Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

For all things philosophical.

Moderators: AMod, iMod

Post Reply
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12385
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Kant’s Transcendental Idealism
Nicholas F. Stang
First published Fri Mar 4, 2016
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/Kant ... -idealism/

Instead of focusing on what Transcendental Idealism is as in accordance to Kant, this article deviated into mainly asking the question, 'Is Kant a Phenomenalist?' especially of the Berkelyan genre.

In the end, Stang is inconclusive of Kant's position, note his conclusion;
7.0 Conclusion
This article has traced the meaning of transcendental idealism, sometimes referred to as “critical” or “formal” idealism, through the text of the Critique of Pure Reason and various interpretive controversies.

Historically, the main question dividing different interpretations is whether Kant is a phenomenalist about object in space and time and, if so, in what sense.
The phenomenalist interpretation of Kant, dominant among Kant’s immediate predecessors and later German idealists, was challenged in twentieth century Anglophone scholarship by, among others, Graham Bird, Gerold Prauss, and Henry Allison.

Some later scholars have retained a central idea of these scholars’ reading—that the appearance/thing-in-itself distinction is a distinction between distinct aspects of objects, not distinct kinds of objects—while jettisoning the purely epistemological interpretation of Kant’s idealism.

The meaning and philosophical significance of “transcendental idealism” has been debated by Kant’s readers since 1781, and this debate shows no sign of abating any time soon.
Those who failed to understand [not necessary agree] Kant's Transcendental Idealism properly, is because most of them are realists thus stuck with the idea that there is something real external out there [ontologically] independent of the human conditions.

Whereas Kant's view which is leveraged on a Copernican Revolution approach
Kant's Copernican Revolution
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32906
do not align with the realist's external independent world.

In this sense Kant's approach is NEVER focused nor targeted on the ontological thing/object at all.
The Kantian approach is focused on the epistemological approach never the ontological.
Meanwhile the realists are brainwashed with the idea of the ontological object, that is why they cannot understand Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
They either denounced Kant Transcendental Idealism as similar to Berkeley's or insist Kant is AGNOSTIC with the ontological thing-in-itself.

My point;
Kant only identified his views are transcendental idealism because critiques condemned his views as similar to Berkeley's [heavy derogated and "mocked" during his time]. He also named his work as formal idealism and critical idealism to distance his from Berkeley's.
Actually Kant need not have to identify his work as 'idealism' at all [to avoid hasty generalization by others] but merely presented whatever is his philosophies which are merely anti-philosophical_realism and let his books speak for him.

Question;
1. Is Kant Transcendental Idealism identical with Berkeley's idealism?
2. Is Kant agnostic with the ontological thing-in-itself?
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12385
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Note CONTENT [with detailed sub-sections] for reference,

CONTENT
# Introduction
  • • 1. Appearances and Things-in-themselves
    o 1.1 Transcendental Realism and Empirical Idealism
    o 1.2 The Empirical Thing-in-itself
• 2. The Feder-Garve Review and Kant’s Replies
  • o 2.1 The Feder-Garve review
    o 2.2 Varieties of Phenomenalism
    o 2.3 Kant Strikes Back
    o 2.4 Changes in the B-Edition
• 3. Kant as a Phenomenalist
  • o 3.1 Appearances = representations?
    o 3.2 Qualified phenomenalism
    o 3.3 Criticisms of Phenomenalist Readings
    o 3.4 The Problem of Things-in-themselves
    3.4.1 The Unknowability of Things-in-themselves
    3.4.2 Things-in-themselves as causes
    3.4.3 The Problem of Affection
• 4. The “Dual Aspect” View
  • o 4.1 One object, Not Two
    o 4.2 Allison’s “Epistemic” reading
    o 4.3. Problems with the Epistemic reading
    4.3.1 The Triviality Objection
    4.3.2 Epistemic conditions entail realism
    4.3.3 Abstraction
    4.3.4 Things-in-themselves as more fundamental than appearances
    o 4.4 Metaphysical “Dual Aspect” Readings
    o 4.5 Problems for Langton’s reading
    4.5.1 Textual evidence
    4.5.2 Phenomena substantiata
• 5. One object or Two?
  • o 5.1 Identity between appearances and things-in-themselves
    o 5.2 Langton and non-identity
    o 5.3 Phenomenalist Dual Aspect Readings
    o 5.4 Assessing the Interpretive Issues w/tables
• 6. Things-in-themselves, noumena, and the transcendental object
  • o 6.1 Phenomena and noumena
    o 6.2 The transcendental object = X
• 7. Conclusion
• # Notes
• # Bibliography

