Glad you found it helpful. This is a supplement for an online course I'm teaching at the moment called Mind and Nature in German Idealism. I do plan to continue to develop this diagram to show how Fichte, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel build on Kant's transcendentalism. I'll make those videos public, too.
great video! This was my introduction to Kant. I really like learning about the German Idealists but reading them is intimidating since so much of their work systematizes older philosophers' theories. Makes me feel as if I should start with the Greeks lol
start with the greks then go into the muslim philosophers such as Al Ghazali. his magnum opuses are incredible to read thats where kant stole a lot of his ideas from.
Kant actually said that categories *cannot* be applied to noumenal realm. "The doctrine of sensibility is at the same time the doctrine of noumena in the negative sense of the term; that is, the doctrine of things which the understanding must think without reference to our mode of intuition, and therefore not merely as appearances but as things in themselves. But the understanding, at the same time as thus separating them, knows that it must not, in this new aspect, apply its categories to them. For the categories have meaning only with reference to the unity of intuitions in space and time, and can therefore a priori determine this unity only on account of the mere ideality of space and time, by means of general concepts of combination. Where this unity of time cannot be found, as in the case of the noumenon, there the whole use, indeed, the whole meaning of categories comes to an end, because even the possibility of things that should correspond to the categories would then be incomprehensible"- (B308, page 309). Besides that Kant also added "If, therefore, we attempted to apply the categories to objects which are not considered as appearances, we should have to assume an intuition other than sensible one; and thus the object would become a noumenon in the positive sense. As, however, such an intuition, namely, an intellectual one, is entirely beyond our faculty of knowledge, the use of the categories can likewise never reach beyond the boundary of the objects of experience".
Yes, he says that categories like causation are not applicable to things in themselves; but do you agree he is inconsistent on this point, as elsewhere he says that some unknown, nonsensory X must be the cause of sensory appearances?
0ThouArtThat0 Maybe, if we speak about the same object which is empirically given to us but also has a connection with the real "representation "of itself as a thing in itself which we cannot perceive. Maybe Kant wanted to say that that nonsensory object (which is then not given in intuition and therefore belongs to noumena) is directly connected with the appearance of the empirical object in our intuition which we can perceive. Because there needs to be a link between objects as things in themselves and their mere representation as they appear to us in intuition in phenomena.
wot boi Thats right but there necessarily needs to be some sort of connection between the appearance in our empirical realm and the transcendental object that lies behind that appearance in the noumenon. You did the right thing by putting quotation marks on the word cause in this context. My only problem with Kant is about the noumenon, how did he prove that the noumenon realm exists? If he cant prove this why should we believe in it? The whole Critique revolves around noumena. If we dismiss that then it becomes useless, and i dont want that to happen.
to exegete the first excerpt, in basic terms, kant is saying the categories of senses are an inversion of the noumenal, similar to a photo negative; the doctrine, or form, of the given categories, therefore, is in like with the application to its initial a priori realm of the doctrine of noumenal, but the actual sense content therein is, because phenomena, different. maybe this is where whitehead picks up on his idea of the eternal objects being pure potentials which are not fully realized or pictured until made or experienced as a compression of interrelationships; which would mean a rough inversion of the kantian/platonic universal realm, upgrading the sensory (though even the modality is different here, as whitehead's telos isn't linear toward inexorable progress of actualization, nor is it ego-centric alone).
@@Footnotes2Plato yes! Jacobi spelled that out first, around 1785, I think. He remarked that without the thing in itself, one does not enter into kant's philosophy, but with it one cannot dwell inside. Tough crowd!!
Matt: You seem to be taking sides with the post-Kantian idealists who accuse Kant of a systemic contradiction, i.e., a fundamental contradiction between phenomenal knowledge bound by sensory appearances and the a priori categories of the understanding, which together constitute the conditions for the possibility of any experience, on one hand, and what you are describing as the "noumenal realm" with things-in-themselves, on the other hand. But isn't it the case that Fichte, the early Schelling, and Hegel (among others) simply deny the reality of things-in-themselves and thereby attempt to extend the powers of reason (e.g., intellectual intuition) beyond warrant? This (or something like it) would be the response that Kantians would make, and that Kant did make to Fichte at one point. The noumenal is not an additional realm that houses things-in-themselves; rather, things-in-themselves constitute the "negative image" of appearances. To quote, "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" (A250/B307). In any case, there is considerable debate on this issue of "contradiction." My own view is that post-Kantian idealists were creative misinterpreters of Kant.
