Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

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Veritas Aequitas
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Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Since Kant's Noumenon is critical to support my views on Morality, I am posting this in the Ethical Theory Section.

From the early days when Kant's CPR was first published, it was subjected to severe criticisms especially from Philosophical Realists [absolute mind-independence] who could not understand the very drastic 180 degrees paradigm shift of Kant Anti-Philosophical_Realism view.

Ever since to the present, Critiques of the CPR are strawmaning Kant most of the time.

Schopenhauer was one of the critique of Kant's philosophy.
"Critique of the Kantian philosophy" (German: "Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie") is a criticism Arthur Schopenhauer appended to the first volume of his The World as Will and Representation (1818). He wanted to show Immanuel Kant's errors so that Kant's merits would be appreciated and his achievements furthered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_ ... Philosophy
However, Schopenhauer was 'strawmaning' Kant most of the time because his grounding was that of the philosophical realists' position.
In The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (1999), the philosopher Paul Guyer wrote an article titled "Schopenhauer, Kant, and the Methods of Philosophy."
In it, he compared the methods of the two philosophers and in so doing, discussed Schopenhauer's Criticism.

In general, the article tries to show how Schopenhauer misunderstood Kant as a result of the disparity between their methods.
Where Kant was analyzing the conceptual conditions that resulted in the making of verbal judgments, Schopenhauer was phenomenologically scrutinizing intuitive experience.

In one case, though, it is claimed that Schopenhauer raised a very important criticism: his objection to Kant's assertion that a particular event can be known as being successive only if its particular cause is known.

Otherwise, almost all of Schopenhauer's criticisms are attributed to his opposite way of philosophizing which starts with the examination of perceptions instead of concepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_ ... hopenhauer
I will comments on other "strawmaning" critiques later.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Notes:
Besides Schopenhauer, the following were also critiques of Kant's Noumenon,

1. Nietzsche - Will to Power -see details
2. Hegel - The Absolute
3. Husserl - Consciousness
4. Heidegger - not directly in Being and Time.
Last edited by Veritas Aequitas on Mon Jul 03, 2023 4:29 am, edited 2 times in total.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Thesis: That Schopenhauer complained Kant used the word noumenon incorrectly, is philosophically childish in insisting there is monopoly or a permanent meaning of 'noumenon'.

Pre-Kantian critique
Though the term noumenon did not come into common usage until Kant, the idea that undergirds it, that matter has an absolute existence which causes it to emanate certain phenomena, had historically been subjected to criticism.
George Berkeley, who pre-dated Kant, asserted that matter, independent of an observant mind, is metaphysically impossible.
Qualities associated with matter, such as shape, color, smell, texture, weight, temperature, and sound are all dependent on minds, which allow only for relative perception, not absolute perception. The complete absence of such minds (and more importantly an omnipotent mind) would render those same qualities unobservable and even unimaginable. Berkeley called this philosophy immaterialism. Essentially there could be no such thing as matter without a mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon# ... n_critique
Schopenhauer's critique
Schopenhauer claimed that Kant used the word noumenon incorrectly. He explained in his "Critique of the Kantian philosophy", which first appeared as an appendix to The World as Will and Representation:

The difference between abstract and intuitive cognition, which Kant entirely overlooks, was the very one that ancient philosophers indicated as φαινόμενα [phainomena] and νοούμενα [nooumena]; the opposition and incommensurability between these terms proved very productive in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later in the scholastics, in the conflict between nominalism and realism. This latter conflict was the late development of a seed already present in the opposed tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who completely and irresponsibly neglected the issue for which the terms φαινομένα and νοούμενα were already in use, then took possession of the terms as if they were stray and ownerless, and used them as designations of things in themselves and their appearances.[35]

The noumenon's original meaning of "that which is thought" is not compatible with the "thing-in-itself," the latter being Kant's term for things as they exist apart from their existence as images in the mind of an observer.[citation needed] In a footnote to this passage, Schopenhauer provides the following passage from the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Bk. I, ch. 13) of Sextus Empiricus to demonstrate the original distinction between phenomenon and noumenon according to ancient philosophers: νοούμενα φαινομένοις ἀντετίθη Ἀναξαγόρας ('Anaxagoras opposed what is thought to what appears.')
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon# ... s_critique
That Schopenhauer complained used the word noumenon incorrectly is philosophically childish to claim monopoly of the meaning of 'noumenon'.

During 400 BCE, Plato had already the equivalent idea;
Regarding the equivalent concepts in Plato, Ted Honderich writes: "Platonic Ideas and Forms are noumena, and phenomena are things displaying themselves to the senses... This dichotomy is the most characteristic feature of Plato's dualism; that noumena and the noumenal world are objects of the highest knowledge, truths, and values is Plato's principal legacy to philosophy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon# ... edecessors
If Sextus Empiricus [2nd Century AD] had made reference to it as Schopenhauer claimed, then Sextus Empiricus would have adopted the same meaning as Plato [400 BCE] for the noumenon.