My point;
To really understand what is Kant Transcendental Idealism, one [assuming one is familiar with Kant] one should start from section 6.0 backward rather than the above sequence.

To start to understand what is Kant's Transcendental Idealism, i.e.
1.0 Appearances and Things-in-themselves
2.0 The Feder-Garve Review and Kant’s Replies
mislead one from the trail to what Kant's Transcendental Idealism really represent.

SEP also made a mistake by relying on Stang to write the article titled 'Kant's Transcendental Idealism' when he agreed Kant's TI is the same as Berkeley's.

Rightly SEP should have asked proponents of Kant Transcendental Idealism [e.g. Henry Allision, Allias, Langton] who would present their views and also introduce who have alternative thoughts.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12385
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Here is an interesting article [from Philosophy Now] that give some idea of what Transcendental Idealism is, but note this is not the complete thing about Transcendental Idealism.
I believe this article do give a lot of food for thought.

While the article is interesting I do not agree with this as something final and there is more to it.
Instead, Kant was convinced that there was something beyond our immediate sensations causing these phenomena.
There’s something out there, insisted Kant, the source of these sense perceptions: something behind or beyond them called the noumenal world.
But aye, there’s the rub.
Kant maintained that although there is a noumenal world that is the initial cause of our subjective (phenomenal) experience of the world, we can never access that noumenal world directly.
The above implied that is 'something' ultimate, i.e. the thing-in-itself [noumena] which is the real thing that caused the phenomena. [..I have argued the noumena is not any real thing but merely a limiting concept]

He continued,
He maintained that the world as experienced is the product of a ‘Matrix’.
  • In the first Matrix film (1999), Morpheus tells Neo, “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
Kant didn’t believe in any robotic conspiracies to systematically delude humanity.
Instead, Kant takes a position which I believe is just as striking: for him, our minds are the Matrix.
This idea is at the heart of Kant’s philosophy, and he called this position transcendental idealism.
I think the idea our minds [collectively] are the Matrix which produces phenomenal which is real is a reasonable analogy.
There is nothing nothing else, no thing-in-itself independent of the human conditions.
The question is if there is no ultimate thing-in-itself, from where do the phenomenon arise from?
There are answers to this, i.e. there is only "emergence" and no ultimate 'real' thing-in-itself.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12385
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

As I had stated those who critiqued Kant's Transcendental Idealism [TI] negatively are mostly philosophical realists who take a metaphysical ontological stance rather than an epistemological stance.

One the philosopher who adopted the epistemological stance to Kant's TI is Henry Allison,
who wrote Transcendental idealism, Interpretation and Defence.
Stance critique and countered Allison views in 4.2 Allison’s “Epistemic” reading in the SEP article.

Allison wrote;
In fact, the manifest untenability of transcendental idealism, as they [critique] understand it, has led some critics to attempt to save Kant from himself, by separating what they take to be a legitimate core of Kantian argument (usually of an antiskeptical nature) from the excess baggage of transcendental idealism, with which they [two-object] believe it to be encumbered.
[...] [not in all cases] this reading is combined with a summary dismissal of transcendental idealism as a viable philosophical position.
Meanwhile Allison general view of Transcendental Idealism is this;
The approach taken in the present work is diametrically opposed to this [critique's two-object view].