I agree and had a similar feeling about differences in the meaning of the word 'cause' supposedly equal for both phenomena. Isn't cause in cause and effect something different than the Ding an Sich to cause the things in the phenomenal realm, which is more of a projection of some sort? I see difference in the use of the word 'cause' here. One implies Newtonian forces almost, the other doesn't.
@@Robinson8491 I'm not sure if that would go. The Noumenon is still what necessarily implies experience (even if the phenomenal realm doesn't represent it in the sense of being like it), which is exactly what it means for something to be a cause (for A to necessarily imply B without the two being the same thing).
Hi! Randomly got your video on my feed. Excellent summation! A few things: I'm currently desperately trying to read ye olde Critique of Pure Reason (again! My third attempt). Kant says what you said re space and time over and over again. And it's a cool idea. But! Relativity seems to contradict that. Kant's space and time are fixed entities. But Einstein proved that they aren't, and therefore cannot be mere intuitions by which our experience is understandable. How do Kantians get around that? He also is big on causality (yet another of our intuitions), but quantum mechanics explodes that notion too. Again, what's the Kantian response? I bring these things up because Kant pooh poohs things like clairvoyance, "ESP" (in his 18th century way), and is "pro science" all the way, which is fine (muy Enlightenment), but that very discipline (science) seems to undermine his arguments.
He who wants to learn to philosophise (Verb) MUST regard ALL systems of philosophy ONLY as the history of the use of reason, AND as OBJECTS for exercising his philosophical talent - Obviously Kant had a different attitude to many of those who now study Philosophy ( Noun)
Do people ever say Kant is a neo-platonist? It seems the Forms have simply moved from outside to inside the mind. We would also have to say that Aristotle’s categories are the second generation of Plato's Forms ... but Plato didn't elaborate on what the Forms are and what they are not, did he? Did he mean concepts like Beauty and Virtue, or did he mean concrete things - a man, a horse, a tree.
Good video, but I’m going to argue that Kant DOESN’T in fact establish the existence of the thing-in-itself, or noumenal realm (and thereby apply a category to it, contradicting his whole system). The full justification for this is found in Henry Allison’s “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.” Having reread the Critique recently, I can verify: he doesn’t establish its existence (or non-existence for that matter). His point in the Transcendental Dialectic is that we can’t help BUT speculate about an object independent of our ability to sense it...but is constantly warning against doing so. THAT’S exactly the Critique: Reason wants to go beyond the bounds of the knowable, running into error because, less empirical intuitions about such a realm, its concepts are all empty and have no way of being verified. The “two-worlds” interpretation of Kant is bogus. The thing-in-itself is what we come up with when we apply the faculty of Reason to the unempirical. There’s a deeper point to be made here: anyone claiming to make objective claims in an argument, stating that they know how the world is, or assuming you agree with them about “human nature” (as in, “people are greedy and self-serving, it’s just human nature!”) is talking about a thing-in-itself: they’ve arrived at conclusions without the necessary empirical conditions to do so because they’re speculating about a mind-independent world. They usually don’t understand they’re doing this. This is compared to, say, Physics or Chemistry, where we already know their findings apply to phenomena. In other words, Kant’s saying that, as far as we can tell by correctly applying Reason and in our Transcendential Deduction, phenomena and noumena are one and the same, and it’s only insofar as the mind begins to speculate about some unempirical essence or aspect of the object that we err and posit the existence of a thing-in-itself.
My interpretation of Kant is that he is a skeptic and thinks a thing in itself doesn’t exist at all. Since the physical world is produced by the productive imagination, are knowledge of any object is limited to its mere appearance .
