odysseus wrote: ↑Sat Jan 05, 2019 4:23 pm
The trouble with Kant's noumena is that he is stuck with some "representation" (pr presentation) that he wants, on the one hand, to acknowledge as vacuous (after all, concepts without intuitions are empty), but on the other, has to admit that there must be a basis for bringing it up at all. This is Hegel's criticism (as I remember him. I'll have to confirm the details), that noumena have some place in experience to validate the serious mention.
Another related and more interesting take on all this is to see that the object before one's perceptions, the one conditioned conceptually and is called a couch or a cloud, presents, or has in its presence, the mystery of noumena. You find something like this in Husserl's phenomenological reduction, his epoche, which is a quasi mystical encounter with the object such that all presuppositions are suspended and the "thing itself" is liberated from broader contexts. Of course, with Husserl, ideas still hover about in the background, but the actual experience of doing this is very strage if you have a mind to pursue it, for it is, if you will,
more pure,
more noumenal. See Anthony Steinbach's Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience.
Does Kant's noumena, that is, the basis for this not being a nonsense word (as Wittgenstein would put it), actually issue from an aconceptual presence of things that, notwithstanding the "presence" of conceptual counterparts, appears before us in actuality, and not, as Kant maintains, just a contrivance of reason?
Kant's philosophy is very complex and very sensitive to understanding such that one can easily missed the target easily after a while.
Note I quote this very often;
Kant in CPR wrote:They [transcendental ideas] are sophistications not of men but of Pure Reason itself.
Even the wisest of men cannot free himself from them.
After long effort he perhaps succeeds in guarding himself against actual error; but he will never be able to free himself from the Illusion, which unceasingly mocks and torments him.
B397
Most of the neo-Kantians were caught up with the "illusion" that Kant mentioned above due to the very strong existential psychology that mocks and torments the individual[s].
Hegel was compelled psychological in very subliminal level to postulate the Absolute, which is an illusion and illusory.
Note, empirical Science [applied and pure] assumes there is an ultimate substance to be found in the face of infinite regression.
Kant did the same and used the noumenon to
assume there is an ultimate substance for the empirical world of intuition, sensibility and concepts.
Note Kant stated his use for the noumena is only as a negative limit;
Kant in CRP wrote:The remaining Things, 1 to which it does not apply, are entitled Noumena, in order to show that this Knowledge cannot extend its domain over everything which the Understanding thinks.
But none the less we are unable to comprehend how such Noumena can be Possible, and the domain that lies out beyond the sphere of Appearances is for us Empty.
That is to say, we have an Understanding which problematically extends further, but we have no Intuition, indeed not even the Concept of a Possible Intuition, through which Objects outside the field of Sensibility can be Given, and through which the Understanding can be employed assertorically beyond that field. B311
The Concept of a Noumenon is thus a merely limiting Concept, the Function of which is to curb the pretensions of Sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment.
B311
As such, the necessary noumena [as a limit only] cannot be used in the positive sense i.e. asserting there is a real noumena in existence.
In the empirical world we have the combination of intuition, sensibility and concepts.
However in the field of pure reason [pure intellect, understanding] we can have only pure concepts.
In the case of pure concepts Kant assumed the extended noumena to the thing-in-itself.
As you can see the thing-in-itself is not grounded in the intuition and sensibility but solely based on pure concepts thus transcendental. In this case how can the thing-in-itself be real when it is not grounded on intuition and sensibility?
Thus to insist the thing-in-itself is real meant one is caught in a transcendental illusion [note B397 above], like insisting the mirage in the desert is a real oasis with shimmering water.
This is where Hegel proclaimed the existence of the Absolute as a real thing when in fact it an illusion of the mind driven by terrible existential psychology.
Theists claimed the ungrounded thing-in-itself in haste driven by psychology as God, the Soul, the Whole Universe created by God.
Schopenhauer was driven to postulate the thing-in-itself as the Will.
I believe Science is more rational, i.e. Science merely ASSUMES there is an "ultimate" noumenon at least until it can formulate a hypothesis for it [which is not likely] and prove it with evidences when available.
