Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 6:40 am
Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:50 am
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:13 am
The claim that features of reality conform to our knowledge of them, and therefore our ways of describing them, is arse-about-face - cart-before-horseplay. And Kant's false analogy says it all. The Copernican revolution was about discovering the way things really are - not assuming they conform to our way of describing them.
I have to say you are very stupid and naive philosophically.
Strawmaning again.
Where did Kant state "they conform to our way of describing them."
Kant stated
if we suppose that Objects must conform to our Knowledge and the term "knowledge" in this case is heavily laden to the context that is in the CPR.
The above quoted was merely a point from the preface, but to understand that point one has to understand his whole CPR thoroughly.
It is very embarrassing and insulting to your intelligence that you are so arrogant with your stupidity when you have not read Kant's work thoroughly.
I have read the CPR, and it was one of the most painful reading experiences I've ever had.
True, note "no pain no gain."
I suffered similar pains as well but also experienced regular "intellectual orgasm"
in the course of reading Kant's CPR and his other work.
But I think what matters is claims and arguments. We may disagree about what - if anything coherent - Kant actually wrote. And the raging debate among Kant scholars about much of it indicates that it wasn't clear at all.
I am aware of that. There are philosophers who spent a life time reading, researching and teaching Kant's philosophers and there are disagreement among them. Those in the analytic or anti-realists camps who read Kant will never agree with each other on certain main elements.
I believe I have got Kant's intended views which is coherent [triangulated] with my other views. Btw, I do not agree with Kant totally.
Question: is there a distinction between phenomena and noumena? If so, what and where are noumena? This is what matters, because you invoke the supposed non-existence of things-in-themselves in order to support your argument for moral objectivity - though the connection is far from clear.
What is
phenomena are things per se that can be verified and justified empirically and philosophically as real within a credible FSK.
The concept of phenomena appear in the
middle [B311] of Kant's whole argument [B884]. He still got 573 pages to get to this final conclusion.
Kant anticipated the realists will be impatient and will question, how can phenomena that appeared exist without '
that-which-appear'?
So Kant at that point in appeasing the realist question, implied, let's
assume there is the '
that-which-appear' so that he can continue to argue the thing-in-itself is ultimately illusory [after another 573 pages].
He labelled this '
that-which-appear' as the
noumena.
Note this is what Kant wrote [in the middle of his argument] about the 'noumena' aka thing-in-itself or things-in-themselves;
The Concept of a Noumenon is thus a merely limiting Concept, the Function of which is to curb the pretensions of Sensibility; and it is therefore only of negative employment.
At the same time it [Noumenon] is no arbitrary invention; it is Bound up with the Limitation of Sensibility, though it [Noumenon] cannot affirm anything Positive beyond the Field of Sensibility.
CPR - B311
What is positive the phenomena within the field of sensibility. If one were to insist the noumena is positive, it has to be within the field of sensibility thus cannot be independent of mind[sensibility].
If the concept of noumenon [aka thing-in-itself] is merely a limiting concept, how can it be a real thing at all ultimately?
Note he went on to demonstrate why the noumenon [aka thing-in-itself] is illusory and not real within the next 573 B-pages.
If you cherry pick to argue against Kant, you will not succeed and besides that is intellectual dishonesty.
Kant warned about cherry-picking in arguing against his work;
A philosophical work cannot be armed at all points, like a Mathematical treatise, and may therefore be open to objection in this or that respect, while yet the Structure of the System, taken in its Unity, is not in the least endangered.
Few have the versatility of mind to familiarise themselves with a new System; and owing to the general distaste for all innovation, still fewer have the inclination to do so.
If we take single passages, torn from their contexts, and compare them with one another, apparent contradictions are not likely to be lacking, especially in a work that is written with any freedom of expression.
In the eyes of those who rely on the judgment of others, such contradictions have the effect of placing the work in an unfavourable light; but they are easily resolved by those who have mastered the idea of the Whole.
CPR Preface B-xliv