I wonder why Kant didn't view our pure intuition of space and time as the correspondence of inner sense to a outer reality. What I really mean is he didn't seem to think that pure intuition mirrored reality so well that it as good as proved it. He had Newton at the time, I think, to be able to connect inner representation with the scientific facts coming along. Granted, he couldn't picture space travel being conducted so successfully on the basis of 'mental conditions'. I had hoped that Kant used the word affected (page 512) to mean the essence of a thing-in-itself affecting our intuitive faculty (which sounds quite Platonic) but he says emphatically that the non-sensible cause of the representations of a thing-in-itself is unknown to us and affection only takes place in our receptivity to representations.
No, Noumenal is 'things in themselves which we can't perceive nor know via reason. While metaphysics is concluding what exists beyond our perception via reason. Kant rejected metaphysics in regards to things in themselves, God etc. While his own metaphysics revolved our an analysis of our innate lenses through which we perceive reality( Kant didn't like to call his innate, but that's the simplest way to describe it).
Locke thought we got concepts from sensation. Kant says that only the understanding thinks in concepts. Big revolution there too. The mind relates to experience only schematically, in fact it is the understanding dealing with intuition. Thing in itself is long gone. Example: The relation of cause and effect is for Kant an analogy of experience, and only determines phenomena of experience, and not things in themselves. Being a type of function or rule of the understanding, the relation of cause and effect applies to sensibility (intuition) alone, not to things. Concepts affect intuitions, that is the mind. The world as it is cannot be known. The mind imagines, anticipates, constructs phenomena according to its rules of possible phenomena. How did the mind get transcendental?
i would like to add a critique here at the time of 7:30 in this video. i want to say i don't think kant contradicts himself but i think he is trying to say with all the madness of how we can only percieve space and time because it is in our intuition which is related to causality he is trying to say that it is not possible for us to imagine something out of space and time because it is intuited in us its built in us that we can only percieve spacetime or space and time. kant when he talks about the neumanal realm he is basically saying that God exists but we don't know how we can't percieve God of how he Exists because if we could than that would mean God doesn't exist so the neumenal realm is something very reasonable that kant puts out there.
Yes, and we hold much gratitude to Kant for coming up with phenomenology along side with Hegel. Except he thought this was in absence of God's 'so-called' phenomenology. Which at that point is repeating the mistake of Socrates and Plato.
If causation is in the mind, as Kant theorizes, then how does he define it? As Hume does: necessary connection? Kant thinks he's smarter than Hume? That instead of negating the scientific claim of causation, as Hume does, Kant saves causation? How? Kant does not save causation. His reference to Hume, the better thinker, shows his subterfuge. Kant has no response to Hume except circumlocution. He would like science to be founded on theoretical grounds, yet he has no answer to the question of how science is "confirmed". Is science confirmed by theory or by observation? Is Einstein's Theory of Relativity confirmed by math or by observation? If causation is a category in the mind then why do we need observation to confirm it? Why did it take a Newton to come along to propose a causal correlate called Gravity, if causation is in everyone's mind? Aristotle and Plato forget to make the connection, even though they knew what causation was? How do philosophers make sense of this? Kant's claim contradicts experience/history. Philosophy should deride Kant for his obtuseness. Unless Kant can give a coherent answer as to why causal correlates were not theorized earlier Kant should be ridiculed as autistic or dyslexic! Kant is used to promote the claim that his ideas underlay a new process for scientific inquiry. A process exemplified by the success of modern physics and especially by ideas like relativity. Theory leading to discovery. Now Dirac's proposal of antimatter particles from his mathematical equations led to the discovery of these particles. But that does not negate the fact that his equations were originally adduced from trying to cohere prior observations! Science needs observation. While theory, in the form of math, can aid discovery; said discovery can only be confirmed by observation or measurement. Kant's transcendental induction is fatally flawed!
My guess is Kant would double down on his transcendental orientation despite everything learned since his day about the brain and about engineering computers. None of that even touches his main philosophical point about the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. Not that there aren’t valid ways to question Kantian transcendentalism. But machine learning ain’t one of em.