Although not denying many of the difficulties pointed out by the critics, its [Allison's book] main goal is to provide an overall interpretation and, where possible, a defense of transcendental idealism.
This defense will not amount to an attempt to demonstrate the truth of transcendental idealism; that being much too ambitious a project.
It will, however, argue that this [transcendental] idealism remains a viable philosophical option, still worthy of serious consideration.
An underlying thesis, which is independent of the viability of transcendental idealism, is its intimate connection with virtually every aspect of the Critique.
In short, the separability of Kant’s fundamental claims in the Critique from transcendental idealism will be categorically denied.
For better or worse, they stand or fall together.
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12385
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

In the Introduction, Allison described how the philosophical realists in their ignorance has perverted Kant's original concept of Transcendental Idealism;

...............................
Introduction
I. KANTIAN ANTI-IDEALISM

As noted above, critics of transcendental idealism, who are nonetheless in some sense sympathetic to Kant,
tend to interpret this idealism in an extremely uncharitable manner and
then argue for its separability from some independently justifiable strand of Kantian argumentation.
We shall briefly consider each of these moves in turn.

A. The Idealism of Anti-Idealism

According to many of its critics, transcendental idealism is a metaphysical theory that affirms the uncognizability of the “real” (things-in-themselves) and relegates cognition to the purely subjective realm of representations (appearances).
It thus combines a phenomenalistic, essentially Berkeleian, account of what is actually experienced by the mind, and therefore cognizable, namely, its own representations, with the postulation of an additional set of entities, which, in terms of the very theory, are uncognizable.[3]
In spite of the obvious paradox it involves, this postulation is deemed necessary to explain how the mind acquires its representations, or at least the materials for them (their form being “imposed” by the mind itself).
The basic assumption is simply that the mind can acquire these materials only as a result of being “affected” by things-in-themselves.
Thus, such things must be assumed to exist, even though the theory denies that we have the right to say anything about them, including the claims that they exist and affect us.

Although it has a long and reasonably distinguished lineage, traceable to
Kant’s contemporaries,[4]
the continued acceptance of this understanding of transcendental idealism in the Anglo-American philosophical community is largely due to the influence of P. F. Strawson, who brusquely defines this idealism as the doctrine that “reality is supersensible and that we can have no knowledge of it.”[5]
Moreover, in the spirit of this reading, Strawson not only rejects transcendental idealism as incoherent; he also provides an account of what led Kant to this “disastrous” doctrine.
As Strawson sees it, transcendental idealism is the direct consequence of Kant’s “perversion” of the “scientifically minded philosopher’s” contrast between a realm of physical objects composed of primary qualities and a mental realm consisting of the sensible appearances of these objects (including their secondary qualities).
This mental realm, like its Kantian counterpart, is thought to be produced by means of an affection of the mind by physical objects.
Kant allegedly perverts this model, however, by assigning the whole spatiotemporal framework (which according to the original model pertains to the “real,” that is to say, to physical objects) to the subjective constitution of the human mind.
The resulting doctrine is judged to be incoherent because, among other reasons, it is only with reference to a spatiotemporal framework that one can talk intelligibly about “affection.”[6]

In addition to its unwarranted postulation of things-in-themselves that somehow affect the mind, transcendental idealism is often attacked on epistemological grounds for its complementary claim that we can know only appearances.
Equating Kantian “appearances” with “mere representations,” critics take this to mean that we know only the contents of our own minds, that is, ideas in the Berkeleian sense.
This is then sometimes used as the basis for a critique of the doctrine of the ideality of space and time, which Kant presents in the Transcendental Aesthetic.
Simply put, the claim is that Kant’s subjectivistic starting point confronts him with a stark dilemma: he must maintain either
(1) that things only seem to us to be spatial, or
(2) that appearances, that is to say, representations, really are spatial.
The former, however, allegedly entails that our consciousness of a world of objects extended and located in space is somehow illusory; whereas the latter is supposedly absurd on the face of it, since it
requires us to regard mental items as extended and located in space.[7]