Thus Kant's definition of the Noumena is similar to Plato's use, i.e. phenomena [senses] vs noumena [ideals and forms], but with the following difference;

while Plato insist ideal and forms are really real, Kant insist in contra to Plato, ideal and forms cannot be real.

Point is Kant provided very solid arguments why noumenon as ideals and forms cannot be really real but at best are merely intelligible objects of thoughts.

Are p-realists willing to accept Plato's ideals and forms as really-real existing externally and mind-independent?

As such, provided Kant qualified the context he used for the term 'noumenon' it is philosophically childish to insist he cannot do so.
Last edited by Veritas Aequitas on Mon Jul 03, 2023 7:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
Wizard22
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Wizard22 »

That's my summation too.

The German Idealists were making a lot of classification errors in the 19th Century concerning general cognition, especially with respect to Perception.

The debates revolved around how 'things' are Known, "beyond" or with exception to Perception. So their criticisms revolve around Epistemology.

It wasn't until the 20th Century that Psychology and Pyschologists rolled-in, to more fully investigate, understand, and scrutinize the Sub-conscious processes of conceptualization.

However, it seems Western Philosophy in general has not really overcome these linguistic misinterpretations (English to German to Latin). Germans had different categories of Conceptualization and Idealism, than the Anglos/British/Americans, for example.
Atla
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 02, 2023 10:35 am Since Kant's Noumenon is critical to support my views on Morality, I am posting this in the Ethical Theory Section.

From the early days when Kant's CPR was first published, it was subjected to severe criticisms especially from Philosophical Realists [absolute mind-independence] who could not understand the very drastic 180 degrees paradigm shift of Kant Anti-Philosophical_Realism view.

Ever since to the present, Critiques of the CPR are strawmaning Kant most of the time.

Schopenhauer was one of the critique of Kant's philosophy.
"Critique of the Kantian philosophy" (German: "Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie") is a criticism Arthur Schopenhauer appended to the first volume of his The World as Will and Representation (1818). He wanted to show Immanuel Kant's errors so that Kant's merits would be appreciated and his achievements furthered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_ ... Philosophy
However, Schopenhauer was 'strawmaning' Kant most of the time because his grounding was that of the philosophical realists' position.
In The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer (1999), the philosopher Paul Guyer wrote an article titled "Schopenhauer, Kant, and the Methods of Philosophy."
In it, he compared the methods of the two philosophers and in so doing, discussed Schopenhauer's Criticism.

In general, the article tries to show how Schopenhauer misunderstood Kant as a result of the disparity between their methods.
Where Kant was analyzing the conceptual conditions that resulted in the making of verbal judgments, Schopenhauer was phenomenologically scrutinizing intuitive experience.

In one case, though, it is claimed that Schopenhauer raised a very important criticism: his objection to Kant's assertion that a particular event can be known as being successive only if its particular cause is known.

Otherwise, almost all of Schopenhauer's criticisms are attributed to his opposite way of philosophizing which starts with the examination of perceptions instead of concepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_ ... hopenhauer
I will comments on other "strawmaning" critiques later.
Ok so Schopenhauer seems to have had the better, more fundamental approach, the phenomenological one, from where it's easier to see and consider the various levels of abstract thinking, and their relevance to ontology. Whereas if we start from concepts, we already start from the abstract, and then can be generally ontologically confused. So Schopenhauer's main critique seems to stand, but he may have also misunderstood a lot of what Kant said.

Aand this has to do with realism how? Are you saying that not even phenomena are "real" to you, but then what are? Concepts? Nothing? What does that even mean? What are we talking about?
Atla
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Atla »

Maybe he thinks that everything is conceptual, any reality is ultimately conceptual. Even though he has an Eastern philosophy background, which warns us using big bold capital letters against such an illusion.
Iwannaplato
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Iwannaplato »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sun Jul 02, 2023 10:35 am Since Kant's Noumenon is critical to support my views on Morality, I am posting this in the Ethical Theory Section.
It might be critical to explaining your views. You might take some of his arguments and use them. But otherwise it's one philosopher's opinions. I am not sure you understand what is an appeal to authority and what is the use of a philosopher's ideas to heal YOU support your own postion.

IOW it's great if you want to credit Kant for the source of some of your arguments. Or you mention that a term you use comes from Kant. But the fact that he held position X that you agree with is irrelevant.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Appeal to false authority
This fallacy occurs when a person appeals to a false authority as evidence for a claim.[15][16] These fallacious arguments from authority are the result of citing a non-authority as an authority.
An example of the fallacy of appealing to an authority in an unrelated field would be citing Albert Einstein as an authority for a determination on religion when his primary expertise was in physics.
This OP is specifically related to the "Critiques of Kant's Noumenon.." and not how Kant's noumenon is critical to support my views on morality which is dealt in other threads.