@@Footnotes2Plato sorry, I wasn’t critiquing, I’m actually pretty new to him. I was just thinking that, as such a central enlightenment thinker, his ideas are a part of the intellectual air we breath. This guy didn’t even know what a mitochondria was, or how continents are formed, and here he is figuring out how the dang brain works. Good job Kant.
Well, there are some who have interpreted Kant in cognitive neuroscience terms, but I think that’s misguided. I get why the analogy is tempting (e.g, phenomenal experience is a neural construct, etc.), but the transcendental move he is making is more subtle than that. He’s saying even our knowledge of the brain as a physical object is constructed a priori by the categories of our understanding and forms of intuition. Anyone claiming that the brain causes consciousness would be overstepping Kantian limits on knowledge.
@@Footnotes2Plato I've been working through a commentary on the Critique and I think I see what you're saying now. Well I don't understand the last sentence - are you saying that to make that claim a person would have to know something that Kant says can't be known ("transcendent" things)? So just to be clear, Kant is saying that our knowledge of things is constructed a priori, but the source of that a priori understanding/intuition isn't necessarily based in the material world (brains)? He's trying to justify the existence of free will right?
You used the whiteboard well. Clear and simple. Good to see old fashioned teaching.
Really clear outline, and much appreciated. Thanks Matt. I look forward to the rest of this series.
Glad you found it helpful. This is a supplement for an online course I'm teaching at the moment called Mind and Nature in German Idealism. I do plan to continue to develop this diagram to show how Fichte, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel build on Kant's transcendentalism. I'll make those videos public, too.
Great video. The diagrams also help.
Absolutely brilliant presentation. Very easy to grasp, thank you.
Wonderful video. Thank you very much ♥️
This is very clear explanation thanks
day 2 of telling matthew i m in love with his energy. i’ll do this until he notices.
Thanks!
great video! This was my introduction to Kant. I really like learning about the German Idealists but reading them is intimidating since so much of their work systematizes older philosophers' theories. Makes me feel as if I should start with the Greeks lol
lol yes, always start with the greeks
@@victorgirardin2120 be more specific
@@yaboydolphin I mean, the presocratics pretty munch created logic and then Socrates/Plato developed most if not all of today’s philosophical subject.
start with the greks then go into the muslim philosophers such as Al Ghazali. his magnum opuses are incredible to read thats where kant stole a lot of his ideas from.
Kant actually said that categories *cannot* be applied to noumenal realm. "The doctrine of sensibility is at the same time the doctrine of noumena in the negative sense of the term; that is, the doctrine of things which the understanding must think without reference to our mode of intuition, and therefore not merely as appearances but as things in themselves. But the understanding, at the same time as thus separating them, knows that it must not, in this new aspect, apply its categories to them. For the categories have meaning only with reference to the unity of intuitions in space and time, and can therefore a priori determine this unity only on account of the mere ideality of space and time, by means of general concepts of combination. Where this unity of time cannot be found, as in the case of the noumenon, there the whole use, indeed, the whole meaning of categories comes to an end, because even the possibility of things that should correspond to the categories would then be incomprehensible"- (B308, page 309). Besides that Kant also added "If, therefore, we attempted to apply the categories to objects which are not considered as appearances, we should have to assume an intuition other than sensible one; and thus the object would become a noumenon in the positive sense. As, however, such an intuition, namely, an intellectual one, is entirely beyond our faculty of knowledge, the use of the categories can likewise never reach beyond the boundary of the objects of experience".
Yes, he says that categories like causation are not applicable to things in themselves; but do you agree he is inconsistent on this point, as elsewhere he says that some unknown, nonsensory X must be the cause of sensory appearances?
