after take some stems from the water) The straight stick in air and the bent stick in water would remain equally valid representations of the stick’s appearances under different conditions. Two phenomena. Equally real. To say one is real and the other is an illusion can only be supported by claims about noumena or frequency of perception. There is no justification for latter, and the former goes against Kant. Yes, science generally considers knowledge that which predicts experience. But it does not justify calling one phenomenon real and the other an illusion in a Kantian context.
Calling the bent-stick phenomenon an "illusion" while privileging the straight-stick appearance assumes that one of these appearances reflects a closer relationship to the noumenal reality of the stick. However, Kant denies the possibility of such access to the thing-in-itself. He writes, “The understanding can never go beyond the limits of sensibility within which alone objects are given to us” (A226/B274). In other words, all appearances are equally part of the world of phenomena, and there is no basis for declaring one more real than another.
Kant’s epistemology supports the argument that phenomena we often label "illusions" are no less real than other perceptual experiences. The stick appearing bent in water is not an illusion in the sense of being a distortion of reality but is a legitimate phenomenon shaped by the conditions under which it is perceived. Both the straight-stick and bent-stick phenomena are valid within Kant's framework, as they are both products of how human perception interacts with the physical world.
So.............................., from both Kant’s philosophy and a scientific understanding of refraction, perceptual phenomena like the bent stick are not less real than their counterparts. Labeling them as illusions implies that one can access the noumenal world and declare one appearance more genuine than another, a position that Kant firmly rejects. All phenomena, whether frequent or rare, common or unusual, are equally real within the limits of human perception. One sense of the stick or stem might be more useful in some contexts for specific individuals. But that does not make it more real.