"Since Kant's Noumenon is critical to support my views on Morality.." is just mentioned to emphasize why critiques of Kant noumenon is of interest to me.
What is most irritating is when someone merely rely on the above to allude there is a fallacy of 'Appeal to Authority' while ignoring the whole context of the discussion in this Ethical Theory section.

Obviously it would be fallacious just to wave his name in support of one's argument.
Kant is one of the greatest philosopher of all times and he had very solid arguments for epistemology which extend to morality.
Thus when I mentioned Kant's noumenon, it is implied I am referring to his whole argument in his CPR and elsewhere that would support [in part not whole] my own arguments on epistemology morality.

Specific to this OP, I want to discuss all those who had critiqued Kant's noumenon.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

"Where Kant was analyzing the conceptual conditions that resulted in the making of verbal judgments, Schopenhauer was phenomenologically scrutinizing intuitive experience."

The above can be misleading.
Both Kant [phenomena vs noumena] and Schopenhauer started with the phenomena.

From phenomena, Kant argued the noumena is merely a thought [intelligible object] and nothing substantial. To Kant, anyone insisting the noumena is something substantial in a positive mode is delusional.

Schopenhauer started with the phenomena and insist the phenomena is represented by something substantial, i.e. the noumenon as the the WILL which is also the thing-in-itself.
Schopenhauer as with any philosophical realist is driven by the evolutionary default to seek something ultimate that is ultimately human-mind-independent, i.e. exists even if there are no humans.

In a way, Schopenhauer's metaphysics is grounded on the ultimate reality of the Upanishads, i.e. Brahman.

Arthur Schopenhauer - Upanishads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-5sr0KQnks

Schopenhauer's critique of Kant has no teeth in terms of the main philosophical elements.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Besides Schopenhauer, the following were also critiques of Kant's Noumenon,

1. Nietzsche - Will to Power
2. Hegel - The Absolute
3. Husserl - Consciousness
4. Heidegger - not directly in Being and Time.

From StackExchange;
1. Nietzsche - Will to Power
Two different criticisms of the thing-in-itself can be found in Nietzsche's work, a good review is Riccardi, Nietzsche’s critique of Kant’s thing in itself.

A. The Strawman
Both criticisms argue that the idea is inconsistent. The first, more straightforward one, can be found in Gay Science and is sketched in the OP. It is that Kant applies the notion of causality to infer the existence of thing-in-itself whereas he himself previously restricted the category of causality to appearances only.

"Kant was no longer entitled to his distinction between “appearance” and “thing in itself” – he had denied himself the right to continue to distinguish in this old, traditional way having rejected as invalid the inference from the appearance to a cause of the appearance – in accordance with his understanding of the concept of causality and of its purely intra-phenomenal validity."

This was a common objection already prior to Nietzsche. Riccardi suggests that Nietzsche here copied almost literally a passage from Teichmüller's 1882 metaphysical treatise.
The problem with it is that this is not how Kant arrived at his thing-in-itself. It is not the cause of appearances for him, but merely a conceptual plug: if there are appearances then there is something that appears.
The relation between them is not that of causation, but of abstract expression. Put more positively, the thing-in-itself is a noumenal completion of phenomena. The above may be a valid criticism of some quasi-Kantian misconceptions, but it has nothing on Kant himself.
..............

B: Strawman 2
Nietzsche's second criticism is more to the point. He argues that positing a relationless propertyless "thing", which Kant's thing-in-itself must be, is even conceptually absurd. This line of reasoning appears in Kritische Studienausgabe c. 1887:

"The “thing in itself” [is] absurd. If I remove all relations, all “properties”[,] all “activities” of a thing, then the thing does not remain left. [...] The “in itself” is even an absurd conception: a “constitution in itself” is non-sense; we always have the concept “being”, “thing” only as the concept of relation."

Anderson unfolds Nietzsche’s second argument as follows in Nietzsche’s Views on Truth and the Kantian Background of His Epistemology:

"The unknowability of things in themselves is part of their very conception: it arises not from some contingent deficiency or incompleteness in our experience or theorizing to date, but from general and inevitable limitations on our cognitive resources, most importantly the lack of intellectual intuitions capable of representing such objects. This means that in attempting to conceive of things in themselves, we outstrip the legitimate realm of our concepts, and therefore stop making sense altogether".

Now to the Will to Power. It is true that many early commentators pointed out Nietzsche's own inconsistency in presenting the Will to Power as a sort of beyondly thing that he rejected in Kant as incoherent, and passages like aphorism 36 of Beyond Good and Evil give quite a bit of fodder to that. It is also true that Nietzsche seems to need a common referent for his "perspectives" in epistemology, and that the Will to Power fits the bill. Moreover, although he generally uses the term ambiguously and confusingly, he does described it as "the essence of the world".