0ThouArtThat0 Maybe, if we speak about the same object which is empirically given to us but also has a connection with the real "representation "of itself as a thing in itself which we cannot perceive. Maybe Kant wanted to say that that nonsensory object (which is then not given in intuition and therefore belongs to noumena) is directly connected with the appearance of the empirical object in our intuition which we can perceive. Because there needs to be a link between objects as things in themselves and their mere representation as they appear to us in intuition in phenomena.
wot boi Thats right but there necessarily needs to be some sort of connection between the appearance in our empirical realm and the transcendental object that lies behind that appearance in the noumenon. You did the right thing by putting quotation marks on the word cause in this context. My only problem with Kant is about the noumenon, how did he prove that the noumenon realm exists? If he cant prove this why should we believe in it? The whole Critique revolves around noumena. If we dismiss that then it becomes useless, and i dont want that to happen.
to exegete the first excerpt, in basic terms, kant is saying the categories of senses are an inversion of the noumenal, similar to a photo negative; the doctrine, or form, of the given categories, therefore, is in like with the application to its initial a priori realm of the doctrine of noumenal, but the actual sense content therein is, because phenomena, different. maybe this is where whitehead picks up on his idea of the eternal objects being pure potentials which are not fully realized or pictured until made or experienced as a compression of interrelationships; which would mean a rough inversion of the kantian/platonic universal realm, upgrading the sensory (though even the modality is different here, as whitehead's telos isn't linear toward inexorable progress of actualization, nor is it ego-centric alone).
@@Footnotes2Plato yes! Jacobi spelled that out first, around 1785, I think. He remarked that without the thing in itself, one does not enter into kant's philosophy, but with it one cannot dwell inside. Tough crowd!!
Matt: You seem to be taking sides with the post-Kantian idealists who accuse Kant of a systemic contradiction, i.e., a fundamental contradiction between phenomenal knowledge bound by sensory appearances and the a priori categories of the understanding, which together constitute the conditions for the possibility of any experience, on one hand, and what you are describing as the "noumenal realm" with things-in-themselves, on the other hand. But isn't it the case that Fichte, the early Schelling, and Hegel (among others) simply deny the reality of things-in-themselves and thereby attempt to extend the powers of reason (e.g., intellectual intuition) beyond warrant? This (or something like it) would be the response that Kantians would make, and that Kant did make to Fichte at one point. The noumenal is not an additional realm that houses things-in-themselves; rather, things-in-themselves constitute the "negative image" of appearances. To quote,
"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" (A250/B307). In any case, there is considerable debate on this issue of "contradiction." My own view is that post-Kantian idealists were creative misinterpreters of Kant.
I agree and had a similar feeling about differences in the meaning of the word 'cause' supposedly equal for both phenomena. Isn't cause in cause and effect something different than the Ding an Sich to cause the things in the phenomenal realm, which is more of a projection of some sort? I see difference in the use of the word 'cause' here. One implies Newtonian forces almost, the other doesn't.
@@Robinson8491 I'm not sure if that would go. The Noumenon is still what necessarily implies experience (even if the phenomenal realm doesn't represent it in the sense of being like it), which is exactly what it means for something to be a cause (for A to necessarily imply B without the two being the same thing).
Very good explanaiton!!
So clear and simple for them which is not
Thanks. Very clear.
Hi! Randomly got your video on my feed. Excellent summation! A few things:
I'm currently desperately trying to read ye olde Critique of Pure Reason (again! My third attempt). Kant says what you said re space and time over and over again. And it's a cool idea.
But! Relativity seems to contradict that. Kant's space and time are fixed entities. But Einstein proved that they aren't, and therefore cannot be mere intuitions by which our experience is understandable. How do Kantians get around that?
He also is big on causality (yet another of our intuitions), but quantum mechanics explodes that notion too. Again, what's the Kantian response?
I bring these things up because Kant pooh poohs things like clairvoyance, "ESP" (in his 18th century way), and is "pro science" all the way, which is fine (muy Enlightenment), but that very discipline (science) seems to undermine his arguments.
Kant is not up to anything for more than 200 years. Great video by the way!
I think he died.
THANK YOU!
That was a very clear explanation! But why is Kant's method called 'transcendental'?
He who wants to learn to philosophise (Verb) MUST regard ALL systems of philosophy ONLY as the history of the use of reason, AND as OBJECTS for exercising his philosophical talent - Obviously Kant had a different attitude to many of those who now study Philosophy ( Noun)
Do people ever say Kant is a neo-platonist? It seems the Forms have simply moved from outside to inside the mind. We would also have to say that Aristotle’s categories are the second generation of Plato's Forms ... but Plato didn't elaborate on what the Forms are and what they are not, did he? Did he mean concepts like Beauty and Virtue, or did he mean concrete things - a man, a horse, a tree.