This line of criticism can likewise be traced back to Kant’s contemporaries, and it certainly has echoes in Strawson.[8]

Perhaps its sharpest twentieth-century formulation, however, is by H. Prichard, who concentrates much of his attack on the alleged incoherence of Kantian “appearance talk.” [... I will not go into the details here]
............................
Veritas Aequitas
Posts: 12385
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 4:41 am

Re: Kant's Transcendental Idealism: SEP: By Stang

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

A relevant point;
Conde Lucanor wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:32 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 7:02 am Yes, Kant accepted the universe exists a mind-independent reality, but that is within his empirical realism perspective which is subsumed within his transcendental realism, thus ultimately whatever is external cannot be independent of the human conditions.
What you are saying here is that Kant denied the existence of things in themselves, which is completely false. Conditioning existence of things to minds is just the same as saying they don't exist as mind-independent things.
That is the problem when you do not read Kant's CPR thus ignorant of what Kant actual views are.

If you are familiar with the CPR, you will not Kant presented 'things' and things-in-themselves in many perspectives and contexts.

In the above I presented two perspectives;
1. Kant accepted the universe exists a mind-independent reality [externality], but that is within his empirical realism perspective,
2. the above perspective is subsumed within his transcendental realism,

because of 2, thus ultimately whatever-is-external cannot be independent of the human conditions.

Whatever-is-external are not things-in-themselves in the ultimate sense.
Things-in-themselves do not exist as real in the ultimate sense and cannot be known in the real sense.
However Kant stated things-in-themselves can only be thought of thus only in mind

Note according to Kant's main approach i.e. Copernican Revolution, the things-in-themselves are only epistemological things not ontological things.
The mistake with realists like you is they ASSUMED things-in-themselves are ontological things that has objective reality.

It is this wrong assumption of the ontological things-in-themselves that lead realists to their idea of 'affection', there must be things-in-themselves to affect representations. Thus leading the 'problem of affection' below.
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 7:02 am Note the point from the above,
(Affection) Things-in-themselves causally affect us

Kant would never agree with the above literally.
Actually, he would, depending on which edition of the CPR one is looking at, and which section. If one is looking to the Aesthetics, or the Prolegomena, or the Refutation of Idealism, different interpretations might emerge. It is well known that this tension inside Kant's own system was the basis of Jacobi's criticism of Transcendental Idealism, which accurately describes the major problem of this philosophy: either accept things in themselves or solipsism. Most philosophers try to deny solipsism, but in order to remain faithful to idealism, assume positions such as yours, where things do exist (to keep realism), but they also don't (to keep idealism). An absurd, incoherent philosophy.
Stang wrote of Jacobi and the Problem of Affection,

  • In the context of Kant’s theory of experience, it means that appearances cannot “reach back” and cause the very experiences in virtue of which they exist.
    From the 1780s until today, many have taken this problem to be fatal to Kant’s theory of experience.
    3.4.3
That is only his and realists of the likes' opinion which is based on a short-sighted view of Kant's CPR.

Allison's allocated a chapter to the Jacobi dilemma issue and explained how Jacobi and Vaihinger's posers were based on a short-sighted view of the CPR.
see Allison, Chapter 3 The Thing-in-itself and the Problem of Affection, pg 50

Allison's view on Jacobi Dilemma is summed up as;

  • In fact, Jacobi's denial is based on a twofold confusion:
    1. it conflates Kantian Appearances with Berkeleian Ideas, and
    2. it construes Affection simply as a species of causation.
    [...]
    Consequently, we can reject the second horn of Jacobi's dilemma,
    ... namely, that with the concept of the Thing-in-Itself (or Transcendental object) we cannot remain in the Kantian philosophy.
    Indeed, we can remain in it quite comfortably, so long as we keep in mind that the concept has a legitimate meta-level function within the framework of Transcendental Reflection and, as such, does not bring with it any claim to cognize a super-Sensible reality.
Allision detailed exposition is in the book.
Post Reply