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Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 5:30 pm
by Paul Caldwell
When Kant talked of the 'noumenal' universe which is logically 'out there' and the 'real' one as opposed to our Phenomenal universe perceived through fallible senses, did he come close to the multiverse theory of cosmology which states that there are endless universes which we may be able to travel to but cannot return to the original one? or is his reasoning simply a rational tool to support his concept of reality and knowledge about it?
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 5:58 pm
by Richard Baron
Definitely the latter. Talk of the noumenal world is a way of setting limits to our knowledge. We have the general notion of a way the world really is, independently of our apprehension of it, but we cannot have any definite grasp of the world as it really is.
There is ongoing argument about whether we should interpret Kant's philosophy as involving one world (in two aspects, phenomenal and noumenal) or as involving two worlds.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 7:35 pm
by thalarch
Paul Caldwell wrote:When Kant talked of the 'noumenal' universe which is logically 'out there' and the 'real' one as opposed to our Phenomenal universe perceived through fallible senses, did he come close to the multiverse theory of cosmology which states that there are endless universes which we may be able to travel to but cannot return to the original one? or is his reasoning simply a rational tool to support his concept of reality and knowledge about it?
Kant's noumenal world is existence as uncomprehended, unexperienced, and uncontrolled --existence as it is independent of being intellectually received, processed, and represented. A perpetual neutral placeholder for that which hasn't been conditioned into knowledge.
Phenomena are things and concepts exhibited in experience that have already been structured by the mind. They're "real" inasmuch as that empirical world/simulation is the only known domain where evidence for anything is manifested (either directly or indirectly).
The framework of the "innate" operating system of the mind might require or compel us to project many scientific models and cultural beliefs upon the blank placeholder of the noumenal world because of necessity or practicality (as Kant compromisingly did God, immortality, free-will and the like), but these are actually more additions to the entities, abstractions, and inventions of the phenomenal world. That natural order resulting from raw input, entities and thoughts being given presence in space and time, being taxonomically tamed, being conjoined with memory. and resultingly comprehended (existence or its influences converted into knowledge).
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 7:54 pm
by Paul Caldwell
Quite. It really is a one-world view.Kants point was that the complete view of the world by definition is the real noumenal one that our phenomenal observations of it can approach but can never be complete. this seems to me what rational observation-science- does, something kant would have approved of. I have a feeling Kant would have be a scientist had he born after 1900! One central tennant of science is that pictures of the real world can never be perfect- the Uncertainty principle- as simply observing interfers with that picture (if it couldnt interfere, then how could it observe? that would break causality). Did kant nearly get there?!
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2010 8:10 pm
by Paul Caldwell
mm, not so sure. kant had a premium that reasoning beings like us would, through rational thought, think in the same way to arrive at the same conclusion. This, in turn, is a direct consequence of us having free will which, despite all attempts at debunking the idea, is true. The problem of two-worlds is that it is effectively stating that the noumenal one, as can never be known, can only be guessed at and our phenomenal picture and our attempts to get an ever-closure one of the noumenal may be wildly wrong but we can never know so. Whilst this has some rational basis, it seems to me absurd to claim that rational observation is potentially desperately wrong and therefore any picture of it, no matter how irrational eg crystal gazers, is just as acceptable. This is 'The Matrix' arguement. Science readily accepts on the grounds of rational exposition (the uncertainty principle is set in maths), that our world-view can only ever be one-step back from a complete view.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 11:51 am
by i blame blame
Richard Baron wrote:
There is ongoing argument about whether we should interpret Kant's philosophy as involving one world (in two aspects, phenomenal and noumenal) or as involving two worlds.
Really? Doesn't he clearly state he means the phenomenon to be a perceivable expression of the noumenon?
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 11:55 am
by i blame blame
Paul Caldwell wrote:mm, not so sure. kant had a premium that reasoning beings like us would, through rational thought, think in the same way to arrive at the same conclusion. This, in turn, is a direct consequence of us having free will which, despite all attempts at debunking the idea, is true.
How is coming to the same conclusion a consequence of "free will"? What do you mean by "free will"?
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 1:40 pm
by chaz wyman
Paul Caldwell wrote:When Kant talked of the 'noumenal' universe which is logically 'out there' and the 'real' one as opposed to our Phenomenal universe perceived through fallible senses, did he come close to the multiverse theory of cosmology which states that there are endless universes which we may be able to travel to but cannot return to the original one? or is his reasoning simply a rational tool to support his concept of reality and knowledge about it?
No not even close.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 2:47 pm
by Richard Baron
i blame blame wrote:Richard Baron wrote:
There is ongoing argument about whether we should interpret Kant's philosophy as involving one world (in two aspects, phenomenal and noumenal) or as involving two worlds.
Really? Doesn't he clearly state he means the phenomenon to be a perceivable expression of the noumenon?