Brilliant
Good video, but I’m going to argue that Kant DOESN’T in fact establish the existence of the thing-in-itself, or noumenal realm (and thereby apply a category to it, contradicting his whole system).
The full justification for this is found in Henry Allison’s “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.”
Having reread the Critique recently, I can verify: he doesn’t establish its existence (or non-existence for that matter).
His point in the Transcendental Dialectic is that we can’t help BUT speculate about an object independent of our ability to sense it...but is constantly warning against doing so. THAT’S exactly the Critique: Reason wants to go beyond the bounds of the knowable, running into error because, less empirical intuitions about such a realm, its concepts are all empty and have no way of being verified.
The “two-worlds” interpretation of Kant is bogus.
The thing-in-itself is what we come up with when we apply the faculty of Reason to the unempirical.
There’s a deeper point to be made here: anyone claiming to make objective claims in an argument, stating that they know how the world is, or assuming you agree with them about “human nature” (as in, “people are greedy and self-serving, it’s just human nature!”) is talking about a thing-in-itself: they’ve arrived at conclusions without the necessary empirical conditions to do so because they’re speculating about a mind-independent world. They usually don’t understand they’re doing this.
This is compared to, say, Physics or Chemistry, where we already know their findings apply to phenomena.
In other words, Kant’s saying that, as far as we can tell by correctly applying Reason and in our Transcendential Deduction, phenomena and noumena are one and the same, and it’s only insofar as the mind begins to speculate about some unempirical essence or aspect of the object that we err and posit the existence of a thing-in-itself.
My interpretation of Kant is that he is a skeptic and thinks a thing in itself doesn’t exist at all. Since the physical world is produced by the productive imagination, are knowledge of any object is limited to its mere appearance .
What a great comment and insight. Thank you.
👍
I wonder why Kant didn't view our pure intuition of space and time as the correspondence of inner sense to a outer reality. What I really mean is he didn't seem to think that pure intuition mirrored reality so well that it as good as proved it. He had Newton at the time, I think, to be able to connect inner representation with the scientific facts coming along. Granted, he couldn't picture space travel being conducted so successfully on the basis of 'mental conditions'. I had hoped that Kant used the word affected (page 512) to mean the essence of a thing-in-itself affecting our intuitive faculty (which sounds quite Platonic) but he says emphatically that the non-sensible cause of the representations of a thing-in-itself is unknown to us and affection only takes place in our receptivity to representations.
They reversed it so Kant couldn't see it, then he only believes what they read. We aren't sure how they work.
Would you say there's a difference between the "noumenal" and the "metaphysical"? Is one a sub-set of the other?
No, Noumenal is 'things in themselves which we can't perceive nor know via reason.
While metaphysics is concluding what exists beyond our perception via reason.
Kant rejected metaphysics in regards to things in themselves, God etc. While his own metaphysics revolved our an analysis of our innate lenses through which we perceive reality( Kant didn't like to call his innate, but that's the simplest way to describe it).
Couldn't we say that the noumenal realm is very similar to Plato's "heaven" with it's ideal forms?
Locke thought we got concepts from sensation. Kant says that only the understanding thinks in concepts. Big revolution there too. The mind relates to experience only schematically, in fact it is the understanding dealing with intuition. Thing in itself is long gone. Example: The relation of cause and effect is for Kant an analogy of experience, and only determines phenomena of experience, and not things in themselves. Being a type of function or rule of the understanding, the relation of cause and effect applies to sensibility (intuition) alone, not to things. Concepts affect intuitions, that is the mind. The world as it is cannot be known. The mind imagines, anticipates, constructs phenomena according to its rules of possible phenomena. How did the mind get transcendental?