However, we should remember from Gay Science that

"What things are called is unspeakably more important than what they are [...]: what started as appearance in the end nearly always becomes essence and effectively acts as its essence!"

It is this "essence" that the Will to Power likely refers to at its core, the Relations-Welt essence, not the beyondly essence of metaphysics that Kant relegated to his relationless thing-in-itself. "There is no “essence in itself”, relations first constitute essences", as Nietzsche says in Kritische Studienausgabe. On this interpretation, the Will to Power only summarizes the world as given to us (in the integrated sense of "us", split up into perspectives), the world of appearances, it does not reintroduce the thing-in-itself or "supplant" it.
In both critiques by Nietzsche, they are strawman.
In the 2nd, Nietzsche claimed the thing-in-itself [aka noumenon] is conceptually absurd.
For Kant this "conceptually absurd" is merely a thought, a real thought [not a thought of realness] which p-realists reified as real, thus clinging to an illusion [culminating to an illusory God] which has psychological effects.
Atla
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2023 2:15 am "Where Kant was analyzing the conceptual conditions that resulted in the making of verbal judgments, Schopenhauer was phenomenologically scrutinizing intuitive experience."

The above can be misleading.
Both Kant [phenomena vs noumena] and Schopenhauer started with the phenomena.

From phenomena, Kant argued the noumena is merely a thought [intelligible object] and nothing substantial. To Kant, anyone insisting the noumena is something substantial in a positive mode is delusional.

Schopenhauer started with the phenomena and insist the phenomena is represented by something substantial, i.e. the noumenon as the the WILL which is also the thing-in-itself.
Schopenhauer as with any philosophical realist is driven by the evolutionary default to seek something ultimate that is ultimately human-mind-independent, i.e. exists even if there are no humans.

In a way, Schopenhauer's metaphysics is grounded on the ultimate reality of the Upanishads, i.e. Brahman.

Arthur Schopenhauer - Upanishads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-5sr0KQnks

Schopenhauer's critique of Kant has no teeth in terms of the main philosophical elements.
There is no "WILL", but it's also completely delusional to insist that noumena can only be thoughts. The reference is a thought. The referent, if it exists, could be anything. We can consider Kant to be refuted if that's what he really meant.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

If there is no "WILL" [aka thing in itself, noumenon] as claimed by Schopenhauer, why refer to S as support for the existence of the noumenon as real?

The reference is a thought.
The referent, if it exists, could be anything, yes.
The referent as thought can be empirically possible, thus provable scientifically.
What is provable by science is real empirically.

The referent as thought could be a square-circle which has no empirically possible.
The noumenon is purely a thought and has no empirical possibility.
The noumenon is a thought which is unprovable by Science. [see OP]
Therefore the noumenon [negative] can only be a limit & cannot be real.

Any thought of a noumenon in the positive sense [as an illusion] is delusional.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Thesis: That Schopenhauer complained Kant used the word noumenon incorrectly, is philosophically childish in insisting there is monopoly or a permanent meaning of 'noumenon'.
see:
viewtopic.php?p=653186#p653186
Atla
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2023 6:16 am If there is no "WILL" [aka thing in itself, noumenon] as claimed by Schopenhauer, why refer to S as support for the existence of the noumenon as real?

The reference is a thought.
The referent, if it exists, could be anything, yes.
The referent as thought can be empirically possible, thus provable scientifically.
What is provable by science is real empirically.

The referent as thought could be a square-circle which has no empirically possible.
The noumenon is purely a thought and has no empirical possibility.
The noumenon is a thought which is unprovable by Science. [see OP]
Therefore the noumenon [negative] can only be a limit & cannot be real.

Any thought of a noumenon in the positive sense [as an illusion] is delusional.
If WILL is just another name for noumenon, then there can be WILL, I just take issue with the naming. It's like calling the world "GOD" for no reason.

If you don't call the empirically verified, real referent noumenon "noumenon" then what do you call it? What is science studying if not the noumenon?
Atla
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Re: Critiques of Kant's Noumenon

Post by Atla »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2023 7:22 am Thesis: That Schopenhauer complained Kant used the word noumenon incorrectly, is philosophically childish in insisting there is monopoly or a permanent meaning of 'noumenon'.
see:
viewtopic.php?p=653186#p653186
Yet you are quite upset when I don't use noumenon exactly as Kant used it (or how you think he used it, as no one knows for sure), and open 10 more threads about Kant's usage. Even though it's 250 years later, and the dominant view is the representationalism/indirect perception, which makes the dominant view some sort of dual-object noumenon where the phenomenon in the head and the noumenon "out there" are two different spacetime events (for example when we see a table).
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