One place to find a summary of the history of the two-world v one-world dispute is pages 656-658 of Lucy Allais, "Kant's One World: Interpreting 'Transcendental Idealism' ", in
British Journal for the History of Philosophy, volume 12, number 4, 2004. You might also like to look at Sebastian Gardner,
Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason (Routledge, 1999), pages 289-298.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:33 pm
by thalarch
Paul Caldwell wrote:mm, not so sure. kant had a premium that reasoning beings like us would, through rational thought, think in the same way to arrive at the same conclusion. This, in turn, is a direct consequence of us having free will which, despite all attempts at debunking the idea, is true. The problem of two-worlds
It's an epistemological duality, not a literal situation of two cosmological realms. Existence-in-itself (noumenal world) and its influence interpreted by minds (phenomenal world, appearances -- experience, which is the fusion of intuitions and conceptual structure). There's also a kind of nomological duality involved if these two assertions made by Kant are paired:
Things in themselves would necessarily, apart from any understanding that knows them, conform to laws of their own. But appearances are only representations of things which are unknown as regards what they may be in themselves. As mere representations, they are subject to no law of connection save that which the connecting faculty prescribes. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subje ... n/ch02.htm
Thus the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we ourselves introduce. http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/ancon.html
is that it is effectively stating that the noumenal one, as can never be known, can only be guessed at and our phenomenal picture and our attempts to get an ever-closure one of the noumenal may be wildly wrong but we can never know so. Whilst this has some rational basis, it seems to me absurd to claim that rational observation is potentially desperately wrong and therefore any picture of it, no matter how irrational eg crystal gazers, is just as acceptable. This is 'The Matrix' arguement. Science readily accepts on the grounds of rational exposition (the uncertainty principle is set in maths), that our world-view can only ever be one-step back from a complete view.
In Kant's scheme, science and whackiness are "safely" insulated from each other. Unreserved metaphysicians, religions, and occultists have the noumenal world as a playground for projecting their practical and impractical myths upon. Science studies and theorizes about appearances, the phenomenal world, etc. --science is a
human enterprise (as Gleiser aptly puts it below in a largely unrelated topic) dealing with the manifested natural order that people actually find themselves living in via their experiences. The former potential nonsense is a human enterprise as well, but usually lacking any empirical evidence --that is, the blank neutral placeholder of the noumenal world is all the priests and wizards have left to cast their dogmas upon.
Marcelo Gleiser:
Since knowledge of physical reality depends on what we can measure, we will never know all there is to know. Who is to say there are only four fundamental forces? Science is full of surprises. Much better to accept that our knowledge of physical reality is necessarily incomplete. This way, science is understood as a human enterprise and the "mind of God" is exorcised once and for all. --
New Scientist 10 May 2010; Magazine issue 2759
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 10:47 pm
by lancek4
Meaning is present. Kant was speaking the only way he could about the evident discrepancy between us speaking about the world and our experience of it
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 12:57 am
by lancek4
It is a falacy of the 'misunderstanding' that is founded in materialist faith that there are 'essentially true' "things in themselves" that avoid our effect of being and knowing. The issue of kant' there, is discursive.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 6:35 pm
by thalarch
lancek4 wrote:It is a falacy of the 'misunderstanding' that is founded in materialist faith that there are 'essentially true' "things in themselves" that avoid our effect of being and knowing. The issue of kant' there, is discursive.
While Berkeley with bias would have placed things-in-themselves always in the context of materialism, Kant seemed to suggest that the latter would only be a sub-genre possibility for things-in-themselves (noumena, etc.) -- that is, to whatever extent Kant left the expression as a stand-alone broader category unnarrowed to specific ontological doctrines like supposed "materialism".
If the chair itself or the environment around it experientially perceives and classifies it as a chair, or if it were only a technical slash quantitative description rather than the former phenomenonal manifestation, then there's probably no need to posit things-in-themselves (or a lone "thing-in-itself") that are unknowable as the result of not actually existing as such products of human comprehension. This alternative, however, would be objective idealism, neutral monism, panpsychism or pan-phenomenalism, etc. (take one's pick). I'd consider process philosophy to be yet another variation of such global mentalism, inasmuch as its progression of "events" are either simple or collectively complex qualitative presences.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2011 12:34 am
by chaz wyman
lancek4 wrote:It is a falacy of the 'misunderstanding' that is founded in materialist faith that there are 'essentially true' "things in themselves" that avoid our effect of being and knowing. The issue of kant' there, is discursive.
You need to do more than say a thing is a fallacy, you need to demonstrate it, if it is not to be an empty criticism, as by such a method we are forced to decide between your view and that of Kant's. As Kant's achievements in science and philosophy far outweigh yours we are forced to conclude through his authority that he is more likely to be correct.
Re: Kant and Multiverses
Posted: Fri Jan 07, 2011 12:47 am
by chaz wyman
thalarch wrote:lancek4 wrote:It is a falacy of the 'misunderstanding' that is founded in materialist faith that there are 'essentially true' "things in themselves" that avoid our effect of being and knowing. The issue of kant' there, is discursive.
While Berkeley with bias would have placed things-in-themselves always in the context of materialism, Kant seemed to suggest that the latter would only be a sub-genre possibility for things-in-themselves (noumena, etc.) -- that is, to whatever extent Kant left the expression as a stand-alone broader category unnarrowed to specific ontological doctrines like supposed "materialism".
Berkeley would not place t-in-i as a materialist context; his main conclusion was that reality was utterly mental, and that a material world was only a thing conceived.
What you mean by "sub-genre possibility" is not at all clear.
If the chair itself or the environment around it experientially perceives and classifies it as a chair, or if it were only a technical slash quantitative description rather than the former phenomenonal manifestation, then there's probably no need to posit things-in-themselves (or a lone "thing-in-itself") that are unknowable as the result of not actually existing as such products of human comprehension. This alternative, however, would be objective idealism, neutral monism, panpsychism or pan-phenomenalism, etc. (take one's pick). I'd consider process philosophy to be yet another variation of such global mentalism, inasmuch as its progression of "events" are either simple or collectively complex qualitative presences.
The environment does not perceive a chair, that is the role of the subject.
What do you think a "technical slash quantitative description" means?? And why would youthink this obviates the t-in-i ?
There is no 'alternative' that is coherent here.
What is "process philosophy"?
Never mind - I've decided that the entire paragraph is nonsense.