The mind is sensibility affecting understanding (via receptivity) and undertanding affecting itself (via spontaneity).
i would like to add a critique here at the time of 7:30 in this video. i want to say i don't think kant contradicts himself but i think he is trying to say with all the madness of how we can only percieve space and time because it is in our intuition which is related to causality he is trying to say that it is not possible for us to imagine something out of space and time because it is intuited in us its built in us that we can only percieve spacetime or space and time. kant when he talks about the neumanal realm he is basically saying that God exists but we don't know how we can't percieve God of how he Exists because if we could than that would mean God doesn't exist so the neumenal realm is something very reasonable that kant puts out there.
Have you commented on Thomas Aquainas?
I dont really get how did Kant contradict himself
I'm still unsure if space and time are real 🤔
I am very sad.
Chao Xing why
we all are, this is why we're here.
WHy does he symbolize the brain by the symbol "mind"?
I call this deceptive.
because they are different levels of description.
Yes, and we hold much gratitude to Kant for coming up with phenomenology along side with Hegel. Except he thought this was in absence of God's 'so-called' phenomenology. Which at that point is repeating the mistake of Socrates and Plato.
According to Kant, neumena is impossible to understand
If causation is in the mind, as Kant theorizes, then how does he define it? As Hume does: necessary connection?
Kant thinks he's smarter than Hume? That instead of negating the scientific claim of causation, as Hume does, Kant saves causation? How?
Kant does not save causation. His reference to Hume, the better thinker, shows his subterfuge. Kant has no response to Hume except circumlocution. He would like science to be founded on theoretical grounds, yet he has no answer to the question of how science is "confirmed".
Is science confirmed by theory or by observation? Is Einstein's Theory of Relativity confirmed by math or by observation? If causation is a category in the mind then why do we need observation to confirm it? Why did it take a Newton to come along to propose a causal correlate called Gravity, if causation is in everyone's mind? Aristotle and Plato forget to make the connection, even though they knew what causation was? How do philosophers make sense of this? Kant's claim contradicts experience/history.
Philosophy should deride Kant for his obtuseness. Unless Kant can give a coherent answer as to why causal correlates were not theorized earlier Kant should be ridiculed as autistic or dyslexic!
Kant is used to promote the claim that his ideas underlay a new process for scientific inquiry. A process exemplified by the success of modern physics and especially by ideas like relativity. Theory leading to discovery.
Now Dirac's proposal of antimatter particles from his mathematical equations led to the discovery of these particles. But that does not negate the fact that his equations were originally adduced from trying to cohere prior observations!
Science needs observation. While theory, in the form of math, can aid discovery; said discovery can only be confirmed by observation or measurement.
Kant's transcendental induction is fatally flawed!
who are you?
this Kant guy did ok for someone without any knowledge of neurochemistry or machine learning
My guess is Kant would double down on his transcendental orientation despite everything learned since his day about the brain and about engineering computers. None of that even touches his main philosophical point about the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. Not that there aren’t valid ways to question Kantian transcendentalism. But machine learning ain’t one of em.
@@Footnotes2Plato sorry, I wasn’t critiquing, I’m actually pretty new to him. I was just thinking that, as such a central enlightenment thinker, his ideas are a part of the intellectual air we breath. This guy didn’t even know what a mitochondria was, or how continents are formed, and here he is figuring out how the dang brain works. Good job Kant.
Well, there are some who have interpreted Kant in cognitive neuroscience terms, but I think that’s misguided. I get why the analogy is tempting (e.g, phenomenal experience is a neural construct, etc.), but the transcendental move he is making is more subtle than that. He’s saying even our knowledge of the brain as a physical object is constructed a priori by the categories of our understanding and forms of intuition. Anyone claiming that the brain causes consciousness would be overstepping Kantian limits on knowledge.
@@Footnotes2Plato I've been working through a commentary on the Critique and I think I see what you're saying now. Well I don't understand the last sentence - are you saying that to make that claim a person would have to know something that Kant says can't be known ("transcendent" things)?
So just to be clear, Kant is saying that our knowledge of things is constructed a priori, but the source of that a priori understanding/intuition isn't necessarily based in the material world (brains)? He's trying to justify the existence of free will right?
You got it wrong my friend. There is no split in Kant. The noumena is not a different plane.